“Oh, me first,” one of the women said eagerly. “This was my idea.”
Divine nodded and led the woman inside, leaving Marco and all thought of him out on her stoop.
“Here, mister.”
Marcus tore his gaze from the door Madame Divine had just ushered her client through and peered down at the small boy tugging at the top of his pant leg and holding out a half-eaten ball of cotton candy on a cardboard cone.
“Here,” the boy repeated, holding it a little higher. “I don’t feel good. You can have the rest.”
Marcus arched an eyebrow, but took the cotton candy. He suspected the boy didn’t feel good because he was stuffed full of cotton candy, something drenched in mustard, powdered elephant ears, and—he considered the last stain on the boy’s shirt and then decided it had to be—ice cream. The kid was a walking menu of everything he’d eaten that day. At least, Marcus hoped it was all the kid had eaten that day. Otherwise he’d be wondering if Dante and Tomasso hadn’t fathered the little tyke. They were the only two people he knew, mortal or immortal, who could have eaten like that as a boy.
“Danny! What are you doing? Get over here and leave that man alone.”
Marcus glanced at the woman rushing toward them from the midway and offered a reassuring smile even as he slipped into her thoughts to ease her mind that he wasn’t a child molester and nothing untoward was happening. By the time she reached them, she’d slowed to a fast walk, and was smiling in a relaxed manner.
“I hope he wasn’t bothering you?” she said apologetically as she took the boy’s hand.
“Not at all,” Marcus assured her.
The young mother smiled again and then nodded and turned away with the boy, saying, “Come on, honey. Your daddy is waiting with your sister in the Ferris wheel line. They’ll be worried.”
Marcus watched them go and then turned his gaze back to Madame Divine’s RV. The door was closed now as were the blinds. He couldn’t see the woman anymore, except in his mind’s eye, and he was definitely seeing her there. Madame Divine was more than memorable in her Gypsy getup. A white peasant blouse, worn off the shoulders, a crimson underskirt, a bright teal scarf skirt, an orange sash tied at the waist with gold chains hanging from it and tinkling merrily, a wide leather belt, and a crimson scarf around her head. Gold hoops had dangled from her ears, a gold chain hung around her neck, several gold bracelets dangled from her wrist, and knee-high black leather boots with stiletto heels strapped up the front of her legs had finished the outfit.
The woman looked damned sexy in the getup, so sexy in fact that when she’d straddled the would-be wife killer, Marcus had wanted to pull her off the man and onto his own lap. He’d been rather startled by that urge. Marcus hadn’t been interested in women for a while. Okay, for a couple millennia. Still, he hadn’t come across a woman like Madame Divine in quite a while either. The woman was walking sex in her getup, and his body was waking up and responding to it.
Obviously he had a Gypsy fetish, Marcus thought wryly. It made as much sense as anything else at the moment. Certainly more sense than his own life presently did. It appeared at the ripe old age of 2,548 he was having a midlife crisis of sorts. That was the only explanation for how he found himself doing a favor for Lucian Argeneau.
Marcus smiled wryly at the thought. Lucian Argeneau was not only the head of the powerful Argeneau clan, but also oversaw the Rogue Hunters and led the North American Immortal Council. Rogue Hunters were the immortal police force; they hunted down rogue immortals to be presented to the Immortal Council, who then passed judgment on them and sentenced them to whatever punishment they saw fit, often death.
As the head of those two organizations, Lucian could arguably be the most powerful immortal in North America. It was hard to imagine him needing anyone’s help. But he did. He was searching for a family member, his niece Basha Argeneau, who had been thought to be dead for millennia, but who might now be alive after all . . . and who he feared had gone rogue.