As Shadows Fade (The Gardella Vampire Hunters 5)

She looked at herself in the mirror for a long time and at last made her decision.

If that was what he really wanted, she’d let him go. But the way he’d looked, as he stood over her in the carriage after the dinner dance, spoke otherwise.

Perhaps it was time to force his hand. One way or the other.

Rising from the stool, she whisked off her simple white night rail and pulled from the wardrobe a lacy shell pink gown. The fabric weighed little more than a whisper, and fitted her breasts like two lace hands… then fell free, in a sheer pink glaze from her bodice to the floor. Her two vis bullae glinted behind it, at her navel.

Victoria left her chamber silently and padded through the small town house to the rear, where the servants kept their rooms. Then she climbed up a flight of stairs to the next level, where the heat lingered even more heavily.

Her gown swirled around her, light as smoke, as she came to a stop outside Max’s room. The crack under the door showed no illumination, but it was well after two o’clock in the morning. He was either sleeping or out. And since there weren’t any vampires in London anymore…

Victoria opened the door and saw the same moonbeam splaying over his bed. Empty. Unslept in.

He wasn’t there.

Victoria backed out of the room, her stomach twisting uncomfortably, her palms suddenly damp.

She felt foolish.

Back down the stairs she went, and kept going down to the ground floor. She found herself near the kitchen at the back of the town house. She wasn’t hungry, but walked through to the front of the house, now wide-awake and alert. Suddenly she realized why.

The hair on the back of her arms lifted, and she slowed her careless movements into something silent. The sound had been a soft clink, or a dull scrape, perhaps.

Not a vampire-she didn’t feel a chill. It could be Kritanu or Charley or…

Victoria drew herself up tall and continued along the corridor to the sitting room. Her heart pounded.

A yellow glow shone from under the door, faint and unassuming. She turned the knob and pushed it open.

Max sat in Aunt Eustacia’s favorite chair near the piecrust table on which her stakes had lain. A short glass with liquid that glowed amber in the lamplight gave testament to the dull scrape Victoria had heard, and the fat decanter next to it, the clink. He raised his face, half of it burnished gold from the lamp, and the other melding into shadow. His white shirt, with a loose neck cloth draped around his shoulders, glowed in the dim light.

“What do you want?”

She stepped across the threshold and stood close to the wall, feeling anger… and something else… bubbling through her. Her fingers gripped the edge of the door, but she moved to stand in that beautiful, broad moonbeam from the side window. “I couldn’t sleep. ”

His glance flickered over her, and she saw his mouth compress. “Go away, Victoria. ”

“Max. ”

Then he looked at her, straight on, and she was knocked nearly breathless by the venom in his expression. The same bitterness he’d had earlier that afternoon. That same deep, flat anger he’d had when she drugged him with salvi three weeks ago.

“You’ve settled things with Vioget. Why are you here?”

There was no use wondering how he’d known she’d visited Sebastian; she’d accepted that about him long ago. Max knew everything.

“Ye-” she began, but he didn’t wait to hear the rest of it.

“Get. Away. ” His words were little more than a breath.

She took a step closer, and felt the whisper of fabric around her legs. She knew what he saw, with the white glow behind her: the froth of pink gauze outlining her from torso to toes, the heavy bundle of thick curls cascading down her back. Victoria had no illusions about the image she made.

She needed all the help she could get.

“Max, I went to your chamber, looking for you. ”

“Obviously. ” Those dark eyes scraped over her, somehow managing to be cold and yet arrogant. “I’ve no interest in Vioget’s leavings. Or is it that you don’t want to know your child’s patrimony?”

So he also knew that she had stopped taking the potion. Again, that was no surprise to Victoria. She’d told him it was her intention, and Max, being Max, would confirm it. But his other accusations…