With a hand on his chest, I shoved him back onto the couch and straddled him.
“Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,” I whispered.
And then my teeth found his neck. It was becoming my best way to shut someone up.
20
I fled barefoot from the elephant like Cinderella being chased by her glass slippers, a ticket from the Louvre wadded up in my fist, the only helpful thing I’d found in his pockets. The duke hadn’t spoken again, had simply jerked and moaned when my blood magic helped him find his relief. It was grotesque but helpful, the way that happened with my clients. I giggled to myself, considering how this happened every night. I had become silent but deadly.
I had a foot on the stairs up to my room when Vale called my name, his voice soft and urgent as it echoed down the hall. We both knew there was no one else around to hear it. My heart lurched as it always did when he was near, but my brain was impatient. I really did need sleep, not to be up half the night thinking about the mysterious brigand. Still, I stopped. I couldn’t not stop.
I turned back to wait for him. He didn’t hurry. He never did.
“Bébé, it’s all set. Run up to your room to lose the bustle and grab your boots, and we’ll take some blud and get your book. And maybe some information, too.” He held out a disreputable umbrella and grinned. “Enough room for us both under here, if you stay close.”
I dug a bare toe into a knot in the wood floor. “I can’t. Tomorrow’s the finale and some sort of ball. I have to get sleep.”
He shook his head. “Oh, bébé. I do not understand you. You’ll go to the gardens, you’ll meet men in that ridiculous pachyderm, you’ll go to Lenoir. But I try to help you find your friend, and you brush me off like a pestering child. Have you forgotten the whole reason you’re here?”
Anger flared, my cheeks going hot and my fangs bared. “I didn’t forget. I can’t stop thinking about Cherie. Everything I do is for the sole purpose of staying here, to buy more time, to find more clues.” I held up the ticket. “See this? The duke was at the Louvre today, and there’s some sort of code on here, but I can’t even go there by myself to investigate because I have no freedom during museum hours. I’m constantly trapped. I don’t like what I do. I need the blood to live, and I need the men for the blood, and I need the performing for the men. I’m caught here.”
“You’re not caught right now. Come with me. We’ll be back in an hour.”
I shook my head again but with warning this time. “I told you. I can’t.”
For a moment, he just breathed, watching me. “You’ll do anything for anyone. Except me. And except Cherie.”
“Oh, I’m the one who won’t do what I’m supposed to? Aren’t you supposed to be taking over the family business? Aren’t you running away, too, hiding in Paris from your real responsibilities?”
“For you, bébé! For you!” The shout was sharp, and he strangled it quickly. He looked me up and down in my ridiculous costume and chuckled bitterly. “We both have issues with men who want things we don’t wish to give, I suppose. Except I run away from mine, and you run right toward yours and start sucking on it.”
I exhaled in a growl and poked him in the chest. “I like you, but you make it so damned hard, Vale! Everyone else here worships me, and you just push and push and push.”
“I could not have said it better myself.”
“I thought after last night—”
His grin curled up, his eyes dancing. “What about last night?”
“I thought we’d found something good.”
“Oh, we did. I would like to find it again.” He licked his lip, and my knees nearly melted.
“Then stop pissing me off and pushing me away, and start wooing me, you ass.”
I spun around to flounce away, but he caught a fistful of my bustle and yanked me back. No man I’d met yet in Sang would have dared it, but he held me there with a chuckle.
“As you like, bébé. Leave with me now, and I’ll woo you in the most romantic place in Paris.”
Stifling a yawn and twitching my skirt out of his grasp, I turned. “More romantic than the catacombs?”
“Oh, you’ll enjoy this place. It is dark, private, and filled with surprises. It was once a fortress, then a palace, now a national treasure. And at this time of night, you can touch . . . whatever you wish.”
He pulled me close, and the breath caught in my throat. “You want to break into the Louvre?”
His hands tightened on my waist. “Break in? We won’t break anything. It is considered trespassing only if they catch you. And no one ever catches me.” He held up the duke’s ticket, which I had slipped into my pocket moments ago. “These are directions to a painting’s placement in the gallery. Let’s go see what it is that so interests your duke, shall we?”