Page 22

Cate

Not only had Lach’s methods failed to extort what was in the costume bag, he’d been too busy the last few days with the secret business of running the city to continue his so-called torture. In fact, he barely had time to come to bed at all. By the time Halloween morning finally showed her face, I was ready to murder someone to get his attention.

By the evening, he still hadn’t shown despite a dozen texts promising he was on his way, and I was losing patience with him.

“Ignore it,” I told Ciara as my phone buzzed on the bathroom counter.

She plucked up the phone anyway, her lips pursing in disapproval at whatever the latest text read. “I say you withhold sex to teach him a lesson.”

“But that would be a punishment for me.” I took the phone from her, turning the alerts off. Any guilt I felt over the costume I’d chosen for him was long gone.

It’s not like there had been much of a choice. Something told me the creatures of New Orleans brought their A game to the holiday, so that had ruled out anything cheap and tacky, and Lach’s request to avoid tights further narrowed my options. In the end, I’d actually found something perfect, and if he didn’t like it, he could kiss my ass—preferably repeatedly…while naked.

“Are you ready for this?” Ciara unzipped the bag from the costume shop, and a cascade of tulle and lace and silk spilled out.

“As long as you’re helping.” Between the petticoats and the corset, I didn’t know where to start.

She grinned mischievously at me. “That’s why I’m here.”

I suspected she had also volunteered her services because it was a sure way to get some distance from her newly assigned bestie , as she kept angrily calling Roark.

Ciara helped me into the gown, fussing along the way as she adjusted corset strings and fastened hooks and hoops. The dress was straight out of a fairy tale, which was kind of the point. The soft pink fabric of its ample skirt shimmered like rose petals in full bloom, but it was the strict boning of the corseted bodice I suspected Lach would appreciate. Mostly because it pushed my breasts to swell over the scandalous lace-trimmed neckline. The effect was almost worth how tightly Ciara had drawn the corset strings.

“I feel like I woke up in a storybook,” I said, admiring my reflection in the mirror. She’d already worked her magic on my hair and makeup. I spun around, smiling at the way the fabric swished across the marble tile. “Why don’t we still dress like this?”

“Ask me that again after you try to use a toilet,” she said dryly as she picked up the final piece of the costume: a golden tiara set with glittering crystals.

I held up my hand as she moved to put it on my head. “I think that’s a bit much.”

“Whatever.” She planted it there anyway, tucking it into my carefully glamoured hair. “You’re Lach’s mate now, and he’s still prince of the Nether Court, you know. That pretty much means you have to wear a tiara. You’re a real princess.”

I swallowed at the thought. It’s not like I didn’t know that; I’d just become really freaking good at pretending it wasn’t true. Trust Ciara to deliver the tough love.

And tonight was supposed to be fun. I didn’t want to worry about court politics. Not when I got to live with the reality of them so frequently.

I picked up my phone to check the time, frowning to see a half dozen new texts that I promptly ignored. If he was going to cancel, I would go without him. I’d already spotted my first problem, though. “Where do I put this?” It wasn’t like the dress had pockets.

“Reason number two that we don’t dress like this still,” Ciara teased. She studied the skirt for a minute before she circled her finger. “There. How’s that?”

My hand slipped down to discover a perfect phone-size pocket. “I don’t know why you don’t use magic all the time. It’s so damn useful.”

“Magic has a cost.” A shadow passed over her face, but it was gone in an instant, like a cloud passing over the sun. “Unfortunately, there’s no magical solution to trying to pee in a hoop skirt. Consider that fair warning.”

“I’ll skip the ambrosia,” I promised. I wouldn’t need it if Lach showed. Not when my body was practically vibrating with hunger for him, his absence turning our new mating bond into an itch I couldn’t scratch. I hoped this particular symptom wore off quickly.

“You better get ready. Lach is supposed to be here soon,” I said, checking the time before I slid my phone into my new pocket. “Do you want help?”

“I’m easy.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll find you both.”

My dress took up half the elevator compartment, and I lifted the skirts nervously, afraid I might get caught in the sliding doors. Heads turned as I entered the lobby, a few people murmuring compliments on my costume as I passed them, but I was only interested in the prince waiting for me in front of the revolving door. Relief washed over me that he hadn’t changed his mind, quickly replaced by awe. He’d always looked like something out of a fairy tale to me, but tonight he’d traded his villainous black attire for something that suited him better.

He looked like he had stepped out of a different time. The tailored golden coat hugged his body, opening to reveal a crisp, white shirt with its ruffled neck buttoned high. His fitted black pants showcased his muscled thighs as suggestively as a pair of tights might have—but I wasn’t about to tell him that. As far as I was concerned, he could wear these pants every day.

