Like her first real kiss. The taste of spun sugar on Marie’s soft lips; Odette’s mortal heart racing in her chest. The way their hands trembled. The way their breaths quickened.
She turned toward the young man on the cross. The Son of God.
“Is my love a sin?” she asked him without flinching, as she had on countless other occasions. Again he gave her the same response. Odette nodded with satisfaction and repeated the mantra. “Your message was one of love. And hatred should never prevail over love.”
Once more, her memories wavered at the edges of her mind. She recalled her first brush with death, the day her father was led to the guillotine, jeers accompanying each of his steps. How he still wore his powdered wig, even when the blade fell. The slick sound of his blood splashing across the stones, which brought to mind her first kill, the night after welcoming her maker with open arms. The thrill of holding such godlike power in her grasp.
Odette’s fingers turned white around the metal spire. Contrary to popular opinion, she was no longer angry. Not at the bloodthirsty men and women who’d left her a shivering orphan. Not at her parents for being unable to fight back. Not at Nicodemus for stealing Odette away from the dregs of her former life. Not at Marie, who had broken Odette’s heart in the way of so many first loves.
“Because of everything that happened, I’ve learned to love myself more,” she said. “And is that not the best gift any trial in life can give you? The power to love yourself today better than you did the day before.”
Odette angled her chin into a violet sky spangled with stars. The clouds above shifted like feathers of mist in a passing breeze. Nigel used to say the skies over New Orleans were filled with the smoke of the city’s misdeeds. The lapses in judgment so often celebrated by the Vieux Carré’s well-heeled tourists, who helped make New Orleans one of the wealthiest cities in the entire country, despite the recent War Between the States. Whenever Nigel would sit down to share his most salacious bit of weekly gossip, his Cockney accent would deepen with prurience.
Something clenched around Odette’s dead heart.
This time, she hesitated before glancing toward the metal cross in her periphery.
“I know I have no business thinking of Nigel Fitzroy with anything resembling warmth,” she whispered. “He betrayed us.” She swallowed. “He betrayed me.” Incredulity flared across her face. “To think this happened only one day ago. That the rising and setting of a single moon has changed all our lives in such an irrevocable fashion.” In that single night, Odette had lost a brother she’d loved for a decade to a bone-chilling kind of treachery. This loss was keenly felt, though she dared not mourn it in the open. To do so would be une erreur fatale, especially in Nicodemus’ presence. The loss of a traitor was no one’s loss at all.
And yet . . .
She’d cried in her room this morning. She’d drawn the velvet curtains around her four-poster bed and let blood-tinged tears stain her ivory silk pillows. No one had seen hide nor hair of Boone all day. Jae arrived not long after sundown, his black hair wet, his expression somber. Upon returning to Jacques’, Hortense took to playing Bach cello suites at inhuman speed on her Stradivarius, while her sister, Madeleine, wrote in a leather-bound journal nearby. In short, every member of La Cour des Lions mourned in their own way.
On the surface, it had been business as usual. They exchanged stilted pleasantries. Acted as if nothing were amiss, none of them wishing to give voice to their anguish or breathe life into the worst of Nigel’s offenses, the proof of which was soon to follow.
Nigel’s worst offense?
The loss of Sébastien’s soul. The unmaking of his humanity. Nigel might have betrayed them, but he had killed Bastien. He’d torn out his throat in front of the only girl Bastien had ever loved.
Odette shivered, despite the fact that she hadn’t felt truly cold in decades. She let her vision glaze as it spanned across the square toward the glittering waters of the Mississippi. Past the twinkling ships along the horizon.
“Should I tell them about my role in this sordid tale?” she asked.
The figure on the cross remained contemplative. Silent.
“You would probably say honesty is the best policy.” Odette tucked a sable curl behind an ear. “But I would rather swallow a handful of nails than face Nicodemus’ wrath. And it was an honest mistake, so that should count for something, non?”
Again her Savior remained frustratingly quiet.
A mere hour before Bastien’s death, Odette had allowed him to strike out on his own, knowing full well that a killer nipped at their heels. She’d gone so far as to distract her immortal brethren so they would not waylay him in his task to find Celine, whose safety had been threatened moments prior.
Should she confess her role?
What would Nicodemus do to her once he found out?
The last vampire who dared to cross Nicodemus Saint Germain had had his fangs torn from his mouth.
Odette swallowed. Not necessarily a fate worse than death, but then again not exactly one to inspire honesty. It wasn’t that she feared pain. Even the idea of the final death did not frighten her. She’d born witness to the rise and fall of empires. Danced with a dauphin beneath the light of a full moon.
Hers was a story worthy of being told.
“It’s just . . . well, I like the way I look, damn it all!” She liked her smart nose and her impish smile. Missing fangs were sure to mar the effect. “I suppose at least I will not starve,” she mused. “That is the gift of family, among other things.”
If gluttony and vanity made her evil, then tant pis. She’d been called worse things by worse creatures.
Odette reeled around the metal spire, the crucifix at its top creaking with the shift in weight. Gas lamps danced in the shadows below. Her vampiric senses flooded with the scent of a New Orleans spring evening. Sweet blossoms, sharp iron, sultry wind. The beating of hearts. The whicker of horses, the striking of hooves against pavers.
Dark beauty, all around her. Ripe for the taking.
A mournful sigh flew past Odette’s lips. She never should have permitted Bastien to go, even if Celine’s life did hang in the balance. Odette had known better. Where blood flowed, murder followed. She’d simply allowed sentiment to get the better of her.
Never again.
For years Odette had eschewed the use of her special gift, one unusual among immortals. The ability to foresee glimpses of another being’s future, with nothing more than the touch of her skin to theirs. She avoided it because she often saw flashes of misfortune in those rash enough to indulge their curiosity.
Just as she’d seen when Celine Rousseau asked her to look the day they first met.
History had taught Odette that informing a person of their impending doom did not exactly endear them to her. Often the individual in question would demand how they might avoid their fate. No matter how hard Odette tried to explain that her gift didn’t work like that—that she was not, in fact, a worker of miracles—they would continue pressing her to the point of exasperation. Twice she’d been accosted. Threatened with bodily harm, a knife flashed before her face, a revolver pointed at her chest.