Demon in My View

Right after she tried to slit my throat, but why sweat the details?'

'Oh, really?'  Jessica  said  skeptically. He was either teasing her or trying to impress her.

He shrugged. 'We got into an argument.'

'Does this happen to you often? '

'Fairly frequently,' he answered, his tone nonchalant. 'Elizabeth and I don't like each other very much, but her book is … interesting. It's the kind of thing you'd like.'

'How do you know what I like to read? '

'I can tell,' he answered cryptically, and then he turned to the checkout. He paused so that she could catch up and walk beside him, not behind.

The woman at the counter looked at Alex with contempt and whispered something under her breath.

'Hasana, what a surprise.' Alex greeted her coolly. He smiled malevolently. The woman glared at him, but he ignored it.

'You two know each other?' Jessica asked foolishly, seeing the angry sparks fly between them.

'Hasana is Caryn s mother,' Alex offered, as if that explained everything. Jessica remembered Caryn's reaction that morning when she had first seen Alex, and wondered what had happened between him and this family.

'Watch out for this guy,' Hasana warned, nodding toward Alex. 'He probably knows more about you than your taste in books.'

'And how could that be? ' Jessica asked dryly.

'I can read your mind, and learn your secret fears and darkest desires,' Alex answered.

Jessica paused, examining his expression. She had written those exact words, Aubrey's words, in Dark Flame, the novel that was presently waiting on her editor's desk. She couldn't remember whether she had used them in Tiger, Tiger.

'Do you always talk like that?' she asked, unnerved.

He looked at her challengingly as he said, 'Don't you know?'

She just shook her head, alarmed but unwilling to show it.

As Alex paid for his book, Jessica realized that she was still holding Tiger, Tiger. She placed it on the counter, not intending to buy it; she had plenty of copies at home.

Alex's gaze drifted to the cover, and his expression leapt immediately from amusement to anger. He spun away and, without another word, stalked out of the store. Jessica was left staring after him, too shocked to react.

'If I were you, I'd just avoid him,' Hasana advised.

'Why? Is he going to hurt me?' Jessica's sarcasm was sharpened by her confusion regarding Alex.

'Unless you keep away from him, he most likely will,' Hasana answered seriously. 'He has a temper.'

Jessica was out of sharp remarks. To hide her discomfort, she picked up the copy of Tiger, Tiger and said, 'I guess I'll put this away before it makes anyone else freak out.'

'If you want it, just keep it,' Hasana answered softly. 'You are the author.'

Jessica froze, dumbfounded.

'I'm sorry,' Hasana said quickly. 'I just—'

'How did you know? ' Jessica interrupted, annoyed to learn that this woman had connected her to Ash Night. She had used a pen name to avoid recognition.

'I've read it, and I … recognized you as the author,' Hasana fumbled. 'You just have a look about you …'

'What look?'

'Never mind,' Hasana said, shaking her head. 'Take the book and the advice, and ignore me.'

She turned away, suddenly very busy with some papers, and Jessica left in a daze.

CHAPTER 9

Aubrey had left the store to avoid hurting someone—probably the witch.

Though he had a house on the fringe of town, he preferred to spend his time in the heart of New Mayhem, in his room behind the nightclub known as Las Noches. There he paced angrily, wondering what to do about the human called Jessica.

She didn't know that everything she wrote was true. She thought vampires were just another myth. She thought her characters were just figments of her own imagination. She had no idea what Alex was.

That wasn't quite true. He knew that Jessica had recognized him the instant she saw him. Only her human rationality had kept her from believing that Alex Remington was actually Aubrey.

Aubrey had heard of the author Ash Night through a young vampire who worked as an editor at Night's publishing company. The vampire had even given Aubrey a copy of the Dark Flame manuscript. The news of this book had quickly spread through the vampiric community, as it had when Elizabeth Charcoal had published her autobiography.

The difference was that Ash Night was not writing about herself, but about things she had no right to know. Dark Flame was Aubrey's own history, which no one but he knew in total. Yet Ash Night had written his past correctly, down to the last detail.

Aubrey didn't mind the thought of Dark Flame's being published. In his history he had almost always been stronger than those around him. However, the others who were mentioned in the manuscript came across as often weak, and in the vampiric world, there was no worse threat to one's position than an apparent weakness. Dark Flame had earned its author some dangerous enemies.

The vampire from the publishing company had not worked with Ash Night directly, and she must not have known about the author's first book. Seeing Tiger, Tiger in the store today had taken Aubrey completely by surprise. The cover made it strikingly clear whom the book was about. Despite the artist's ignorance of his subject, Aubrey had instantly recognized the portrayal of Risika. He had lived this book as well—or unlived it, as the case might be. He knew what would be printed on its pages.

Aubrey lightly touched the scar that stretched across his left shoulder, which Risika had given to him a few years ago. For the first time in nearly three thousand years he had lost a fight, and he had lost it badly. Risika could have killed him in the end. Instead, she had taken his blood and let him live. The action had opened his mind to her completely; she could now read him as easily as he could read most humans.

The sight of the book was like the thrust of a knife into his still-bleeding pride.

Aubrey had been the first of his kind to search out the author, and most of the other vampires were satisfied by the knowledge that he was dealing with the problem.

Though Jessica had requested that her true name and address remain private, Aubrey had easily pulled the information from the mind of her editor. Her town, Ramsa, New York, was only a stone's throw away from his home in New Mayhem, one of the strongest vampiric cities in the United States. Aubrey had drifted into Ramsa to see how much of a threat this Ash Night was.

What had he expected? Anything but what he found: a seventeen-year-old human who had no apparent connection to the vampire world. She did, however, have a darkness in her aura that was almost vampiric. This close to New Mayhem, Jessica's aura was strengthened by the vampires in the area. Humans reacted to it instinctively and drew away from her, as they had from Aubrey until he had started influencing their minds.

He had tried to influence Jessica. He should have been able to reach into her mind and tell her to stop writing. With any other human the task would have been easy, but with Jessica he had been blocked completely. That fact alone had fascinated him enough to refrain from killing her the first time he'd been given the chance.

Indeed, there were many things about Jessica that interested him despite his usual distaste for humans. Foremost was her unnerving lack of reaction when he had caught her eye earlier. Most humans would have become disoriented, momentarily trapped in his gaze, but Jessica had been unaffected.

Aubrey closed his eyes for a moment, taking a breath to calm himself. He stopped pacing and once again