In a flash, Néomi twisted round, sweeping her hair over her face as she dissipated. Reemerging on the landing, she gazed down at him.
Conrad continued to stare at the spot where she'd stood, blinking and easing his struggles as if dumbfounded.
Had he... had he possibly seen her?
No one ever had before. Ever. She'd been so uniformly ignored for so long that she'd begun to wonder if she truly existed.
Up close, she'd been able to see that the whites of his eyes were... red. She'd thought he'd been injured, with burst blood vessels shooting across, but in fact, they were wholly glazed with red.
What were these beings? Could they truly be... vampires? Even in light of what she'd become, she still struggled to believe in anything supernatural.
With a shake of his head, Conrad frenziedly renewed his flight for the door, gaining inches, even as the three wrestled with him.
'I didn't want to have to do this, Conrad!' Nikolai said, digging into his jacket pocket. As the others pinned Conrad, he bit the end off what appeared to be a syringe and injected its contents into Conrad's arm.
Whatever it was slowed him, making him blink his red eyes again and again.
'What did you give him?' Sebastian asked.
'It's a concoction from the witches—part medical, part mystickal. It should knock him out.'
For how long would it knock Conrad out? How long were they expecting him to stay here? To spit across her floor and roar within her halls? She'd be damned if she allowed another of Louis's ilk to taint her home once more! This Conrad was an animal. He should be put down. Or at the very least, put out.
She'd show these trespassers power like they'd never seen, sweeping them into the yard like trash! She'd toss them by their feet all the way to the bayou! Néomi would demonstrate what happened when a ghost went poltergeist—
'Where... is she?' Conrad grated between heaving breaths.
Néomi froze. He couldn't be talking about her, couldn't have seen her.
'Who, Conrad?' Nikolai demanded.
Just before the shot knocked him unconscious, he rasped, 'Female... beautiful.'
3
Dawn had come and gone, and still Néomi was reeling. Because apparently Elancourt was filled to the rafters with real vampires.
Any lingering doubt had evaporated when she'd seen the brothers vanish and reappear as they'd gone about repairing parts of the house.
And this wasn't even the most astonishing development of the night. When Conrad had said, 'Female... beautiful,' had he possibly been talking about her?
Now she could only wait impatiently for him to regain consciousness so she could find out.
He remained as the brothers had left him last night—lying on the new mattress they'd brought in for him, with his wrists chained together behind him, his muddy boots and the ankle restraints removed. His ripped clothing had dried, the material stiff with dirt. The angry red gashes on his chest had healed within mere hours.
She floated in a sitting position above the foot of the bed wondering how much longer he would be out. She'd thought all vampires would be comatose during the day, but his brothers were in and out downstairs, busily teleporting goods into the manor.
This waiting was unbearable. Because he possibly... saw me. Yes, no one ever had before, and, yes, this development was based solely on the idea that he'd deemed her beautiful. Maybe if he wasn't one to quibble about pink cheeks and the appearance of blooming health... ?
Néomi didn't necessarily seek an acknowledgment of her presence. She could float a sheet spray- painted with 'Bonjour! from le spectre!' if she wanted bad attention, or a possible exorcism. No, she wanted to be seen. She yearned to converse.
The possibility of this meant that all her grand plans to evict them had evaporated, her rancor over the damage to Elancourt temporarily soothed. Now she wanted to keep them close—especially Conrad.
Curiosity ruled her. Why after eighty years of sporadic tenants had the blood-spitting vampire been able to see her? Why not his brothers? When they'd been chaining up Conrad for the day, she'd waved her hands, yelling as loud as she could. She'd even thrown herself through their torsos, to no effect.
Was Conrad able to see her because he alone had red eyes?
She stood to float from one peeling blue wall to the other. The brothers had unerringly chosen for Conrad the Blue Room, the most masculine of all the guest rooms. The heavy curtains were a deep navy, and the spare pieces of furniture—the bedstead, the nightstand, and a high-backed chair by the fireplace—were dark and stout.
Though she'd expected them to sleep in coffins, they'd put Conrad in the made-up bed. She'd also believed that even indirect sun would burn them, but the room was aglow with enough pallid sunlight to illuminate the dust motes. And when the curtains wavered from a draft in the house, light would encroach all the way up to his feet.
He turned over on his back then, reminding her how massive he was, his broad shoulders seeming to span the bed, his feet hanging over the end. He must be over six and a half feet tall.
She floated above him, tilting her head as she peered down. He looked to be in his early thirties, but it was difficult to tell with the mud and blood covering his face. With a nervous swallow, she concentrated and used telekinesis to draw back his upper lip, jabbing his nose before she got it right.
She saw a slash of white teeth gleaming against his dirty face and... unmistakable fangs. Just like in the novels she'd read long ago. Just like in the vampire movies the last young couple had loved to watch.
How had these men become vampires? Were they turned? Or born that way?
At that moment a loud bang sounded from downstairs. Though she dearly wanted to investigate what they were doing to her house, she feared Conrad would wake in her absence.
The brothers had already boarded many of the windows that didn't have heavy curtains, and had brought in folding chairs, mattresses, and sheets—even a modern refrigerator. The plumbing had been repaired in the master bathroom. Earlier, electricity had surged to life so abruptly that the lightbulb and fixture overhead had popped and shattered, raining glass.
She'd floated the shards off the prisoner, a good move because he now began to twist in the tangled sheets.
When his ripped shirt rode up a few inches, she noticed a thin scar beginning just above the waistline of his loose pants. How long was it? She waved her hand to tug the shirt farther up his torso. The scar continued. Nibbling her lip, she painstakingly manipulated the buttons until she could unfasten them all and spread the sides wide.
The scar nearly reached up to his heart. It appeared as if a razor-sharp blade had entered at his stomach and slashed upward.
When she could drag her gaze from the mark, she surveyed his bared chest. It was broad and generously packed with muscle. With his hands behind his back, those rippling muscles seemed to flex even at rest. His entire torso looked hard as rock, with not a spare ounce on him.
She wondered what his skin would feel like. She would never know... .
His pants waist sat so low that she could see the line of crisp, black hair descending from his navel. That dusky trail taunted her to ease his pants lower, but she resisted—barely.
The men Néomi had been attracted to in the past had been older and handsome in a soft, cultured way. In contrast, this male was all hardness and sharp edges.
So why did she find his battle-scarred body so attractive?
'Oh, wake up, Conrad,' she said with difficulty. Speaking was an arduous undertaking for her—she often felt like she was trying to shove elephant-sized sounds through a pinhole. To her, the words came out echoing and extended. 'Just... wake up.' She wanted to jump on the bed or scream in his ear. If she'd had a bucket of water—
