“I might nap. I’m definitely going to take a proper shower, and eat the snack Diego left for me.” She smiled. “And I’ll miss you.”
He took one of her hands, lifted and turned it, and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist.
What a difference six weeks made. The first time he had made such a gesture, she had been frozen with fear. Now, warmth suffused her.
“Until later,” he said against her skin.
Touching his temple, she stroked his hair.
He straightened, and after another final, hard kiss, he left.
Without the intensity of his presence, the room felt cold and empty, and her feet were freezing. Slipping on her shoes, she explored quickly. Xavier had already left, and the rest of the apartment was silent and empty. The door to Diego’s room was closed.
She stared at it thoughtfully, tempted to knock and ask how he was doing, but although they had shared a few conversations, they weren’t close, and she wasn’t a confidant of his.
In the end, she respected the silent message in that closed door, ate all the food on the plate by the nightstand, collected her toiletries and clean clothes, and went to take a shower.
Antiquated though Evenfall might be, at least the water was hot.
? ? ?
The farther away Xavier got from Tess, the darker his mood grew. As he strode down the hallways, he checked his messages. The only news he’d received was from Raoul, from a few hours ago:
M missed check in. Instructions?
And his brief reply: Wait. Let me know if you hear from him.
Marc was the best of his new recruits. Not only was he smart and capable, but he was also steady-natured and had proven himself to be reliable. Xavier had given Justine to him as his assignment, with strict instructions to maintain a low profile, protect his identity, use extreme caution and avoid direct engagement.
But as more time passed and still no word came, the probability that something had happened to Marc grew greater. By the time Xavier reached the IT section of Evenfall, which was located in a concrete reinforced area off the underground garage, he was scowling.
Earlier he had notified Gavin he would be stopping by, and the younger Vampyre was waiting for him. Gavin was just under two hundred years old, but he had been turned when he was barely out of his teens. With a snub nose, red hair and freckles that had never faded, he had been nicknamed “Opie” by his coworkers.
Xavier handed his cell phone over, and Gavin got to work.
“So, I heard you brought a new attendant with you,” Gavin said. “A female one. It’s her, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” Xavier leaned back against a table as he watched Gavin extract the recording.
“Are you going to bring her down here, so I can meet her?”
His expression turned wry. Gavin hadn’t even met Tess yet, but he appeared to have developed a crush on her. “I’m afraid we don’t have time this trip. But I will be sure to bring her next time.”
“What’s she like?” Gavin’s tone was elaborately nonchalant.
Defiant. Devious.
Delicious.
He didn’t say any of those adjectives aloud. Instead, as his silence grew too long and Gavin lifted up his head to look at him curiously, he finally settled on “Unforgettable.”
The other Vampyre’s eyebrows lifted. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were falling for her.”
He leaned against a nearby table. “Why do you think you know better?”
“Xavier, for as long as I’ve known you, I think you’ve had a total of maybe three relationships, and those were all shallow and ended after just a few months.” The younger Vampyre gave him a sidelong, curious glance. “Son of a bitch. You are falling for her, aren’t you?”
He didn’t have to reply, but he did anyway. “I am.”
Gavin’s eyes went wide. Then he grinned. “Good for you.”
After transferring the recording to his desktop, they listened to it together. “Trim everything off but their agreement,” Xavier told him. “Then get the clean copy to Julian as soon as possible.”
“You got it.”
While he had finished what he had come to do, he hesitated and turned his attention to the wall of TV monitors, watched by two Vampyres across the room. They studied footage from security cameras placed at strategic intervals all over Evenfall.
He said, “Do me a favor and run a search for Justine over the last twenty-four hours.”
“You got it,” Gavin said. He walked over to another computer system, sat down, and his fingers flew nimbly over the keyboard. “Can you tell me what we’re looking for?”
Watching, Xavier crossed his arms and shook his head. “I don’t know. At the very least, I just want proof that she is actually still here. I haven’t seen her since I’ve arrived. I’ve only heard Julian mention her.”