After all the work that went into preparing the gala, the evening seemed to pass in a flash. I spent the entire time making sure everything was going smoothly, checking on the food, the silent auction, the EmCee. I wouldn’t be bragging, only reporting the truth, if I said everything went without a glitch and we raised more money than I’d imagined—quite enough for the shelter to be rebuilt and to have enough funds to function for a long while. It was nice that something good was coming out of the situation I’d been thrown into.

Something besides me growing closer to Morgan, I mean. But was that even a good thing? Was it a good idea for me to grow closer to—

Oh, who am I kidding? It wasn’t about ‘being close’ to him anymore. I was falling in love. How crazy was I to fall in love with a vampire? Or, forget the vampire thing. Was it good to fall in love with a man who pretended so hard not to have any interest in me when every other thing he did pointed to the opposite? I could have been wrong, of course. I could have read more in his behavior than was really there. I could have imagined all of it because I wanted the Morgan from our fantasies to be real.

But what if I wasn’t wrong?

With my mind in shambles, I was glad to keep busy the entire evening and only saw Morgan a few times, never closer than a few feet away. He’d stayed away from me the entire day, and that was fine by me. I didn’t want to talk to him right now. I couldn’t, not when I was still trying to understand the kisses.

There was one slight problem with my ‘keep busy’ plan: the gala couldn’t last forever. After the auction ended, the band continued to play, but the party started to wind down. By two-thirty or so in the morning, the guests were gone, the band was just about finished packing, and the servers had done a first quick clean-up. I accompanied everyone to the door, thanking them for a great job and promising I’d use their services again if I ever found myself planning another party. Seeing how I was determined not to work for Miss Delilah anymore when she finally freed me, I wasn’t sure I’d get the chance to organize galas like this one again, but it was always good to keep business contacts.

I was about to go to bed when I was surprised to find someone in front of my favorite painting. I’d thought all the guests had gone, but there seemed to be at least one straggler. I approached from behind, and for just a second I thought it was a man—a rather short, svelte man with hair long enough to cover the back of his neck with soft-looking auburn curls—but the peek of high heels under the tuxedo pants clued me in. Coming closer, I could see the delicate features of a woman, her full lips pink and shiny, her brown eyes darkened by mascara, eyeliner, and eye shadow.

The contrast between her tailored tuxedo, cut in such a way that her modest chest and narrow hips were accentuated, and her expertly applied make-up was a little jarring. At the same time, she looked perfectly at ease, holding an almost empty flute of champagne in a nonchalant hand.

She finished the champagne without taking her eyes off the painting she was detailing—the same painting of Central Park I liked so much—and, still without looking toward me, she held out the glass in my direction. When I didn’t take it, she threw me an impatient look.

“Well, Angelina?” she said. “I’m not going to wait on you all night.”

I don’t know what shocked me the most: that she knew my name or that she was treating me like I was staff.

I’d ended up choosing a black dress, and granted it was the color of the uniform the serving staff had been wearing, but the gown did not look in any way, shape, or form like a uniform. I almost wanted to scoff at her or even turn my back and walk away. Something stopped me, however. The tone of her voice wasn’t the same as Miss Delilah’s when she’d compelled me, but it was very close: the expectation that she’d be obeyed came through loud and clear.

The realization of what she might be silenced my annoyance, and I took the empty glass from her. I was about to set it down on the closest piece of furniture, a tall, carved wooden stand topped by a porcelain vase, when she tisked reprovingly.

“Do you have any idea how old that stand is?” she asked. “And you want to treat it like a coffee table. Children have no manners these days.”

My annoyance roared back, and my cheeks burned with outrage as my hand closed over the glass.

“I am no child,” I started, but she wasn’t listening. Her eyes were back on the painting, and she talked over me as she gestured at it.

“No manners at all. Putting that thing in the same room as my Monet. Honestly, I don’t know what goes through Morgan’s head anymore. Unless…”

She turned a narrow-eyed look toward me.

“Did he buy that… painting for you? Is that it?” She shook her head. “He always did the silliest things when women asked him to. I rather hoped it’d be different with you.”

Remember all the times I complained about Morgan giving the most unhelpful explanations? Now I knew where he’d learned that amazing skill. And I knew, without the shadow of a doubt, who this woman had to be: his maker.

“You’re Mother,” I said, a little breathless, and it wasn’t a question.

“My name is Irene,” she replied in that same stern, forbidding voice. “Only my children may call me Mother, and you are not my child.”

After a pointed pause, she added, “Yet.”

I gulped, then took a step back.

And you’d have done the same.

Standing in front of the person who was responsible for my current situation? Knowing she was a vampire? Hearing her allude, ever so casually, to the possibility of making me a vampire, too?

Oh yeah. That was a gulp moment if I ever lived through one.

“You still haven’t answered,” she chided. “Did Morgan buy that painting for you?”

