Dark Debt (Chicagoland Vampires 11)

“As it turns out, I am not of those Houses. But I helped to make one of them.”

“How?” one of the men in the crowd shouted back. Someone in his early twenties, I guessed from the voice, but his image was blocked by the crowd. “How did you make one of them?”

Balthasar didn’t look impressed by the asker. “Who knows the answer?”

“Ethan Sullivan!” shouted a girl, mid-twenties, with waist-length blond hair pulled back in a low tail.

“Ethan Sullivan, indeed,” Balthasar said. “I gave him immortality. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to want my attention.”

While the crowd waited, breath bated, for his explanation, Balthasar looked up, scanned the crowd, and when he found Kelley, smiled directly at her—and into the camera.

“Careful, Kelley,” Luc said. “You’ve been made.”

Ethan crossed his arms, his expression unfathomable as he stared at the screen. “I suspect he wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for our benefit. And for theirs.”

Balthasar moved two steps toward a woman, lifted her hand. Kelley adjusted her position so they were both in the frame.

The woman was petite, with coal black hair prettily tied into a topknot and held in place with a black patent headband. Deep-set eyes were poised above a Cupid’s bow mouth, and she wore a short and stylish dress with flats. On her way back from a date, I guessed.

“What’s your name, mon amie?”

“Park,” she said with a smile.

“Make a fist, Park,” he requested, and she did, eyes wide and bright with anticipation.

As the growing crowd twittered like excited birds, he lifted her hand to his lips, pressed a kiss there. “Perhaps,” Balthasar crooned, “Ethan Sullivan simply doesn’t want to share.” He turned the woman’s wrist so her fingers faced upward. “Open your hand,” he said to the woman.

She did, and a small white bird, just like the first, flew from her hand and into the sky.

The woman laughed, put a hand on her chest in nervous excitement as the crowd erupted with applause.

“Thank you,” Balthasar said, and looked at the camera again. “Sharing is how we show love and respect.”

I know he hadn’t meant me, not specifically, but the remembrance of his magic—as potent as it had been unwelcome—sent a cold trickle of unease down my spine. Ethan must have sensed my discomfort; he put a hand at my back, warm and gratifyingly possessive.

“May I impose on you one more time?” Balthasar asked. His voice was sweet as honey, his gaze warm and inviting.

Or maybe that was just his magic working overtime.

The girl nodded, extended a hand when he offered, and stepped forward beside him.

“We’ve never met before, yes?”

She nodded. “We’ve never met.”

“And yet here, beside this beautiful building”—he gestured toward the Wrigley Building behind him—“in this beautiful metropolis, it is impossible but to be moved.”

“What’s he after?” Ethan murmured to himself, fingers rubbing his jaw as he watched.

“It’s very beautiful,” Park agreed.

Balthasar fanned and fisted the fingers of his right hand, then opened them to reveal a soft white flower in perfect blossom. The woman’s eyes grew wide.

“For you,” he said, and she took it, inhaled deeply.

Her gaze went slightly vacant, her lips parting in what looked like delicious agony. But I saw the truth in her eyes—the dilated pupils, the mask of arousal overlying fear, overlying lack of control.

A shiver ran down my spine in earnest sympathy. She wasn’t pretending; she was glamoured.