A piece of yellow paper fluttered to the floor when Kat opened her cello case to practice that evening. The rest of the orchestra had finished for the day and left the opera house to enjoy Baton Rouge nightlife before performances began and their social life was reduced to Monday mornings and a few hours each afternoon.
Kat had to be careful. Reynard had eyes everywhere. Baton Rouge was a musical city only forty-five minutes from New Orleans. It wouldn’t be beneath his notice. She had to lay low even as she turned every stone looking for Victoria.
She bent to retrieve the small square of rough-edged cardstock. She turned it over to read the print on its front side. The Blues Queen. It was a riverboat ticket stub for a cruise earlier in the spring. Kat fingered the perforated tear that indicated the ticket had been used.
How had the scrap found its way into her case? It hadn’t been there earlier in the day. The black lining of her case wouldn’t have hidden the bright yellow paper. Printed along with the words was a tiny rendering of a showboat. The kind that had offered cruises up and down the Mississippi since before the Civil War. The drawing included whimsical clouds of steam from smokestacks that would be mostly decorative in these days of gasoline-powered engines.
Kat closed her case and placed her cello in the corner. Someone had put the ticket in her case. Sybil? Tess? The find wasn’t accidental. It was a deliberate hint. But it also felt like a lure. It was dangerous to leave l’Opéra Severne. Vic surely had in the months she’d been in Baton Rouge, and now she was gone.
Katherine decided against going to Severne with the ticket. He might not understand the tug of intuition she felt as she looked at the tiny stub. And she needed to avoid him as much as possible. A night on the town did not figure into the strategy. He might try to persuade her not to go, or he might decide to go with her. Neither of those were options she wanted to consider.
Kat rummaged for clothes to blend in with a riverboat party crowd. Even with her decision made, she wondered what she might encounter alone on a sultry Louisiana night.
She chose a simple belted shift dress she could pair with wedge-heeled booties. Sleeveless in a soft watercolor pattern, the dress wasn’t eye-catching, but a sheer wrap of pale green chiffon matched her belt and the leaves on the print, showing enough effort that she wouldn’t stand out in the opposite direction. She didn’t want to be over-or underdressed. She clipped her hair up in deference to the humidity and added a swipe of matte lipstick.
The yellow clutch she grabbed felt ironically un-weapon-like in her hand. She wasn’t as prepared to find and rescue her sister as she should have been. She was unsure what dangers she might face. But she didn’t have time to become a ninja or proficient with guns or knives. She was a cellist, and a cellist had to be enough.
The walk out of l’Opéra Severne was interminable. She expected Severne or Grim at every turn. She’d called a cab to avoid lingering on the street and flagging one down. Leaving the opera house and stepping out into the city was like trading one world for another.
Suddenly glittering lights and traffic, the sound of distant music and horns, enveloped her with seductive warmth. Somewhere Reynard stalked, and her sister... She tried not to imagine what was keeping her sister from calling. The pull of Severne’s Brimstone blood didn’t diminish. It was so strong it followed her into the Baton Rouge night, an attraction she tried to ignore.
The cab took her to the river and the quay, where several paddle wheel cruisers awaited their departures for dinner cruises. She paid the driver and got out to walk down the boardwalk as if she was only a tourist. But the light wind fluffing her skirt didn’t charm her. She was too nervous. Her motives for being here were too urgent to enjoy the happy sounds of the throng.
When she approached the window of The Blues Queen’s booking booth, she saw others being turned away.
“There are no more seats available for the evening,” she heard the agent at the window say.
She could see the large showboat gleaming with lights in the distance. It dwarfed the other boats tied nearby. She could hear the music already playing to welcome its passengers. Beautiful blues piano played by expert hands floated across the water. So near and yet so far. She couldn’t sneak on board. There was a narrow ramp with several crewmembers taking tickets from orderly boarders.
She stopped. Instinct still urged her that only The Blues Queen would do, even though other potential passengers in front of her were easily moving away to purchase tickets for other boats. Last minute partiers couldn’t be picky.
Just as Kat decided she would purchase a ticket for another night, a familiar figure stepped around her to talk to the agent at the window. The agent was obviously familiar with John Severne, as well. She smiled, nodded and picked up a phone.
Severne turned around and approached her. Kat could only stiffen her spine and stand firm rather than retreat.