I gulped again, and still my mouth and throat felt almost too dry for words.

“No,” I croaked. “It was already up the first time I came here.”

She made a little “Hmm” sound, like she wasn’t convinced, then turned again to the painting, her arms crossed in a decidedly forbidding posture.

“After all this time, you’d think he’d have learned to distinguish between true art and… this.”

The words could hardly have been more hurtful if I’d created the painting myself. I loved that painting. It meant a lot to me. It had given me peace and, in my mind at least, freedom. Hearing her disparage it like this… She wasn’t just criticizing Morgan’s taste. She was criticizing mine, too.

“Wasn’t Monet derided by art critics when he first showed his paintings?” I said, my nervousness forgotten for a second. “Maybe Morgan can recognize true art before others label it as such.”

When she faced me again, her grin was wide enough to show her fangs. Definitely another gulp moment.

“So, you do have a spark. I was beginning to wonder. Although, with the shoes you have to fill, you’re going to need more than a spark.”

Call me stupid, but when she mentioned shoes, my mind flashed back to the shoe-shopping spree Morgan had given me. And from there, I jumped to the gown shopping I’d done right in the mansion. And to that heated conversation we’d had. Add to that the remark from Miss Delilah that had troubled me since she’d uttered it: she’d called me perfect, like she was judging me against some unknown-to-me benchmark.

It hadn’t dawned on me until that moment, but in retrospect it should have. I wasn’t there because of a whim from Miss Delilah or ‘Mother.’ I wasn’t just a gift chosen randomly among millions of other women. I was there, very specifically, as someone’s replacement. And I felt very dumb for not understanding sooner.

“Whose shoes are they?” I asked her, trying to sound as unconcerned as I could manage when, in fact, I was dying to hear her answer.

“Ah, Angelina.” She tisked again. “You’re not asking the right person. This is not my tragically sad story to tell. Why don’t you ask Morgan about Melody?” Her eyes gleamed with mischief as she brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh dear. I let something slip. Shame on me.”

Melody.

How silly was I for feeling jealous? I couldn’t be sure who Melody was, or even if she was alive or dead, but here I was, needing to remind myself that I had no reason or even no right to feel betrayed.

Just the same, when Morgan’s voice rose behind me, I turned to him with a mild glare. He didn’t notice. His full attention was on Irene.

“Mother. I wasn’t aware you had come. What a pleasant surprise.”

She held her hand out toward him. He took it and bowed lightly to press a kiss to her knuckles.

“You did invite me,” she pointed out.

“I invited you to my birthday party, too, but you didn’t come.”

She shrugged, then returned her gaze to the painting yet again.

“Lilah mentioned you were redecorating my home, so I came to check the damage.”

“Speaking of Lilah—”

She continued as though he had not spoken.

“You will have this thing removed, of course.”

“Mother.” Astonishing how much exasperation Morgan could cram in that small, respectful word. “Would you please tell Lilah to come back and let Angelina out of the house?”

She moved—

No, ‘moved’ isn’t the right word. When I hear the word ‘move’, I think of a body going through basic gestures that, put together, can be graceful or powerful or clumsy or so many other things. I did not see Irene perform any such gesture. I couldn’t tell you what she looked like when she took the three steps that separated us, settling behind me with her hand on my neck. It just happened. One second, she was in front of the painting. The next, she was all but growling behind my ear.

“Don’t resist, Angelina, or you’ll be dead before you hit the floor.”

The champagne glass slipped from my hand and shattered on said floor. I? Did not move a muscle. I even stopped breathing. Morgan stood like a frozen waterfall, power hiding behind stillness.

“You want her out of here?” Irene said. “We don’t need Lilah for that. I can deal with her right here, right now, since you won’t do it for yourself. I’ll even take care of the clean up for you. She’ll be out of your life, and you’ll be free to wallow in self-pity for another decade or ten, child. All you have to do is say the word.”

I blinked repeatedly, my eyes focused on Morgan’s, trying to capture his attention, but his gaze remained over my shoulder—on Irene.

“Please, Mother,” he murmured.

“Please what?” Her nails dug a little more into my neck, sharply enough that I was sure she’d broken the skin. “Get rid of her? Is that what you want?”

“No. I don’t want her dead. Please.”

“Why not? You just said you want her out of here.”

“Not like that.”

“Why not?” she said again. “She’s human. There’s nothing more normal than a human dying. Did you forget? How many gifts like this one did Lilah and I offer you over the years? You didn’t use to have qualms taking those lives. Or have you forgotten that, too?”

I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I let it out in a shaky, shuddering whimper. Morgan’s eyes drifted to me, and I lost my breath again. We’d known each other for less than two weeks, and our relationship, if I can even call it a relationship, was odd to say the least. But in his eyes, I could see more fear than would fill an ocean.

