Chapter Two
That had been too close.
Jonathan leaned back on his heels. He’d nearly forgotten Miss Sorrow had been a bridesmaid at his brother Marcus’s wedding almost six years earlier.
Had he not hastily erased his face from her memory, she’d surely have drawn the daggers strapped to her shins.
She wasn’t an active member of the Sorrow patrol, the hunters who prowled the streets at night, but she was still the reason he’d been locked in a vampire trap alongside his brother Cordon.
The damned woman had placed the wretched caskets outside his nest’s daylight resting place at the time. She was the enemy.
Or at least, she was supposed to be.
It was difficult to think of her that way after he’d been watching her for so long, at Marcus’s orders.
He knew she always walked a different route each morning to the Sloan House, she drank her tea with precisely three teaspoons of sugar, and she preferred linen petticoats to wool.
It was as if she’d crawled into his mind and would not come out.
Now she stood before him dressed entirely in black, still mourning the members of her family who had died while storming Marcus’s castle years longer than society would have expected the show of her grief.
She rather resembled a thief herself, with her black hair pulled into a tight chignon and every inch of her skin from her chin to her toes concealed by black fabric.
The dark color made her already pale skin seem gaunt, a situation not helped by the deep bags under her eyes and the way her thin lips were pinched together beneath her sharp, upturned nose.
“A reformed thief,” he said. “I have given up my wicked ways.” He swept into a deep bow. “Mr. Jonathan Drake, at your service.”
She huffed.
Her skepticism was warranted. In truth, he’d been a thief for longer than she’d been alive, although he’d only recently resumed his former occupation as a vampire.
It had started fifteen years ago when he’d seen a ruby-encrusted dagger displayed in the Louvre.
The moment he’d recognized the spider emblem of the Wild Hunt, the ancient group responsible for training humans to be daylight vampire guardians, engraved on the blade, he’d known what to do.
Over the following years, he’d returned more than a thousand vampiric artifacts to their rightful owners.
It was one of the few things that brought him a sense of purpose and distracted him from the chasm in his soul that had opened when the woman he’d loved more than anyone else in the world had abandoned him.
That wound still festered, even after more than fifty years.
Unlike his siblings, he refused to accept that she had perished.
Not only had they never found her body, but the Marguerite de la Valencia he remembered could never have been felled by a mere illness.
Thinking about his maker made his heart clench. He had vivid memories of her lying next to him on the bare earth, stroking his forehead with fingers that always smelled like incense and beeswax, as if she’d just returned from evening mass.
Miss Sorrow put her hands on her hips. “What do you want, Mr. Drake?”
He felt his eyes widen. For weeks, he’d imagined confronting her, defying Marcus’s orders not to reveal himself.
In each conjured scenario she’d swooned before him, compelled by his vampiric nature.
He should have expected she’d be different.
Taming her would be a challenge unlike any he had ever faced.
But from her clipped tone, it was clear she’d have no interest in accepting the service he’d intended to offer.
That would make things more difficult. His task, assigned to him by Marcus, was simple: observe Miss Sorrow and report any suspicious activity.
He was not to show himself, harm her, or interfere in her family’s hunting.
He’d been unable to resist disobeying the first command but had no intention of continuing that trend, even though the Sorrow family had been responsible for the assault on Marcus’s castle six years earlier.
As old and powerful as Marcus was, he did not thirst for revenge.
This, at least, Jonathan could understand.
When one lived for centuries, grudges were a weight that only grew heavier with time. It was better to forgive and move on.
Or failing that, seek vengeance immediately.
He assumed Marcus had spared Miss Sorrow because she was the cousin of Marcus’s mate, Winifred, and the two women had once been close friends. Were it not for Marcus’s command, Jonathan would have eagerly dispatched Miss Sorrow for his brother months ago.
The only good hunter was a dead hunter.
That was what he’d believed for decades, but now whenever he forced himself to consider killing her, something deep inside his chest ached. It had to be because he’d spied on her for so long. He was a damned fool for not demanding that Marcus assign someone else to the task.