“I like to let them know when they can expect me. We’ll be putting their preparations to the test tonight. Let’s see if they stand as ready as I expect them to be,” Severne said.
The daemon held out his arm. She noted his perfectly tailored suit. Very different from the shorts he wore in his gym. Yet its fitted lines revealed as much about his physique to the observant eye. She tried to observe less. She failed. He wore the suit casually with a loosened shirt and no tie. Her eyes were drawn to his bare neck. It was so very human of him to seem vulnerable in the loosened collar in spite of the hard body below it.
“I own The Blues Queen. My table is always reserved. Will you join me?” he asked.
His pants were slim-cut and low on his lean hips. Painfully sexy and modern for a “man” who had probably stood on this same quay a hundred years ago as casually as he did tonight.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Kat said.
It wasn’t a date. He must have followed her here to help her find her sister. No more. No less. But she could see in the fairy light glow that the green was already apparent in his nearly black eyes. She hadn’t meant to match the moss there with her wrap. Or had she? When had green become a color that appealed to her?
“It isn’t safe for you to go alone. I’m not the only one who followed you tonight,” Severne said.
Kat looked around. Her affinity was focused entirely on Severne. He had moved closer to her as she hesitated. She was blind to other threats just as she’d been blind to Sybil’s true nature. She felt no other pull.
“Is it Reynard?” she asked. She tugged her wrap closer even though the night held no natural chill. Her goose bumps were prompted by her emotions, a physical rejection of the evil that stalked her always.
“He and his Order are always a possibility. You know that. But I was referring to other threats,” Severne said.
He had reached to take her arm. Solicitous to onlookers, but she could feel a tension onlookers might not see.
“Is that why you followed me? To protect me from...?” she asked.
She looked up into his eyes. The shadows had reclaimed them as black. She couldn’t read the tight line of his lips or the clenched angle of his jaw.
“I’d like to be able to give you an unequivocal yes to that question,” he said. “Shall we?” He indicated the movement of the crowd down the quay and up the ramp onto the showboat. It was a happy, boisterous line up of couples and small groups.
“Well, we’re here. I’m not going to turn back now,” she said.
She slipped her hand into the crook of Severne’s arm as if they were a couple, and he led her on board. She probably should have walked away. Chances were her other stalkers might be dangerous, but in ways she could fight. Severne was the true danger. Him, she might not be able to beat. He felt far too good by her side.
John Severne was the master of l’Opéra Severne, but that wasn’t his only realm. It was obvious from the moment he climbed the ramp up to the waiting boat that he was also the king here on the river. The staff and crew of The Blues Queen welcomed him onto the deck with practiced deference, and they treated her royally as his guest.
They were led past rows of bistro-style tables to a more private setting in an alcove that overlooked the gleaming river from a private balcony. Severne held her chair and she stood stiffly, not knowing what to do. She was here to look for her sister. She wasn’t here to explore the flutter in her stomach when Severne watched and waited for her to act. Every time, every minute, every move, she felt him teasing her to action. Just as when he’d held her silver chain, he held her chair, almost daring her to resist...or not to resist.
“This isn’t the time for chivalry,” she said. It was a standoff. Him offering the chair. Her standing even though she was drawn to him and his company.
“But it needs to appear to be. We are being watched. Seeming to be here for any other reason than enjoying my hospitality would be a very bad idea,” Severne warned.
He was nothing but a handsome playboy enjoying an evening with a willing woman. No one else would see the tension in his shoulders or the tight grip of his hands on the chair. No one else would see the unmitigated black of his eyes or know that their lack of color indicated his level of tension.
Once again, Kat glanced around. The crowd was an elegant one seeded generously with tourists. She saw no monks. Felt no daemons. Then again, she could feel only Severne when he was standing this close. She decided to accept the proffered chair if for no other reason than to get Severne to move away from her to the other chair.
She tingled with the pull of Severne’s Brimstone from head to toe. Or maybe that was the response to the perusal of his eyes. He took in her appearance, lightly, but the approval she thought she saw in the slight softening of his mouth made her heartbeat in her chest seem obvious. Its sensual rhythm would increase with the brush of his hand.