I nearly tripped on my skirt, dumbfounded by how impossibly beautiful he was, even wearing his human glamour. Later, I’d have to figure out a way to officially thank the French.

Or was it the English? My brain wasn’t working right.

“Milady.” His hand swept out as he bowed deeply, giving me a glimpse of the rake he might have been a few centuries ago.

“I bet the girls didn’t stand a chance with you back in the day.” I suddenly wished I’d opted to add the fan the saleswoman had suggested. It had seemed silly at the time. Now? In his presence? Not…so…much.

“They did not.” He grinned as he rose up, revealing a bright-orange bucket painted like a pumpkin. “For milady’s candy.”

I tried not to laugh. “I don’t think I can handle you calling me that all night.”

“Princess it is.” He held out a hand. “Shall we?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I asked.

He paused as if considering the question, ticking off a list on his fingers. “Bucket. Costume. Beautiful woman. Nope, I’ve got everything.”

“Your mask.” I looked around for the one that should have been in the garment bag.

But he pulled me toward the door. It began to revolve as we stepped inside, and I found myself gathering my skirts carefully to keep them from getting caught.

Reason number three we didn’t dress like this anymore.

“I can do better than a mask,” he said when we were safely on the street without a human in sight.

With another flourish, Lach waved his hand, and his face contorted, rippling and shifting. Curved horns sprouted from his head. His fingernails lengthened into razor-sharp talons. And his teeth…

“What do you think?” he asked. Even his voice sounded deeper, each word coming out as nearly a growl.

“Is it wrong that I find you hot?” I couldn’t stop staring at him. Maybe I would love him in any incarnation, but this…

“You better,” he said with a smile that revealed elongated canines.

Yeah, it was so wrong that it had to be right.

We strolled into the twilight, Beauty with her Beast, guaranteed a happily ever after if only for one night.

“Walk or drive?” he asked when we reached the end of the sidewalk. “At least you don’t have to nip on date night.”

My stomach turned over just thinking about it. I didn’t miss being whisked between worlds. I picked up my skirts, swaying them slightly. “I’m guessing I can’t get this thing in the Mercedes without magic.”

“Probably not.” He eyed it for a moment. “If you want to take it off…”

My eyes rolled up at his self-serving suggestion and found the pastel sky streaked with lavender and rose. Around us, the sweet citrus scent of olive bushes wafted in the air. I suddenly felt like I hadn’t enjoyed the city for far too long. That was natural with a murderer on the loose, but tonight, there was no safer place than by Lachlan Gage’s side. “Walk.”

He nodded, tucking my hand into the crook of his elbow. Laughter and music spilled from every doorway that we passed. Children began to crowd the sidewalks, heading to the city’s neighborhoods in droves, their harried parents tailing them with their phones, snapping pictures of every step. Their enthusiasm felt contagious.

We followed a particularly rowdy group toward the Garden District.

“Are you sure you’ve never been trick-or-treating before?” I asked. Judging from the number of people heading in the same direction, Lach had actually picked the best trick-or-treating in New Orleans.

“I know things.”

A toddler careened toward us, her mother chasing behind her. He dropped my arm and scooped the little girl off the ground. She took one look at his beastly mask and burst into tears.

“Sophie! You have to hold hands!” Sophie’s mom gave Lach a grateful smile as he passed her off. “Thank you, and I love your costume.”

Maybe it was the glamour, but I swore his chest puffed out. “Don’t let her flirting go to your head,” I joked.

He turned bewildered eyes on me. “Flirting? She just said she liked the costume.”

“I think she likes it like I like it.”

“Take it as a compliment. You picked it out,” he said with a shrug. Either he was oblivious, or he just didn’t care.

We continued along St. Charles. Every time I looked over at Lach, he was grinning, clearly enjoying the wealth of attention we were being paid from not just the many mothers out tonight but all ages and sexes.

“It’s strange. I never thought you were the type to enjoy the attention of the masses,” I teased.

“Oh, you’ve got it all wrong,” Lach said, patting my hand on his arm. “I’m enjoying how they’re looking at you.”

“Me?” The word came out on a choked laugh. “Pretty sure they’re trying to decide if you might rip them to shreds.” In fairness, he exuded that energy most days.

But he shook his head. “You have no idea how beautiful you look, my love.”

“Oh?” I said, totally unprepared for the compliment.

“I look scary—and still they can’t help but come closer,” he said with a glance of deep satisfaction. When it was clear I hadn’t taken his meaning, he clarified further. “It’s you they want to see.”

“That’s…not true,” I spluttered.

“How do I look right now?” Lach said, helping me step off a high curb—something made surprisingly difficult when I couldn’t see anything within two feet of my shoes.

“I thought we’d already established that you are disconcertingly hot for someone rocking a snout.”

