Silken Rapture (Princes of the Underground 2)

She would be destined for greatness if she wasn’t now Blaise’s prisoner.

He stifled his regret with the ability of long practice. That the trajectory of such a beautiful creature—the very essence of life—should be cut off in midpath pained him, but there was nothing he could do.

Nothing.

“Was she about to do a play in London?” he asked Aubrey.

“No. She was in London for something far more fascinating. Apparently, she was severely injured in a car wreck a year and a half ago. That’s part of the reason she hasn’t yet reached the apex of fame the theatre critics had predicted for her. She spent almost half a year in a coma. Apparently, after she left the hospital, she lived as a recluse in Brooklyn in a rundown boarding house.”

“Hasn’t she got any family?”

“No. She hasn’t. She was an only child. Her parents were a sort of oddment. A Stanley Kowalski and Mary Cassatt romance, if you take my meaning. Her mother, who apparently was a rather gifted painter, died when she was only two. Her father aspired only to work in the coal mines, and died of lung cancer at age thirty-eight. From all indications, her father’s death was a defining point in Isabel’s life.”

“Who will be looking for her?”

“A man named Lester Dee arranged her tour here of universities and colleges in the United Kingdom. Isabel gives demonstrations of her power and Dee lectures on the research he’s done on her. He’s already contacted the authorities about Isabel’s disappearance.”

“Her power?”

Aubrey sat forward, his gray eyes alight with intellectual interest. “Yes—let me get to the meat of things. Isabel Lanscourt is a psychometrist—apparently an incredibly gifted one.”

Blaise’s incisors were not extended, but he snarled at Aubrey nonetheless. Unfortunately, Aubrey was every bit as brilliant as he bragged. He had a nasty habit of getting swept up in that brilliance and talking to himself, since only he could comprehend his own meaning. He immediately interpreted Blaise’s familiar annoyance and hastened to explain.

“Psychometry is a type of psychic ability where an individual can telepathically receive information about an object or person through touch. Ms. Lanscourt can pick up a discarded newspaper and tell you where the trees grew that make up the paper, where it was printed and details about the man who just touched it that would likely make the gent blush. She can touch a weapon and tell you details of how it was manufactured, the people who used it and the violence it wrought. She’s a walking miracle. There was a very talented Russian psychometrist I studied along with the Society for Psychical Research back in the 1890’s, but Ms. Lanscourt’s abilities blow that case away. What’s wrong?” Aubrey interrupted his own enthusiastic explanation when he noticed Blaise’s expression.

“She must exist in a living hell.”

Aubrey’s expression sobered. “Well, yes…I suppose it must be difficult at times, having all those images and perceptions invade the brain. Rather like a madness, now that I come to think of it. Perhaps that explains her isolation and depression after she left the hospital. Good thing Dee happened upon her, poor girl.”

“That’s why she wears the gloves,” Blaise said. Too late, he realized he’d been staring at the painting mounted over the fireplace of a woman wearing a topaz, ermine-bordered gown, a slender diadem resting on her dark brown hair.

“Isabel Lanscourt looks nothing like Elysse,” Aubrey observed.

“Why do you keep bringing up Elysse?” Blaise blurted out in rising anger.

“Because I know you. You’re comparing the two women in your mind. Who wouldn’t?”

Blaise stood frozen, both shocked and infuriated at his friend’s audacity. “Are you saying that you’re comparing the two?” he asked in an ominous tone as he stepped toward Aubrey.

Aubrey stood with the alacrity conferred by his paranormal nature. “I am. All the Literati are, Blaise. It’s not only you who sees Isabel Lanscourt’s grandeur. She’s like a blazing comet in all of our eyes. The fact that we see her for what she is, that we feel her pull, isn’t what’s got you upset right now.”

Blaise approached him so that they stood eye to eye. Fury boiled in his veins. Aubrey was an inch away from being beaten to a bloody pulp, and damn his tendency to go easy on him in a brotherly sparring match. He was so mad that Aubrey had the nerve to compare the woman to Elysse out loud that he actually hoped his friend would dig himself a deeper hole.

“Go on. Enlighten me,” he prodded.

“You’re upset because she’s more powerful than Elysse. You’re pissed at finding yourself a thousand times more attracted to Isabel Lanscourt than you ever were Elysse de Gennere.”

For a moment, Blaise experienced a very satisfying fantasy about planting his fist in Aubrey’s face. He conquered the lure of it, but with extreme difficulty.

“Get out of here.”

“Don’t be such a son of a bitch about this, Blaise.”

“I am no one’s son. Now get out of here.”

Regret sliced through him when Aubrey moved hastily, obviously taking the ominous threat in his tone seriously. He stumbled and caught hold of himself on the arm of the couch.

“I don’t know why I put up with you half the time,” Aubrey said, eyes blazing and his fangs fully extended. Blaise stepped toward him. Aubrey retreated. They were like brothers, but there could only be one alpha in a pack of wolves.