“I’m not being alarmist. They tried to burn down a building with you inside!” Celeste yells. Tears stream down her cheeks. Beth pulls her in for a hug, her eyes still fixed on her burning studio.
I turn away, but Gideon’s grip around my arm is a vise. He tugs me to the edge of the green, out of earshot from any human villagers. “You should have told me.”
“I can take care of myself. This isn’t the first time I’ve run into people from my past.” I frown. “They usually calm down after they realise I’m not going to expose their secret kinks to their current business interests. Badica was a special case—”
“Does this look calm to you?” Gideon waves his arm at the smouldering remains. “Someone tried toburn you alive,which is supposed to be the worst imaginable way to kill a vampire. If something happens to you, I can’t—”
“You can’twhat?”
My charred heart flutters with life.
His long eyelashes tangle together as he squeezes his eyes shut. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we catch the person who did this before they hurt you or anyone else.”
“On that we are agreed,” Maisie groans, as the members of the Nevermore Coven crowd around us. “Completely aside from the threat to your lives, Zen and Tonic was the only venue in the village where we could host the variety show. We’re going to have to cancel, and without it…”
“Maisie, how can you be thinking about your job when Arabella was almost killed?” Dora scolds her.
“I’m sorry, Arabella,” Maisie says glumly, dropping her gaze to her colourful sneakers. “It’s just that being a journalist is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. This fire feels personal somehow. This killer isattacking people in the village, includingmyfriends, and they’re also trying to ensure I can’t write about it.”
“It sure does feel personal,” Beth whispers. Celeste hugs her tightly.
Dora and Komal berate Maisie as she shrinks into herself, but I’m silent. What she said about only ever wanting to be a journalist… She’s worked so hard to drum up support for the village variety show, and Beth’s worked even harder to open her own studio, and as annoying as I find the whole thing, I will confess that my friends have done everything they can to make the show a success, including hiring me to direct it.
I too have had something I built destroyed by fire. If this killer is after me, then so be it. But he willnotdrag my friends into his vicious game.
I’ll find a way to fix this for Beth and Maisie and the village. Somehow.
I drift back to the conversation and notice Gideon studying me, his plump lips in an unusually serious line. I suppose he was also supposed to die in tonight’s fire. Even Gideon Blake feels unsettled when threatened with roasting to death.
The thought makes my chest fill with heat and my steely pulse thump in my ears. As pissed as I am at this killer turning his sights on me and the perfectly innocent pole studio, when I think of Gideon being hurt, I’m filled with rage.
I just got those skilled hands and that naughty tongue of his back in my life, and if I’m being honest, I’m not as upset about it as I let him believe. No one is killing Gideon Blake – that pleasure should be all mine.
So who did this? Whose neck am I severing?
They have to be a member at Sanctus Estate, and they’re going around husking innocent humans. They need to be put down.
If Paul Badica isn’t the one who gave me those songbirds and burned down the hall, then who did?
Who hates me this much?
35
Arabella
ANON:Thank you for your service to the Conclave. That information about the Sanctus security leaks has been most useful. If you have any more dirt on Gideon Blake that the Conclave could use to gain control over Sanctus Estate, we would love to hear it.
ITAP MY TALONS AGAINSTthe steering wheel as I pull into the parking lot at the Rose & Wimple, the text from my Conclave contact burning in my mind.
Gideon Blake has given me more than enough information to hang him. If the Conclave test his blood, they’ll know he drained a vampire. Everyone – even the Sanctus members – would turn on him.
But if Gideon goes down for draining the blood of his kin, Sanctus will crumble. As much as I love revenge, I won’t do it that way.
What interests me is how easily he trusted me with that secret, knowing that I could destroy him.
Do I even still want to destroy him?
Andwhydid I decide to trust him back?
