Serafina and the Silent Vampire - By Marie Treanor Page 0,68
him speak. “I think we just have to be there for her. And warn the bastard that she’s not alone and that if he does her any harm whatsoever, somehow we’ll manage to stake him to hell.”
Jilly stared at him, but he didn’t back down. She grinned. “That’s the first time you’ve ever spoken like a sensible man.”
“Stop, Jilly,” Sera said, coming through from the inner office. “Such exaggerated praise is liable to go to his head. What’s happening?”
“Nothing much,” Jilly said. She decided not to care whether or not Sera had overheard her and Jack. In fact it would be good if she had—might wake her up to her own idiocy. “Elspeth’s gone for vodka, I mean milk, and as you asked, we’ve been researching a bit deeper into your Nicholas Smith. His name crops up in the membership of several groups and societies—what would you call them, Jack?”
“Esoteric,” Jack supplied mildly.
“Aye, what he said. Anyway, they’re to do with pretty heavy magic, witchcraft, Satanism, that kind of thing.”
“Yes?” Sera eased her hip onto Jilly’s desk. She looked better than she had in the flat—well, who looked good when they first woke up? “That fits with what I heard, that he’s a ‘real’ sorcerer.”
“Does any of that stuff work?” Jack asked, almost apologetically. “Or is it just a symptom of the way he thinks, the power he’s looking for and found with the vampires?”
“Oh, some of it works. Some of it definitely works. Trust me, a friend of mine is a witch.”
“Mel,” Jilly remembered. Melanie Merrow had flickered erratically in and out of Sera’s life since childhood. Jilly had once wondered if, young as she was, Mel was Sera’s real mother, but Sera had laughed so hard at this speculation that Jilly had been forced reluctantly to drop the dream. Mel would have been a good mother to have. Or at least better than a drug addict who abandoned her baby at a clinic or whatever other wild or pathetic stories Sera produced for the entertainment of others. “Scary woman,” she observed.
“Very knowledgeable woman.” Sera frowned, staring at Jilly without really seeing her. “Why does he smell like me?” she said inexplicably. She stood up, reaching for the phone in her pocket. “I think I need to see Mel about many things.”
****
Although she was still pissed off at Ferdy, she’d be driving so close by his house on her way to visit Melanie that she decided to call in. There were more important things bothering her, personal things, like what she’d done with Blair last night and which way Blair would jump. And how she was going to feel about both of those things when he did.
Before she left, she ran back up to the flat to fetch the Christmas present she’d bought for Mel last year. And although it was only half an hour since she’d seen him last, her heart beat like a teenager’s on a first date with her long-time crush.
Silence rang in her ears. There was no sign of him in the living room. She could almost imagine he’d gone, had somehow found a way to leave in daylight, except the whole flat resonated with his personality. No echo of presence but the real thing. Slowly, she followed her instinct to the bedroom and found him lying stretched out on her bed, still clothed, staring at the ceiling. He looked dead.
“Blair?” She rushed over to him, wondering wildly if some ray of daylight had seeped through the curtain and zapped him. Though, of course, his body would have disintegrated, wouldn’t it? She grabbed his arm. “Blair!”
And suddenly he wasn’t on the bed but in the doorway, both hands raised in self-defense. His eyes were steely, murderous, just as she’d seen him in the car park, a timely reminder—or was it too late?—of the nature of the being she’d welcomed to her bed. And yet in the time she took to register this, he was already lowering his arms to his sides. The vicious glare faded from his eyes.
“Serafina.”
“Were you asleep?” she asked in disbelief.
His lips quirked. “I had a busy night.”
Her face, her entire body flushed, and yet beyond her own memory and embarrassment, she recognized that she’d found his vulnerability, that he knew it and didn’t like it. “Normally, I’m aware while I rest.”
“But you didn’t even hear me come in.”
“No, I didn’t,” he acknowledged, his voice very carefully even. “It seems I don’t register you as a threat.”