Miss Sorrow edged backward, as if she expected him to attack. Before she could deem him a danger, he gestured toward the space behind her. “So, this is your exhibit?”
The only space she’d regularly occupied over the past few weeks that he’d yet to penetrate.
He’d watched her carry all manner of paper-wrapped bundles inside but had yet to enter the room himself.
That was the excuse he’d settled on to reveal himself.
Marcus had insisted he report suspicious behavior and what was more suspicious than spending hours in a cramped, windowless room?
She furrowed her brow. “Yes. If you wish to view it, return in two days.”
“That will not be necessary.” Properly fulfilling Marcus’s wishes meant convincing her to allow him access to her exhibit before the public.
He walked to the nearest window and tugged at the bottom pane.
“Quite loose. This could be opened from the outside with little difficulty.” He tapped a finger on the broken latch. “You should have this replaced.”
She joined him. “I will inform the curator. If that is all, Mr. Drake…”
The woman was stubborn. He continued down the hallway until he reached an unmarked locked door. Likely an access point for the cleaning staff. It would do nicely as a demonstration.
She followed. “Must I summon a watchman?”
He pulled a thin, white card from his pocket and slid it along the gap between the door and its frame. When he reached the latch, he jiggled the card. The lock was old, and the door poorly fitted, so the latch disengaged with ease. He swung open the door. “Yet another entry point.”
She huffed. “What is your point?”
She didn’t see it yet. He retrieved his pocket watch from his coat and flicked it open.
When the minute hand reached the half-hour mark, he crossed the hall.
She followed, while carrying on about how she couldn’t let him wander the museum unsupervised.
When they reached the closed double doors at the end of the hallway, he tilted his thumb toward them.
“Let me guess, the most valuable items in the building are in there?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yes.”
“Would you say that even now there are guards patrolling inside?”
He didn’t need to ask because he’d done his research. There were a dozen watchmen on the museum’s payroll who followed a standard three-hour cyclical rotation except for two who kept stationary positions beside both exits to the main hall.
“Yes,” she said. “Why?”
“You will see.” He checked his watch again, then opened the doors with a flourish.
The room was completely empty.
She gasped, then trod inside, her heels clicking and echoing on the tile floor. “Where are the guards?”
He joined her and held out his watch so she could see.
“There is a three-minute window of opportunity during shift change every two hours.” It was a common mistake, one that had allowed him to sneak into the museum undetected earlier that evening.
He clicked the lid of the watch closed. “Perhaps now you’d like to hear what I have to say? ”
Ten minutes later, he stood in a space hardly larger than his cook’s pantry, across from a much paler Miss Sorrow as she fidgeted with the obsidian buttons on her bodice.
Despite accomplishing the first part of his plan, seeing the artifacts carelessly displayed behind her made his blood run cold.
He’d watched her gather them for months but being up close was different.
This woman was surrounded by items she had no business owning.
He recognized a signet ring, a gold quill pen, and a delicately embroidered handkerchief that had belonged to vampires who had been slain by hunters.
As if killing his kind hadn’t been enough, the Sorrow hunters had also robbed the corpses of their victims.
Murderous cads.
“I admit, you’ve raised some serious concerns, Mr. Drake,” Miss Sorrow said. “What I don’t understand is what you want. Have you come to warn me?”
“No. I want a job.”
She frowned. “I’m only the assistant curator. I have no ability to hire staff.”
He knew that, but he also had no desire to speak to the bumbling, paranoid Mr. Blackwood.
Miss Sorrow—Felicity, in his mind at least, for a killer of his kind didn’t deserve the respect of their proper title—was his mission, and so she was the one he had approached.
He could have simply continued watching her from afar, but the thrill of observation had long ago faded.
It would be more of a challenge to earn her trust then whisk the artifacts away, leaving her embarrassed and in ruins. He wanted her to know that she’d allowed a fox into her henhouse only to realize, too late, that she had been deceived.
It wouldn’t be enough, of course. To truly settle the score, he’d have to kill every member of her wretched family. Unfortunately, Marcus had been very explicit regarding Felicity. Jonathan could not hurt her or allow the Sorrow hunters to discover they were being watched.