There were only three days left until her next performance... .
Her maman had always said the sliver moon was lucky for people like them - people who hold on to the sky with all their might, and do it again and again. No matter how many times they lose it. That was why Néomi had scheduled her party on that night.
Lucky wasn't the first term she'd use to describe that party - the one meant to celebrate the achievement of all her dreams. At twenty-six, Néomi had bought this place on her own, after working her way out of the Vieux Carré - all the while managing to keep her shady background a secret.
Her uptown patrons had never found out that Néomi was a French émigrée's bastard born in the seedy French Quarter. They hadn't connected Néomi Laress to Marguerite L'Are, the infamous burlesque dancer.
They hadn't discovered that, for a time, Néomi had been one, too.
After her maman had succumbed to influenza when Néomi had just turned sixteen, she'd begun doing shows. Néomi had been well developed then, and with the right makeup and costumes, she'd passed for twenty. Times had been tough, and the money was good.
She'd had no inhibitions, no moral convictions against it. Everyone got what they needed, and no one was hurt by it. Though she'd never been ashamed of what she'd done, she'd kept it secret because she'd understood that others wouldn't view it the same way she did.
After a year of saving up money, Néomi had quit. She'd always dreamed of being a ballerina and hadn't wanted to waste all those lessons her mother had scrimped to afford - and all the work Néomi had done to justify the incredible sacrifice. And somehow, she'd made it... .
Then I died.
She wished Conrad could have seen her as the ballerina she'd once been - onstage in a luxurious costume, flushed with pride, inundated with lusty applause. Would he have found her pretty?
She sighed glumly. She would never know... .
What would tomorrow bring with Conrad, the vampire assassin with his powerful body and ailing mind? As she drifted off to reverie, she wondered, Can we save him when he doesn't want to be saved?
We?
The ghost doesn't return the entire night.
And he resents her for it.
It takes till late the next afternoon before he smells the scent of roses. The room is lit with afternoon sun, but he can still see her floating directly through the closed door. He knows what to look for now, how to look for her, like a hidden message in a visual puzzle.
She acts as if she's never left, absently lying back across the mattress and stretching her slender arms above her head. Her long hair flows out over the sheet - shining black, stark against the white. Her pale br**sts are barely contained by her dress.
She's forgiven.
If he isn't blooded, then why does this view captivate him? Why does it make his fangs ache?
Chapter 5
He continues to debate the possibilities of fractured memory, hallucination, or ghost. As far as a fractured memory goes, she fits this place, this situation, too perfectly. And if she's a figment of his imagination, why would he imagine a woman the opposite of what he is normally attracted to?
He thought he liked tall, Nordic women with fair hair and their skin sun-pinkened from the outdoor life. But this female's tiny and pale, not much over five feet tall. Her hair is black as night.
During his harsh human life, he would've scarcely spared a pitying glance at her, predicting the delicate girl wouldn't last though the next winter in their war-torn country.
And she hadn't survived long. She appears to be no more than in her early twenties. If ghosts were born of violence, then how had she met her end so young?
She wouldn't have if she'd had a strong protector. I was strong. He stifles a low growl. I'd have kept her safe if she'd been mine.
Maybe he wouldn't have predicted her doom over the winter and turned away. Maybe he would've approached her. In his rough way, he could have attempted to garner the position as her protector. He was a skilled officer. He'd been born a nobleman - and at least before the Great War, that had meant something. Perhaps she would have accepted him.
My God, to have had such a woman in my keeping... to have taken her each night.
He can imagine what that would be like. During the day, his nightmares have been varied with strange new dreams of pinning her arms over her head and mounting her luscious little body.
There's a line... there's a line...
Could this woman possibly be real? This would mean that not only is the ghost not imagined - it would mean he's gone three days without a single hallucination. A hundred years have passed since that happened last.
Which would mean, he might be... healing.
Like a starburst between his eyes, he finally remembers what he'd regretted, what he'd coveted so badly -
Nikolai and Sebastian enter then, their expressions grim. Why is Nikolai holding a syringe? In a tone low with warning, he says, "What's the goddamned shot for? I haven't done anything."
"No, but we fear you will," Nikolai says. "We need to take you from the room - and this will keep you from getting hurt."
When Nikolai nears, he yells, "Get the f**king thing away from me, Nikolai!" He doesn't want to be mindless, can't have that happen again. "No!"
I don't want her to see me like that.
"Damn you, I said no!"
9
Néomi was stunned anew at how viciously Conrad fought the two men, pounding his forehead against Sebastian's and nearly taking off Nikolai's hand with his fangs.
In the end, his resisting gained him no ground. They injected him once again. Just before it took hold, Conrad stared in her direction with his brows drawn and teeth gritted, and she found that so much harder to see now.