“It’s dangerous for you here. In ways you can’t see. I’m unpopular with some. Used by others. It’s a deadly dance between two factions that will be fighting long after you and I are gone,” Severne said. “And your affinity...”
“...is completely unreliable around you,” Kat confessed.
They spoke about a technicality, but it was also an intimate truth. Kat could feel her face grow warm. She knew when the flush spread because his dark gaze followed it to her chest and lingered before rising to meet hers.
Their gazes held. His said he wasn’t a cad, but he enjoyed his effect on her. He enjoyed her attraction and the hold he had over the affinity she’d always had for daemons.
“You are free to go. At any time,” Severne said.
“I’ll never leave without Victoria,” Kat replied.
She raised her chin and broke the spell of his eyes. She looked away. She would resist the pull Severne had over her senses. Quietly, without meeting his eyes again, she told him about the ticket she’d found in her cello case.
“You came here tonight because you thought someone had left you a clue. I thought you were trying to get away from l’Opéra Severne. It can be a dark place to linger too long,” he said.
“But it’s also beautiful. Dark and lovely. When I was a girl, I discovered the cello at your opera house. No matter how dark, I’ll always love l’Opéra Severne for that gift,” Kat said.
“I’ve learned to be wary of gifts. But your music is very like the opera house. Seductive. Dangerous,” Severne said.
“My music? Dangerous?” Katherine asked, incredulous.
“Distraction is dangerous. I have no time for beauty and ease,” Severne said.
No time for beauty yet so beautiful in the glittering lights of his steamboat that he made her ache. No time for ease, yet he sought out the comfort of a child’s favorite fairy-tale operas in a cavernous warehouse where he had memorized the placement of every shoe.
“But you have time for blues and champagne?” Kat asked.
A waiter brought them a bottle without menu or consultation. Severne nodded, and he popped the cork with very little sound. Kat sipped what she’d been given, but when the flavors hit her tongue, she paused and savored the obviously aged vintage.
He said she was being watched. He said she was in danger. But she suddenly felt the need to enjoy. She wanted to stop the fear and the worry and make Severne relax his guard. He still looked at her as if she were a beguiling specimen that fascinated him, but his tension indicated more than danger. He held himself apart. Always.
The boat beneath them had separated itself from the dock. As they talked and sipped, they floated down the Mississippi, easy and slow. In the distance, the cantilever bridge that was a famous part of Baton Rouge’s skyline was aglow beneath a rising moon.
From the stage where they’d passed a shiny baby grand, a jazz standard played. The sound made it to their table. The other passengers talked or danced, enjoying a perfect Southern night for a river cruise.
But Severne was apart in more ways than their alcove position. He was tense. He was stiff. He was cold and controlled in spite of the Brimstone burn urging him to be other, less controlled things. His aloofness was as much an enticement as his daemon magnetism. This was why she should avoid him. His call to her wasn’t only Brimstone. He called to her in other, more human ways.
He had fire in his veins, but he needed her warmth.
She needed to find Victoria. She also needed other things. Starting with this daemon’s kiss.
“I’m not afraid,” she said. In that moment, she meant it. She saw his need and she responded to it as a woman, not as a tool for the Order of Samuel.
“That’s what frightens me,” he said.
Kat rose from her chair. She moved to Severne’s side. But he’d already risen to his feet, as well.
“There are creatures in this room that would burn you for eternity if they knew you helped me or hindered me. They need to see you simply dance with me. As any woman would,” he said.
He took her hand and led her onto the dance floor. Her fear came then because she hadn’t worn a suit of armor. There was not enough between their bodies when they came together. His broad chest pressed to her soft breast. She could feel his heat. His hand at her back was firm, but she could feel a tremor in his fingers.
This wasn’t about disguise. He was putting on a show for whomever or whatever watched her. There were other daemons here, ones invisible to her senses because her senses were full of Severne. But he held her because he wanted to and because she wanted to be held.
“You have nothing to fear as long as you’re with me. I’m in the middle of a revolution. You’re just along for the ride,” he advised. He pulled her closer. Kat relaxed her body and melted into him. It was a capitulation, but not to him or to the plan to appear like an ordinary date. She gave in to her need to feel him and to breathe in his wood smoke scent as she buried her face in his neck.