Fear for me. He’d saved my life twice, and he was afraid—no, terrified—that this time it was out of his hands.

And maybe, just maybe, there was something else behind the fear. Something I’d only ever seen in our shared fantasies. Or maybe I merely wanted it to be there.

“I have not forgotten anything,” he said, looking back at Irene. “I just don’t see why this particular human should die now.”

“All right. Give me one reason why she shouldn’t die now.”

The silence that followed didn’t last long. Seconds, I’m sure, if even that. But with my life hanging in the balance, it seemed to take Morgan ages before he came up with a reason.

“I enjoy her company,” was what he said.

Yeah, I know, it was a let-down for me, too. ‘Enjoying my company’ was fine and dandy, but I’d hoped we’d come a bit further than that. Still, at that moment, I was happy to take those disappointing words over getting my throat sliced open by sharp nails. Or a set of fangs. Or any other kind of death, if you want to get down to it.

Except Irene’s hold on me wasn’t relenting. She had her answer, and yet the threat remained the same.

“Make up your mind, Morgan,” she said in a chiding tone. “Either you like having her here or you want her gone. It can’t be both.”

“She’s here under duress,” he said quietly. “I’d enjoy her company a lot more if I knew it was her choice to… to…”

“To what?” she snapped when he didn’t finish. “To be with you? To fall for you? Like no sane woman would ever find you interesting or, God forbid, desirable if she wasn’t compelled to be around you for five minutes?”

Her nails dug yet a little deeper into my skin, and now I could feel blood trickling from the cuts. I was sure she was about to kill me right here in front of him, with nothing but her bare hands.

She proved me wrong. She pushed me away with enough force to fling me into Morgan’s arms. He caught me as gently as he could under the circumstances and shifted our bodies, drawing me away from her. I closed my eyes, pressed my face to his chest, and clung to him so my knees wouldn’t fold under me.

“Get. Over. It,” Irene said. “If you think I’m going to stand by and watch you torture yourself for another hundred years, you really don’t know me. You like the girl. Just admit it and move on.”

She honest to goodness growled the words, the sounds so animalistic and their register so low that I didn’t understand them right away. Or maybe it was my heartbeat, pounding so furiously against my eardrums, that made it so hard to catch what she was saying. All I knew was that Morgan’s arms had closed around me and he wouldn’t let her hurt me. Nothing else mattered.

If he answered her, I didn’t hear it. The next thing I knew, he was murmuring close to my ear, “Come on, let’s get you upstairs and look at those scratches.”

I’m not used to being a scared, helpless little girl. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I can take care of myself. But I’m also not used to having nails as sharp as claws dig into my throat while a raving lunatic discusses killing me like she’d talk about cleaning a stain on a dress—or rather, throwing away the dress to save herself the trouble. I tried to nod at his words, tried to pull away and regain my composure. I couldn’t move, couldn’t say anything other than a raspy, “Is she gone?”

“She’s gone. You’re safe.” His hand brushed down my hair once or twice before he added, sotto voce, “I promise.”

Those last words lifted a weight off my chest, and I managed to push away from him. I still didn’t feel steady and was grateful for his arm around me as he guided me back upstairs. He didn’t say a word until we walked into the small dining room. He had me sit down and said, “I’ll be right back, okay?”

He waited until I nodded, then stepped into the kitchen. I watched him go, feeling too numb to even wonder why I was in the dining room or why he was going to the kitchen. This was the third time in just over ten days that I had come close to dying. I really wasn’t getting used to it. I didn’t want to get used to it, either. I just wanted it all to end.

In moments, Morgan returned with a first-aid kit. He shrugged out of his jacket, set it on the back of a chair, then sat down next to me, and pulled disinfectant and cotton from the box.

“I’m going to clean those cuts. It’ll sting a bit, I’m sorry.”

He must have taken my blink as assent, because he soaked the cotton in disinfectant and touched it to my neck. I tried to prepare myself so I wouldn’t flinch, but even as careful as he was, I couldn’t help it. It did sting. That wasn’t why my eyes started to fill with tears, though. Actually, I don’t know why my eyes started to fill with tears. The delayed effect of fear? Exhaustion, both physical and mental? The realization that ‘Mother’ had come, the elusive person who could command Miss Delilah to let me go, but she had seemed less than inclined to see me free?

I hated that I was crying. I hated even more that I was crying in front of Morgan. He lowered the cotton ball and cupped my face in his free hand, and even through my tears, I could still see the pain in his dark eyes, a pain deep enough to make me feel lightheaded.

He said my name, a whisper so low I almost thought I’d imagined it. I don’t remember if he drew me to him first, or if already my arms were wrapping around his neck. The result was the same: I was soon in his lap, my eyes scrunched tight as I pressed my face to his neck and tried to get a hold on myself. It took a little while.

 

*