He lifted my hand to his lips, his glamoured fur tickling my skin as he kissed it. “It’s not just tonight. It’s not just how beautiful you are. You command every room you enter.”

Something raw crept up my throat. I didn’t know what to say to that .

He seemed to know what I was thinking—something that had been happening more and more. “You don’t have to say anything. Just accept that I’m telling the truth.”

We walked the rest of the way in silence, jogging a few blocks to head into the heart of the neighborhood. The deepening twilight cast long, angular shadows over the roofs of the mansions and down their wrought iron balconies. But it was the ancient oaks that stole my breath, even though I’d seen them a hundred times before. On either side of the street, their branches stretched like long arms, joining together like the gnarled hands of old friends.

Tonight, the houses themselves seemed equally alive and somehow restless, as though if I looked away and then back, each one would be in a slightly different place. The children spilling past the open gates onto the sidewalk didn’t seem to notice.

The grand old dames of the Garden District loomed like sentinels, their facades adorned with enchantments that made me gasp. Floating jack-o’-lanterns bobbed on invisible currents, glowing with an ethereal fire, at the Italianate mansion on the corner. Across from it, ghostly apparitions danced across the porch of a Greek Revival, disappearing through its tall, mullioned windows. And tucked behind an iron fence on the large lawn of a gabled cottage, a group of skeletons stirred a bubbling cauldron with their own bones.

On a nearby porch, a willow witch sent a swarm of chittering bats swooping over a group of awestruck children. The tiny creatures veered and dove in a complex aerial dance, their echoing sonar guiding them unerringly.

I found myself staring. “How…how can they get away with so much blatant magic use?”

He chuckled. “Clever spell-work and the candy-induced blindness of Halloween. The enchantments are layered with glamours that make everything look just slightly less implausible to mortal eyes. They see wires and speakers and animatronics—things they can rationalize.”

“I must be getting better at seeing past glamours, then, because none of that looks fake to me,” I murmured.

Lach was curiously silent at that, but the slight tightening of his hand over mine made me wonder. Shaking off my unease, I let him lead me up one of the long paths toward a towering gothic revival mansion, which was currently crawling with zombie butlers so realistic, a pit opened in my stomach.

“Do you want to get some candy or just keep walking?” he asked.

“Definitely candy.” I grabbed the bucket from him and started toward the house. That was what tonight was all about, after all.

The porch of the grand mansion was alive with jack-o’-lanterns, their sharp-toothed grins flickering with red light. A male witch towered between them, passing out treats, but his smile faded as I marched up to him. His eyes strayed toward Lach, and his lip curled. So much for his costume. It was clear the witch recognized him.

“I can’t believe you have the gall to show your face here, Gage,” he said, once the pitter-patter of little feet had faded away. In the twilight, his eyes looked like small black beads buried at the base of his large nose.

“New Orleans is my city, Ambrose. I show my face wherever I please,” Lach replied, his tone cool but not unkind.

“For now,” Ambrose shot back, words laden with something more than warning. It tripped something in my brain, and I found myself slowing before I reached him.

“Careful,” Lach said, his voice lethally soft, as he moved to my side on the walkway. “That sounded perilously close to a threat.”

Unease coiled in my stomach like a sleeping serpent. I touched Lach’s arm. “Maybe we should call it a night. Trick-or-treating seemed like a fun idea, but…”

He shook his head, his eyes never leaving the witch. “Get your candy, Cate.”

I held back a sigh as they glared at each other. At least masculine posturing wasn’t reserved purely for fae males. Witches could be dicks, too.

Ambrose didn’t bother to look at me as I took the final few steps and held out my bucket with a weak “trick or treat.” He dumped a handful of candy into it. He’d probably poisoned it on the spot just for me. I turned so quickly to leave that I nearly tripped over my skirts. Grabbing Lach’s hand, I yanked him toward the property’s gate. “Let’s get out of here.”

But he didn’t rush away. He took his time—no, he freaking swaggered all the way to the street.

“Make sure you really shake your ass for him,” I muttered.

“I’m not hiding in my own city. Not anymore,” he added. “I don’t care if assholes like that have a problem with it.”

“What changed?” I asked as we moved away from Ambrose’s frosty aura. “You used to avoid being seen in the city.”

“You.” Vulnerability twined his voice, and he glanced over at me. “Meeting you showed me that I need to know my city better—to be part of it.”

“And that’s it?”

“Isn’t that enough?” But his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Or was it that he’d given up on returning to the Otherworld? A cold wave of fear doused my mood at the thought. I forced my eyes ahead but only far enough to see the next house. We’d worry about the future tomorrow.

A change of subject was in order.