His hand stiffened and pressed into her back. His fingers gripped her warm skin beneath her light dress. His hold became too fierce. He was definitely not casual, cold or in control. He knew. He could tell she didn’t give a damn about disguise. He could feel her let go of all the reasons to hold herself away from him.
“Careful,” he said. It was a warning so guttural and low that it vibrated against her.
“I lied. I am afraid. But I’m still not running away,” she said.
He inhaled in a hiss, then exhaled through his teeth as her lips brushed his skin.
“You should know the daemons that watch us now don’t care if I seduce you. Their surveillance is no excuse to play with fire,” he said.
“You should know I don’t care if they’re watching. I’ve had to live with stalkers my whole life,” Kat said. “And who says you will be the one to seduce me?”
“This riverboat could turn into a battlefield at any second, engulfed in Brimstone and blood. And all I can think about is having you, tasting your kiss one more time,” Severne said.
To have her.
To taste her.
Kat shivered with need and anticipation. Life and death had always hung over her as a constant threat. But this sensual threat from John Severne was new. The song ended, and he led her back to the alcove. He turned her toward the other passengers. They stood with the wrought iron rail at their back, and she perused the crowd.
She could sense only Severne, but she’d been hunted her whole life. It wasn’t her affinity but simple instinct that would help her to see the faces in the crowd that were most often turned toward her. She picked them out, one, two, three. Seemingly ordinary men and women whose body language gave them away. Four, five, six. Her pulse roared in her ears, competing with the mellow jazz piano as its player began another song.
There were plenty of tourists who glanced their way because of their exclusive positioning in the alcove, or maybe because of Severne’s eye-catching appearance.
But the daemons looked at her.
Nightglow eyes occasionally glinted with refracted light.
You had to look hard to see it—a flash and it was gone.
Ten, eleven, twelve.
Possibly thirteen, but the piano player wore sunglasses, and she couldn’t tell if his focus was on her or the music he played.
Severne waited for the daemons to come into her focus.
“I want to help you find your sister, but you are in danger from more than your Order of Samuel. There are daemons that watch to see which side you’ll take in an ancient revolution,” Severne said. “A Council of daemons led a rogue sect that overthrew Lucifer. They have their sights set on a war with Heaven, but they have to defeat the Loyalists first. Lucifer’s Army serves the Loyalists, who want to continue what was begun with the fall, when ancient daemons chose to leave Heaven and forge their own society in hell.”
She began to gauge the daemons’ allegiance. Six circled warily around the room. She could see minute indications that they coordinated their movements. There were seven more seated at various tables. She stopped counting. She’d identified more than enough. And all the poor humans inadvertently sat on a powder keg that could explode at any time. Real danger rode the glittering riverboat while she had indulged in her fascination with Severne.
“Did Victoria stumble into their sights? Did she take the wrong side?” Kat asked.
She no longer enjoyed toying with the attraction she and Severne felt for each other. Playfulness disappeared, replaced by fear.
“There is no wrong or right when every side is damned,” Severne said.
He turned her away from the crowd. He filled her vision. Severne was a tall, dark, unreadable being who probably held her sister’s life in his hands. She faced away from Severne, toward the river.
“You aren’t here to bother them. You’re here to enjoy yourself with me. Laugh. Smile. Prepare to be kissed,” he said. “If you won’t do it to protect yourself, you need to do it for the other human passengers. The only way to protect the people on this boat is to be harmlessly infatuated with me. I’m not sure how or why, but you’re in the middle of this daemon war now, and I’d like to leave with you alive tonight.”
Kat’s eyes widened. She forced a smile, but her knees had gone weak. He pretended to be all business. Detached. But she’d seen the green in his eyes. He might think permission to kiss him for noble reasons would save her, but it wouldn’t. Not at all.
He stood facing her, close at her side. Nothing but scrolled wrought iron protected her from the churning paddlewheels below. The roar of the water disguised their words.
“I’m going to kiss you and it’s for their benefit, but I was always going to kiss you again. Whether they needed to see it or not. I need to taste you even if it will damn me with more sleepless nights,” he said.
He reached to turn her face toward him, and he leaned to claim her mouth with no more warning. She wasn’t prepared. Even with the heads-up, she wasn’t ready. Because this time he wasn’t holding back. She could only try to keep up. His hunger was a scorching, all-consuming thing.
