“Custo?”
The tux. “The shoulders will be a bit tight, but it’ll do,” Custo answered by rote. It was an old joke between them, and a lame effort at lifting the mood.
It got a weak smile out of Adam at least, and a clap on the shoulder. Annabella turned sullenly away and climbed back on the bed. Adam brought over a laptop for her to pass the time during the soldier interviews. She downloaded a movie, Dawn of the Dead, so the sound of soft screams filled the room while Custo worked.
A more effective “screw you” he couldn’t imagine. Very well played.
Twenty-four interrogations later, Custo was beyond perplexed. He’d asked questions from every angle, but a more straight-up, true-blue batch of men he’d never seen.
He was stumped, and he was man enough to admit it. He had to have missed something somewhere, but he’d have to think it through before taking another approach. And it was getting late.
A garment bag hanging on the bathroom door presumably held their clothes for the evening. A glance at his watch told him they’d better hurry if they were going to make the party.
Custo showered quickly, stripping off the now unnecessary bandage, while Annabella put on her makeup at the sink.
When he got out, Annabella used the open shower door to shield herself while she dressed, though he knew she had no problems whatsoever with modesty, notwithstanding the fact that he’d seen all of her lovely body just that morning. But okay, he could take it.
Adam’s tux, classic in cut, was indeed a little tight across the shoulders, a fact Custo would point out at the first opportunity, but it looked good.
Annabella stepped out, devastating in a cobalt blue sheath, her skin a glowing contrast to the deep color and her rich hair, styled in a loose twist. Her eyes were luminous, her painted mouth set both to bitch and pout. When she turned to exit the room, she revealed a backless V that stopped at the last dimple of her spine, her supple, smooth body exposed, the cloth hugging at her waist and hips.
Custo’s fingers itched to skim down her skin, to shed the fabric from her shoulders, to loose her hair, and graze the column of her neck with his mouth. That he couldn’t made him deeply regret pissing her off quite so much.
It promised to be a hell of a night.
A slash of Wolf’s claw shredded the bedsheets. Rage and want consumed him, blurring his vision until the hard lines of the room doubled, colors and edges shifting around him as his legs stumbled for purchase on the too-soft mattress. Pungent scents layered the room. Woman. Angel. Blood. And numerous other mortals, all masculine, but difficult to distinguish individually.
The sources of those thick, driving smells were gone now. The woman, too.
Shadow had offered him back to the world too late, too reluctantly, with too little substance to catch her and press his advantage. A little sooner and he could have compelled her acceptance, when she was too frightened and weak to fight.
Thus his own shadows betrayed him, but they had ever been variable, inconstant, like the shifting boughs of Twilight.
Wolf shook out his pelt. He had his form now. And the woman might not choose to use his name, but she could not take it back.
What he needed was to set a trap. Not a cage like those on the lower levels of this massive structure, housing the life-charged corpses humankind called wraiths.
No, he needed a human trap fitted to a human heart.
And the banshee mother had taught him how.
Chapter Fifteen
ANNABELLA got another round of applause when she entered the reception. She smiled and bowed, this time with only a slight inclination of her head. She was seriously done with bowing. It was way overrated.
The reception was held at the extravagant Upper East Side penthouse of one of the ballet company’s patrons. A champagne affair for the start of the season. The hosts boasted the kind of wealth her family had never dreamed of knowing, and they weren’t subtle about it. An enormous, colorful blown-glass dewdrop of a chandelier warmed an entrance hallway several times larger than Annabella’s studio apartment.
Talk about crossing over into a different world.
Custo’s hand was warm at the small of her back, as if he were her date or something. She’d be damned, however, before she’d lean against him and get another of his remarks about her lack of spine. A nightmarish snakelike shadow had slid all over her today; the man could do with a little sensitivity.
Annabella’s faith in the abilities of Segue or Custo to get rid of Wolf was rapidly diminishing. It would be much worse if he got a hold of her the way he’d gotten a hold of Abigail. Unimaginably worse.