“Look at that one.” I pointed to a house where spectral vines crept up the walls, moving and writhing like a living thing. Lach chuckled, his beastly guise momentarily softening. But a cloaked figure, the hand on his hip resting on what I worried was an actual fucking sword, stepped into our path. I took a step closer to Lach as the man’s midnight-dark eyes landed on me. The stranger drew his hand off the sword and bowed deeply at the waist.

“You’ve always had a flair for grandeur,” Lach said to him, an undercurrent of guarded warmth in his tone. His glamoured talons caught the moonlight as he gestured toward me. “étienne, allow me to introduce my…Cate.”

étienne rose and lowered his hood. His black hair brushed his shoulders, slightly tousled from the cloak but not unkempt. The sharpness of his jaw and the hard-hewn lines of his face mesmerized me as he extended a hand covered in a leather glove that fastened neatly at his wrist.

Lach’s hesitation to call out our relatively new relationship status was adorable. I pried myself away from him, my initial wariness evaporating as I accepted the vampire’s hand, the leather glove buttery soft as I shook it. “I’m Lach’s…lover.”

For an uncomfortable moment, étienne seemed to be calculating something. His nostrils flared, and he looked back and forth between Lach and me—almost pointedly. “Charmed,” étienne said, lifting my hand to kiss it. Lach’s hand tightened ever so slightly around mine, a claim against the flirtation. The vampire withdrew and looked at him. “I thought there was something different about you. Apart from the horns.”

“What are you doing in Second Parish?” Lach asked casually. “Or are you lost?”

I tensed, sensing what he was hinting at, but étienne didn’t even blink.

“Who could resist such a night?” He glanced at me for confirmation, and I nodded awkwardly, put on the spot. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “To tell the truth, I like the decorations, and I’m on my way to visit a friend.”

I’d thought the various covens hated each other. There was another reason he might have come, though. Maybe he thought it bad manners to admit that it was the sheer amount of human blood available that brought him here. An icy tendril of dread traced my neck at the idea that other vampires might be out for the same reason. Not that I knew much about their… eating habits. I made a mental note to ask roughly a million questions about vampires later.

Lach didn’t hide his incredulity. “A friend in Second Parish?”

“Indeed.” étienne dipped his chin, giving Lach a rather wise look for someone who appeared only a few years older than me. “I’ve walked this earth too long to worry about political boundaries and what others think. True friendship transcends such petty differences.”

“Or maybe you’re getting soft,” Lach said with a slight smile.

étienne’s own widened, proof that he meant what he said.

How old was he? Lach had been around for a couple of centuries, and he was still stuck maneuvering the delicate relationships with the covens.

étienne turned to me. “And how did you talk him into actually going out and doing something?”

“He responds well to threats,” I said without missing a beat.

For a minute, the vampire only stared, but then he burst into laughter. “Fate chose well for you, Lachlan.” His attention returned to me. “Have you talked him into attending the Danse Macabre in the Quartier Enchanté tonight?”

Only about half those words meant something to me. I shot Lach a puzzled look.

But the question seemed to pierce through Lach’s beastly exterior, tension tightening his jaw despite the glamour. “I’m not sure that ’ s a good idea.”

“I don’t need to remind you that you are always welcome in my parish,” étienne said softly. “It would also send an important message.”

Lach remained silent as if he was considering what that message might be. “We’ll think about it.”

It was enough to appease étienne. He inclined his head in my direction. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Cate. Keep him in line.”

I bit back a smile. “Will do.”

“And I hope to see both of you later,” he added meaningfully.

Lach jerked his head in farewell, not bothering to pretend he was even considering the invitation.

Night had fallen around us as we spoke, stars twinkling into existence overhead. Only a sliver of the moon was visible, but despite that, the night was clear and bright. When étienne’s form blended into it, I dared to touch the subject Lach clearly wished to avoid. “What’s the Danse Macabre? And why don’t you want to go?”

“Last time I took you to an event like that one, you ended up drinking yourself under the table,” he said, a note of concern buried beneath the memory.

A flush of embarrassment warmed my cheeks. I didn’t have to ask which event he was referring to. The Midnight Feast was scorched into my memory for about a dozen reasons, nearly all of which I’d rather forget. But things had been different then, and part of me wondered what it might have been like if we had attended hand in hand instead of at each other’s throats. “I think I can handle it.”

“Can you now?” Skepticism lined his voice, and when he looked at me, all I saw was apprehension.

But I was determined to make the most of tonight, and according to Ciara, a party thrown by vampires was the height of living.

“Let’s go,” I urged, determined to show him I could handle anything.

“Okay.” But he didn’t seem overly enthusiastic about the change in plans.

I couldn’t help but wonder what awaited us at the Danse Macabre and why it seemed like a shadow looming over Lach’s heart.