She held the balcony rail. His calloused fingers were both hard and warm as they cupped her jaw. He used the slightest pressure to nudge her chin down with his thumbs. She didn’t resist. She cooperated. She opened her mouth so that his tongue, rough and sweet, could claim the interior of her mouth.
Response coiled tight in her abdomen, chasing her fear away. There was no room for frightened butterflies, only ferocious desire.
Her tense yet willing and passionate response made Severne growl into the depths of her mouth. Her body still faced the river, but every part of her yearned to embrace him fully in spite of the other passengers and the daemon threat.
She eagerly tasted him with her tongue. She savored the full swell of his lower lip as if it was her secret discovery of his vulnerability made a hundred years ago only for her. Their deadly audience didn’t fade away, but the real reason for the kiss was in the pounding of her heart, the heat in her belly and the hardness of his response to her tongue. She could feel his erection pressed to her hip. Another secret just for her in the dazzling fairy-lit night.
She finally turned from the rail to hold him, letting go of its support to exchange the cold iron rail for the heated iron of his shoulders and chest. Her move broke their kiss, but he only wrapped her close to his chest.
The embrace was a pause for both of them. A chance to breathe and control the fiery reaction they’d both experienced to the necessary performance of their supposed relationship. She could feel the breaths he took to calm himself. She could feel the unsteady pulse of his heart. The act was an act in name only. Their attraction was very real.
Kat tried to speak in hushed tones to ask more about Michael and her sister, but he quieted her with his lips.
So much for regaining control. If the alcove had been any less private, the stalking daemons would have had a very thorough show.
* * *
He’d distracted her from her questions, and it had almost killed him. He burned from her lips and the soft press of her body against his. Worse than Brimstone in his veins. Far worse. Far better. But she hadn’t asked him more questions about Michael and her sister after a voyage that was all tastes and sighs.
He’d seen the Council’s daemons and the daemons from Lucifer’s Army ease back and melt away in the crowd. Though he’d prevented collateral human deaths, he still hated that he’d used the desire between him and Katherine to distract her from the truth. He’d saved her and deceived her at the same time. His deal with the Council protected Kat from that faction as soon as he showed she was with him.
He didn’t know why Lucifer’s Army hadn’t attacked. He had hoped they would fear his reprisal. But he wasn’t sure that had been enough to keep them from harming Katherine. He wondered what else might have influenced their decision to back off.
Her sister’s association with Michael might have been more serious than he’d assumed. As an ancient one, Michael was a prince to them. Had his loose ties to Katherine through her sister helped to protect her tonight?
There were secrets here that even he didn’t know. Unknown variables he couldn’t plan for or predict. But Katherine was back at l’Opéra Severne. Her venture into the city had proved that she was more than a magnet for daemons. She was at the heart of the daemon political division, somehow in the middle, while being completely in the dark. She was an innocent bystander caught up in the revolution. Both factions, Lucifer’s Army and the Council’s rogues, were haunting her footsteps. The river cruise standoff had been a quiet prelude to slaughter that he’d manipulated so that it turned into a daemon retreat. From now on, he had to keep Kat protected within l’Opéra Severne’s shadowed halls. He wished she could remain safe and unharmed. It wasn’t an option. For now, he was her protector. But soon he would be the one who hurt her.
He couldn’t run from that. He could only retreat to his gym and punish himself for what he was prepared to do to Katherine to save his father’s soul. His soul would be damned forever now. He knew that. Even when the contract was fulfilled, he would burn for what he had done to Kat for as long as he lived.
* * *
Kat’s lips were swollen and sensitive. Her fingers brushed her mouth again and again. She suspected Severne had been more thorough than he’d had to be. He’d helped her, but there had been deeper undercurrents to his fierce, passionate kisses. They hadn’t been for show. She undressed for bed, taking care to shove the moss-green shawl into the back of a drawer.
She’d learned several things tonight.
There were political tangles between daemon factions she hadn’t known about before. The hell dimension was embroiled in revolution. But most importantly, she’d learned that Michael was important and Severne didn’t want her to know it. She hadn’t been fooled by his kisses. She’d enjoyed them. Every single one would replay in her heated memories forever, but she’d known all along that he kissed her to silence her curiosity without realizing he only confirmed her greatest fear.
The daemon she most wanted couldn’t be trusted.