“You know her?” Kendrick questioned.
“Oh, yes. I know her. If she has given you suggestions, I am sure that they are good ones. Shall we go?” Joseph gestured away from the music hall.
Kendrick broke a trail through the crowd and wondered justhowJoseph knew Genevieve—and how well.
When the insidious pull seized her, Elspeth dropped the piece of lace she was nearly finished tatting. Her throat closed.
She knew what that tug meant: Attend me.Now.
Laurent had decided to remember that she existed. And he was angry.
Dread cramping her stomach, Elspeth set aside her work with trembling hands and blew out the candle before the insistent call drew her out of their bolt hole. She hurried along the stone and shored up passageways of the Ossuary; the tug dictated her direction. Resistance would only bring pain and more ire when she finally appeared before Laurent.
She found herself at the Mayfair gate.
“I am called by my maker,” she forced past her lips in explanation to the gate guards even as the tug redoubled into an insistent banging behind her eyes.Now. Now. Now. She flinched and pressed a hand to her temple, avoiding their gazes, but she knew her eyes were red.
“Name?”
“Elspeth Gibbins,” she murmured.
They exchanged a glance and stepped aside. They could spot a blood bond being tugged. “Return through this gate before sunrise.”
Elspeth slipped past them and emerged into a dark alleyway. She crept along until she reached the street. Then, obeying the direction of the tug, she hurried through thoroughfares and lanes until she found herself in a slightly less opulent neighborhood, in front of a modest townhouse she vaguely recognized, embellished with a raven above the door.
As Elspeth mounted the steps, the door flew open. Oxley, a vampire dandy, stared down at her narrow-eyed. “He’s been waiting, girl, and not happy about the delay.”
“It was a far walk,” she whispered, her eyes on her toes. The headache was still banging away inside her skull.
The vampire scoffed, dusting off his lace cuffs. “Could have gotten a hackney, girl.”
With what money, and what address?“He will be further irritated if you impede me,” she pointed out.
The dandy jumped aside comically, and she entered.
The inside of the townhouse smelled like dust and blood. Stale, thankfully. She had been called to awful scenes in the past, simply because Bacchus and Laurent liked an audience. Bacchus, who had drawn the most glee from ordering her about, was dust and ash now, thanks be to a merciful God, but Laurent was the one who held her chains.
“My dear, dear Elspeth.” Laurent descended the staircase slowly because he liked a dramatic entrance. Elspeth stood with her head down and face schooled to the carefully blank expression she had perfected over almost two decades, waiting for him to finally reach the parquet floor.
“It’s been too long,” Laurent said, gripping her chin with his long, cold fingers and raising her head. He was a long, boney man, with a face that could have been considered handsome in the pale English aristocratic way, but the skin clung a little too close to the bones of his skull in death now. In shadows, he maintained his appearance of striking attraction; in daylight, he would have appeared hideous and macabre.
He would also ignite in daylight, which would make the way he looked moot.
“Tell me, Elspeth, what is this I’m hearing about Genevieve? Oxley tells me she’s been ratherfriendlywith our new master.”
“I don’t know.” Truth. She didn’t know what he’d heard. She always made it a careful practice to lie by omission to her maker.
“You don’t know? You, bosom friends with Genevieve, don’t know?” Laurent’s grip on her chin increased to a painful degree.
“He—He’s been meeting people in the Ossuary? Perhaps they ran into each other?”Please let it not occur to him to command me, Elspeth prayed.
“Oxley said Genevieve was bear-leading him.”
“Sh-She made the introductions?—”
“Genevieve, poking her long nose into things that are none of her concern.” Laurent let her go and turned away, pacing up and down the black-and-white floor in thought. “And no one to keep her in check now.”
Elspeth stayed very still.
