'He also said he suspects you played with your victims before you killed them.'
'I did only what I was paid to do.'
'Did you get paid to behead people while you drank them to death?'
He narrowed his eyes. 'Drinking another gives you his memories. Drinking another as you kill him also gives you much of his strength, even some of his mystickal abilities. And beheading is one of the only ways to slay an immortal.'
'Have you killed women and children before? Or humans?'
'Why would I bother to?' He seemed genuinely perplexed.
Somewhat reassured by his answer, she asked, 'How did you become a vampire?'
His face was drawn with anger. 'Nikolai decided to drip his tainted blood down my throat just before I died.'
'He didn't have to bite you?'
'That's only in the movies,' Conrad said. 'Blood is the agent of the transformation, and death is the catalyst. It's this way for any species to be turned in the Lore.'
'It's that easy to become a vampire?'
'Easy? It doesn't always work. And if it doesn't, you die.'
'Who did it to them?'
'Kristoff, a natural-born vampire—and someone I have no intention of speaking about. Ask something else.'
'Very well. Can you still eat food?'
'Yes, but I have as much interest in eating food as you would have in drinking blood.' When her expression screwed up with distaste, he said, 'Exactly. Though I do enjoy a good whiskey.'
So had she. She had a stash of it in her studio. 'What about your teleportation, your tracing? How far can you go?'
'We can cross the world—not just the living room of a haunted manor.' She pursed her lips at that. 'But we can only travel to places we've previously been or that we can see.'
'And the Accession?'
'Phenomenon in the Lore, every five centuries or so. Families get seeded and immortals get sowed. Fights break out, and factions war. Lots of immortals get to die.'
Néomi had heard these uncanny men speak of the Lore, as if it was a separate sphere of beings. She'd heard them talk about Valkyrie, witches, ghouls, and the 'noble fey.' There were werewolves and wraiths—and apparently all these beings... interacted.
'Are mermaids real?' she asked.
'Yes.'
She gave a wide-eyed gasp, unable to hide her excitement. 'Have you seen one? Do they have big tails? With scales? And what about Nessie? Is she real? Does she bite, and is she actually a Neddie—'
'How old were you when you died, ghost?' he interrupted with a patronizing mien. 'Did you reach any level of maturity?'
She straightened her shoulders. 'I was twenty-six.'
Brows drawn, he murmured, 'How did you die so young?'
How to answer? She couldn't very well admit that she'd been murdered without going into details. And the details made her sound weak. But then, being murdered was the ultimate weakness, wasn't it? Only someone who'd succumbed could understand.
This male would understand, her mind whispered. He would comprehend like no other the pain she'd endured. 'I was murdered,' she eventually answered.
'How?'
'What do you suppose?'
'A jealous wife shot her husband's pretty mistress.'
'You think me pretty?' When he gave her an impatient look, as if they were retreading old ground, she felt a flush of pleasure. 'I was never with a married man.'
'A spurned lover pushed you down a flight of stairs.'
'Why do you assume it was a crime of passion?' she asked.
'A feeling.'
'Then your feeling's right. My ex-fiancé... stabbed me in the heart.' Saying the words out loud sent chills racing through her. 'He did it here. And I woke up trapped on the property, unable to leave, unable to feel.'
The vampire's red eyes... softened. His voice a rasp, he asked, 'Why would he do that to you?'
'He couldn't accept it when I broke it off with him.' Louis had told her again and again that he would rather die than live without her, that nothing could make him let her go. 'He turned the blade on himself right after me.'
Conrad tensed, getting that violent expression again. 'Is he here?'
'No. I don't know why I'm here and he's not, but it's the one thing I'm thankful for.'
He relaxed marginally. 'When did it happen?'
'The twenty-fourth of August, nineteen twenty-seven. On the night of my party celebrating my move into Elancourt. I'd just finished restoring it.' The rundown estate had called to her very soul. She'd lovingly overseen every tiny detail of its restoration, slowly bringing the manor and gardens back to life.
She'd had no idea it would be her eternal home... .
'Enough about him,' she said, shaking off the pall of Louis. Now that she was here with Conrad, she was determined to enjoy this conversation.
The second-ever conversation of her afterlife.
'Why do you think you became a ghost?' he asked.
'I was hoping one of you might know.'
'I haven't heard the subject talked about much in the Lore—ghosts are a human phenomenon—but I understand your kind is very rare. In all my years, I've never seen one before you.'
'Oh.' She hadn't expected him to impart the secrets to all ghostly life, but a tad more trivia might have been nice.
'Are you... buried at Elancourt?'
'How strange that question sounds, non? Well, unless something went horribly wrong, I was buried in the city, in the old French Society's aboveground tomb.' Néomi's... remains were in a coffin amidst that towering vault. There were at least thirty other bodies within. 'But then, crypt robbers might have stolen my body for voodoo rituals.'
He frowned at her. 'Are you jesting about this?'
'Tell me, Conrad, what's the etiquette when speaking of one's own dead body? No jesting about one's bones? Am I gauche?'
He gave her a look that said he would never understand her, and might not bother trying to. 'How did you come by this property?'
'I bought it. All by my female self.'
'And how would you afford it?' His tone was tinged with disbelief.
Typical. 'I worked,' she said, unable to disguise her satisfaction. 'I was a ballerina.'
'A ballerina. And now a ghost.'
'A warlord and now a vampire.' She couldn't help but chuckle at the disparity. 'What a pair we make.'
He studied her. 'Your laughter... seems out of place.'
'Why?'
'Aren't ghosts supposed to be steeped in misery?'
'Right now, I'm enjoying talking to you—so I'm happy. I have plenty of time to be unhappy later.'
'Are you usually unhappy?' he asked.
'It's not my nature to be, but my present circumstances are hardly ideal.'
'Then we have that in common. Néomi, when my brothers return, I want you to steal a key to my chains.'
