“Sort of a victory celebration,” he answered, urging her up the stairs with a hand on her lower back. “Why? You wanna join?”
She blanched. “No. Gods, no.”
After the day she’d had, all Dahlia wanted to do was lock herself in a closet and scream until she lost consciousness.
Felix nodded. “Good. I hate telling you no, but I really don’t feel like killing anyone else tonight.”
A chill swept through her at the casual reminder of what he’d done to Devon.
Dahlia wasn’t a saint. She was probably not even a good person. There was no seed of compassion in her that made herregret his ignominious death in the way she should’ve. He’d been a mean, handsy prick who enjoyed tormenting his staff. The gods only knew what else he got up to when no one was looking.
But she was an animal at heart, and all animals could recognize death when it stared them in the face. Felix had killed someone right in front of her. He didn’t care what she saw, which meant she was in an incredible amount of danger.
Trying not to sound as nervous as she felt, she asked, “Why would you have to kill someone at your own party?”
Felix made a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. “Because someone would take one look at you and try their luck. Can’t have that, can I?”
She’d always known that Felix was a special sort of monster, but the casual way he talked about it made her gut churn.
Felix murdered people the same way she might take out the trash. It was nothing but a minor inconvenience.
And I followed him here.
Because he was the monster she knew. Because when he walked into the apartment, something in her brain just… clicked.
But she should’ve thought it through for a second more. Sweat gathered between her shoulder blades as he nudged her to turn right at the top of the stairs. She barely noticed the silk wallpaper or the paintings in their gilded frames.
Moonlight cast pale shapes on the ground through tall, antique windows partially shaded by heavy velvet drapes. She padded through those little puddles of light sightlessly.
What have I done?
She wasn’t exactly paying attention to the route, but even if she had been, Dahlia doubted she could’ve remembered her path through the winding corridors of Felix’s home. They seemed to go on forever, and he pushed her along at a speed that made it impossible to keep track of any landmarks.
“Is this yourhouse?”she asked, bewildered, as he nudged her down yet another hallway.
“Yep. My grandmother built it and then left it to me when she died. What do you think?”
Dahlia shrugged stiffly. “It’s big.”
He snorted. “Not big enough. Do you have any idea how many cousins I have?”
“Your family lives here with you?”
She wasn’t sure why that surprised her so much. Maybe it was because nearly all the vampires she’d ever met were loners. She’d always been under the impression that they liked their private space and weren’t inclined toward living in groups.
“Not all of them all the time,” he answered, at last gesturing to a grand set of double doors at the end of a blessedly short hallway. “But the house was built to hold everyone, their anchors, and their kids in the event of an emergency. Every Amauri has a room. Sometimes they use them, sometimes they don’t. Tends to be that the single folks live in the main house and then move out when they find someone, but it varies.”
Dahlia blinked. “Oh. That’s kind of nice.”
She’d certainly never had a home to fall back on when things got hard. Her family was in the wind. No one told her outright that she wouldn’t have any help when she moved out at eighteen — it’d just been assumed by all involved. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken to any of the McKnights, and it certainly hadn’t occurred to her to give them a call when the rat bastard of a doctor told her the news.
Having a house where every family member was welcome at all stages of their life was a lovely thought.
Or at least itwasuntil she remembered that one of the Amauris had blown up Yvanna. Family meant having a place to crash, apparently, but not safety from being brutally murdered.
As if he could read her mind, Felix blithely continued, “You haven’t met all the cousins — or the elders. This time last year, half of them wanted me dead. The other half only slightly less so. They were just happy to let someone else do it.” Stepping around her to grasp the shiny gold door knobs, he pushed the doors open and nodded for her to go in ahead of him.
Dahlia swallowed. “And you still let them live in your house?”
