Crave The Night (Midnight Breed 12)

But there was definitely someone in the exhibit. Jordana felt the presence like a cool hand settling against the back of her neck. She felt observed somehow, much as she had been in the parking lot the other night. Anxiety spiked through her as she ended her phone conversation and walked out of her office.

A man stood inside the closed exhibit.

Dressed in a rumpled, rain-dappled gray overcoat, he pivoted to face her as she approached. He was tall and fit beneath the drooping coat, worn jeans, and faded T-shirt. His short, bland brown hair was combed neatly to the side.

Everything about him was average and nondescript, except for his eyes. An arresting shade of peridot, they held her in an unrushed, considering stare.

Although nothing about him broadcasted a threat, Jordana’s senses remained alert, expectant in some odd way. “I’m sorry, but the exhibit hasn’t opened to the public yet. You can’t be in here.”

“I won’t stay long,” he said. “I only wanted to come in and have a quick look.”

She frowned. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave. We have tickets for sale at the museum website, or you can come back tomorrow evening at the grand opening and purchase a ticket at the door.”

He didn’t acknowledge the offer or her request for him to go. Slowly, fluidly, he strolled from one art display to another.

“A Canova,” he said, walking over to the clear case containing a marble bust of Beatrice from the famous, epic poetry of Dante Alighieri. “An impressive piece.”

Jordana followed the man to the sculpture, taking in his modest attire more closely now. None of his clothes looked newer than a decade old, and they fit him like they’d been broken in on someone else and cast off years later. His brown leather loafers were scuffed and scarred, faded and timeworn like the rest of what he wore.

“Canova is considered one of the greatest neoclassical sculptors,” Jordana said, unable to resist sharing her knowledge of the collection. “He was probably the most famous artist of his day, but I don’t find many people who know his work on sight. Particularly the lesser-known pieces like this one.”

“More’s the pity.” Her uninvited visitor’s mouth curved in a faint smile. “Canova’s work is exquisite, no question. There is a calmness to his sculpture, from the smoothness of his subject’s skin, to the fluid form of each curve and the flawless stroke of every line.”

Listening to him speak so eloquently and so well informed, Jordana suddenly felt awkward for insisting he’d have to pay to view the art that belonged by rights to the world. In spite of her earlier misgivings about him, she found herself intrigued.

He went on, still studying the sculpture. “The perfection of Canova’s work—the pure idealism of it—invites the eye to linger, to study and admire.” The man glanced to Jordana. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Jordana shrugged. “Honestly, I find it too perfect. His art is too … I don’t know. Too controlled, I suppose.” She gestured to a neighboring marble piece, one of the collection’s most important acquisitions. “Take this Bernini bust, on the other hand. Look at the energy of his work. It’s unsettling, unrefined. Aggressive.”

The sculpture they looked at was Anima Dannata, depicting a condemned soul staring into the abyss of hell. Jordana drew closer to the display. “Bernini shows you every crag in his subject’s face, every livid vein and hair standing on end. You can actually see the torment in the man’s face—you can feel it. You can almost hear the scream of horror from the man’s open mouth. Bernini shows you everything. He dares you to experience it.”

The stranger nodded. “You take your art very seriously.”

“I love it,” Jordana admitted. “It means everything to me.”

Something flickered in his unusual green eyes. “We share that in common, then. I am a lover of art myself. And today, a newfound appreciation for Bernini. Your favorite piece, I take it?”

“Oh,” Jordana said, shaking her head. “No, there’s another sculpture that I like even more. But it’s not as important as either of these.”

“Will you show me?”

For a moment, Jordana forgot all about the fact that the exhibit was currently off-limits to anyone but museum staff. She led him to another of the pieces housed inside a Plexiglas display.

“Cornacchini’s Sleeping Endymion,” he said, a smile on his lips. Jordana noticed he hadn’t needed to read the placard. “You know this one too?”

“It’s been in the museum’s collection for many years, I believe.”

“Yes, it has.” He must be a longtime patron of the museum, to be so familiar not only with art in general but with this particular piece as well. “Endymion came to us by anonymous donation a couple decades ago. It was in another exhibit most of that time, but when I began planning this collection, I had to have it.” She gazed at the reclining human shepherd, sleeping under Selene’s crescent moon. “There’s not another piece in the entire museum that I love more than this one.”

A cryptic smile played at the corners of the stranger’s mouth. “I can’t imagine it being in better hands.”

Jordana considered the odd compliment, her curiosity about the man deepening the longer she spoke with him. He couldn’t be more than thirty years old, she guessed, but he had a wisdom about him—an indefinable aura that made him seem far older than his age.

He wasn’t Breed; he had no dermaglyphs that she could see, nor would he be walking around during daylight hours without being wrapped in yards of UV-protective gear, if he was one of Nathan’s kind.

And yet her senses seemed to resist the notion to call him human.

Flummoxed, she extended her hand to him. “I’m Jordana Gates, by the way. The exhibit curator.”