He clipped the leash onto the German shepherd’s collar and led him out onto the patch of grass behind his apartment building. The sun wasn’t entirely up yet, although the sky had taken on that bright lavender quality of coming dawn. The street was quiet, but he remained vigilant as Rosco did his business. Vampires, he supposed, could only come out at night, but Verinetti and his men, they could be a threat twenty-four hours a day. He took comfort in the weight of his gun. Whether or not she approved, he needed Rowan to teach him about the strengths—and, more importantly, the limitations—of vampires.
A bottle rolled across the sidewalk and into the building. In a heartbeat, he drew his gun and whirled, then lowered his weapon when he saw who it was.
“You up early, Mistah Nick,” Regine said, hobbling toward him from the alley. He’d never known her to sleep here. She loved her place in the park.
“Rosco needed to do his business.” He glanced at the dog, who was sniffing every blade of grass for the right spot, and then looked back at Regine. “I don’t usually see you around here. What’s going on?”
“Somptin’ goin’,” she said in a shaky voice, clearly on the verge of tears. “Blood breathers be everywhere. Ne’er like dis before.”
“Blood breathers?”
She blew a breath toward her open palm. “Ha. Ha. Blood.”
“Their breath smells like blood?”
She nodded, her dark, tangled hair bobbing. “I no wan’ dem to bite me. I seen dem bite Alice, and she don’ come round no more.”
“Where did they bite Alice?” Icy water filled his veins.
She pointed to her neck. “Here. In da park. At night so nobody could see. But Regine sees. I always watchin’.”
Rosco nudged his hand and looked up at him with warm brown eyes, waiting for him to pick up his steaming pile of dog shit. Well, if that wasn’t a metaphor for how Nick’s life was going, he didn’t know what was. He rubbed the dog between his long, pointed ears. Reaching into his pocket, he grabbed his wallet and drew out a twenty. “Here, Regine.”
“What dis fo’?”
“Sleep on the bus or go get breakfast.”
“Oh, you a sweet man, Nick. Some woman be happy-happy to fin’ you.”
“Maybe someday. And uh, I think the blood breathers can’t come out during the day, so maybe that’s when you should sleep.”
She nodded her head slowly, then pointed a finger to the sky. “Good. Good.” She took the twenty and hobbled off toward the bus stop, and he sighed in relief.
Nick drew a poop bag from his pocket and quickly cleaned up after Rosco, not wanting to linger out in the open. Vampires. Real fucking vampires. He shook his head. Despite what Rowan said about the danger, it wasn’t enough for him to hide from this. These things were hurting innocent people. He prayed that Alice wouldn’t end up like his murdered girl.
He let Rosco into the apartment and locked up tight, then crawled under the covers, making sure his gun was within reach. He was almost asleep when he grabbed his phone off the nightstand and texted Rowan.
I want you to teach me everything you know about vampires. Please.
Tomorrow?she texted back. For a moment his mind wandered. Was she in bed? What was she wearing? Were her wings out? He ran a hand over his face.
7 PM. Meet me here.He included a contact file with his address.
See you then.
He drifted to sleep to dreams of dark hair, amber eyes, and wings.
Chapter Eighteen
New Orleans, Louisiana
This had to work. Raven had tried everything to locate Rowan. Every other spell she could think of. But every time she came close to pinpointing her location, she hit a wall of magic like no other she’d encountered before. What good was being a sorceress if she couldn’t even find her mate’s sibling to warn her of danger?
Raven stood in the enchanted library above Blakemore’s Antiques, dressed in Rowan’s red gown, the one she’d been wearing on the day her older brother was murdered by her uncle and their mother cast the remaining eight siblings to Earth. That was over three hundred years ago. Gabriel owned Blakemore’s, a store boasting a delightful collection of high-end furniture and decor from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. But it was the library on the third floor where Raven had first connected with her power. Gabriel had collected hundreds of grimoires from around the world over his lifetime. Shelves and shelves of books on magic, some of the tomes hundreds of years old, filled the room. Raven couldn’t read all the languages they were written in, but that didn’t stop them from being useful to her. She absorbed magic. It made her an extremely powerful witch.
The tracking spell she’d employed today to find Gabriel’s sister was druidic in origin and combined blood magic with a less complicated location charm. It had required her to push aside the desk in the library in order to make room for a circle of bloodstones whose energy would not only seek out the former owner of the dress but would also use Gabriel’s blood to amplify the locator magic, specifically toward his siblings. She wasn’t sure of the range of the spell, but she hoped it would be strong enough to reach as far as New York.
“Are you certain about this, Raven? I do not like your doing this here. Why not perform the spell from inside the Prytania house?” Gabriel scowled at her from outside the circle.
