Once Burned

I suddenly felt very underdressed in my brown slacks and beige turtleneck. Why hadn’t I worn the indigo dress instead, and would it have killed me to put on some makeup?

Vlad’s lips twitched. It occurred to me that during my admiring evaluation, I’d forgotten to keep blasting a song in my mind. I remedied my mistake, but the lyrics to “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” seemed too close to home at the mo-ment.

“Culture Club?” Now his mouth curled downward. “And you accuse me of practicing cruel and unusual punishment.”

“That’s not funny,” I muttered, letting a swath of black hair fall over the scarred part of my face. It was more habit than self-consciousness, but when his gaze followed the movement, his mocking frown vanished.

“Every part of you is beautiful, Leila. One day, you’ll come to believe that.”

I looked away, cursing the tightening in my chest at the words and his low, resonant tone. Compliments didn’t change what he’d done. That was what I really had to focus on.

Again, I’d stopped masking my thoughts, but Vlad didn’t comment. He pulled out a long, flat box from inside his coat.

“For you.”

I stared at it without reaching out. It looked like a jewelry box, and from its size, something big was inside. Was he one of those men who thought any awful deed could be overlooked if he forked over something sparkly?

My chin rose. “If I accept this, then it’ll feel like I’m saying everything is okay between us, and it isn’t. I shouldn’t have hit you, so I’m wrong, too, but jewelry won’t change . . . oh!”

Vlad had flipped open the box during my speech. What it contained made me wish I could stuff back my words with a pitchfork. Inside was a pair of long black gloves, one slightly thicker than the other. I touched them, blinking in amazement. Specialized rubber from the feel of it, but the outside looked like leather, and they were no bigger than normal gloves.

“The material is thin, but I’m assured that the gloves can repel up to twelve thousand volts,” Vlad stated. The faintest hint of wickedness colored his tone as he went on. “They don’t, however, sparkle.”

Somebody, please kill me now.

I was saved from more embarrassment over my aggrandizing declaration when the front door opened and a gust of cold air blew in. Shrapnel bowed first to Vlad and then to me as he held the door open for the people trailing behind him.

“Look at this huge fucking place!” a familiar voice exclaimed. My sister, Gretchen, was the opposite of demure.

I snatched the gloves and put the right one on. Vlad tucked the box back in his jacket and slid the left one on for me since the thicker material made it more awkward. Still, it was a thousand times less bulky than the industrial glove Marty had gotten me from a Florida Power & Light employee. No one would look twice at these while the other led to constant questions.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

His hands lingered on mine, their heat apparent even through the material. “You’re welcome.”

“Leila!”

My sister’s voice yanked my attention back to Gretchen. She managed to look around in awe while also marching forward at an angry clip. Her straight black hair was shorter than the last time I’d seen her, but even though she’d been on a plane for over a dozen hours, her makeup was perfect as usual, accenting pretty features, full lips, and an upturned nose. Blue eyes a few shades darker than mine glared at me.

“What kind of cluster fuck have you gotten us into now?” she demanded.

“Hello to you, too, Gretchen,” I said dryly.

Then my voice caught as I saw the man behind her. Hugh Dalton’s hair had more salt than pepper now, but he still wore it cropped close to his head in the same style as when he’d been a lieutenant colonel. His blue-gray eyes took in Vlad’s house with watchfulness versus admiration, and though he used a cane, his air of authority and tempered toughness remained the same.

I swallowed the lump that rocketed up my throat. “Hi, Dad.”

I am the world’s WORST liar, I thought an hour later. I’d tried to stall by urging my family to go to their rooms to unpack, but Gretchen was having none of that, and with less dramatics, neither was my father.

Vlad wasn’t helping me come up with a cover story, either. No, he’d introduced himself as Vladislav Basarab without a moment’s pause, though the significance of that name went over my family’s heads. Shrapnel had offered them little explanation during his scoop-and-run procurement, so Vlad was leaving it up to me to tell my family a big whopping lie, or the truth.

I went with a big whopping lie, of course.

“You witnessed a mob murder and now you’re in the Romanian witness protection program?” My father cast a pointed look around at the magnificent, two-story library. “Seems a lot different than the American version.”

Wait until he saw the rest of the house. “Well, Romania is broken into communes and Vlad is um, like a mayor of several of them. Since I’m hiding from members of the European Mafia, the Romanian”—were they called something other than police here?—“authorities thought his house would be the safest place for me until, uh, they catch the bad guys,” I finished lamely.

Vlad glanced away, but not before I saw his mouth twitch. Okay, it sounded like the load of bull it was, but I’d thought he would come up with something to tell them! Or at least give me more than a two-minute warning to make up a story myself.

Maybe he would’ve warned you earlier if you hadn’t avoided him all day, an insidious little voice taunted.

Up yours, I snapped back at it.

Vlad coughed, something that didn’t seem unusual to my father or sister, but made me narrow my gaze. Vampires didn’t cough. Was he muffling a laugh?

“I’m sure Vlad can go into more detail if you have questions,” I added in a frosty tone.

The grin he flashed me made me sure about the muffled laugh. “No, you’re doing a splendid job.”

My father frowned, adding to the new lines in his face that I didn’t remember from the last time I’d seen him.

“How long are Gretchen and I expected to stay sequestered with you?” he asked with his usual directness.

The million-dollar question. I took a deep breath. “We’re not sure. Maybe a couple weeks. Maybe a few months.”

My sister rose to her full five feet four inches. “You can’t expect me to put my life on hold that long!” she screeched. “I have a job, friends, plans—”

“Lower your voice,” my father said tersely.

I’d never been able to get Gretchen to quiet down when she went on a verbal rampage, but decades of command hung in that single sentence. She stopped talking, yet the glare she shot me promised there was more where that came from.

My father turned his attention back to me. “What if we elect not to be sequestered with you? What then?”

“You’ll be captured, tortured, and eventually killed by the people after your daughter,” Vlad replied in a casual tone.

My mouth fell open at his bluntness. Gretchen let out a shocked gasp. Vlad looked at me and shrugged as if to say, You wanted me to take over.

My father gazed at Vlad with open calculation. I’d seen that hard stare cower countless people, but of course, it had no effect on Vlad. He stared back, that pleasant half smile never leaving his face.

“I still have top-level connections,” my father stated. “Leila can be protected back in her own country.”

Vlad’s brow arched. “With her abilities? You know better than to expose her to your government or military. She’d never see the outside of a covert research facility again.”

His derision when he said “research” was unmistakable. A muscle ticked in my father’s jaw.

“So you know what she can do?”