Bitten in Two

When I final y managed to gulp myself back to reality, I said, “What about the vamp she’s with? Aren’t you worried about him at al ?”

Vayl’s voice dropped into the sexy growl that set parts of me on fire. “She wil leave him wil ingly once we have…

spoken. I am sure of it.”

Me too. “Um, Lord Brancoveanu?”

“Yes, Madame Berggia.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, how many women have you… you know… since you became a vampire?” He shrugged. “I have lost count. For a time all I knew were women, as if only they could keep me from completely destroying myself.”

I imagined Vayl rol ing in a virtual sea of naked bimbos and felt sick. “Oh.”

“I have tried many avenues of excess, Madame Berggia. None of them have given me the reward which I Berggia. None of them have given me the reward which I seek. But somehow, looking at this portrait of Jasmine, I feel she may be the key.”

“Uh.” Me? The key? More likely the nitro that blows the key to bits.

“Perhaps Madame Hafeza can confirm my suspicions.”

“Wel , there’s her shop.” I pointed to a two-story building in the middle of the block, the door of which had been left open to al ow the night breezes in. Above it hung a sign bearing the international symbol for psychic, a pentagram with the Seeing Eye at its center.

We stepped inside, the smel s of incense and dried herbs covering the scents of the street behind us. Al we could see was a single room, as broad and deep as a bus station, with light wooden shelves lined up to form three wide aisles halfway to the back. Finely woven carpets covered every inch of the floor, and the wal s were tiled, not in some typical geometric pattern, but on one side to depict a woman with flying blue hair riding a stal ion across the desert. On the other side litter bearers carried a queenly figure down a palm- lined street.

The shelves were packed with books. Smal plaques on the edges organized them into categories—if you spoke Arabic or French. I did see a few titles in English. But nothing I’d ever heard of.

Vayl whistled. “Sister Hafeza must be immensely wealthy to have col ected so many tomes in one location.” As if she’d heard her name, a woman nearly six feet tal threw open the beads that curtained off the back room and strode up behind the blue-tiled counter that held a cash register, credit card machine, matching black containers for office supplies, and a pack of tarot cards.

“You’re here!” she announced in a deep alto. I took in her heavily shaded eyelids and cheekbones, perfectly outlined lips, and long red nails. She wore an ankle-length dress in pink satin that, along with her strappy heels and curly brunette updo, screamed nineties prom. The Adam’s apple sealed the deal.

“Sister Hafeza?” I said.

Vayl pointed at her. “That is a man!”

Aw, shit.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I wanted to smack myself in the forehead. Or club Vayl in the back of his. I forced a smile, the kind only Lucil e Robinson can shine on impossible situations. “He’s sick,” I told Hafeza.

“I am not!”

I ignored him. “He thinks it’s 1777.”

“It is!”

“See?” I looked at him. “Tel me you’re not this big of a schmuck about transgender people in the twenty- first century.” I turned back to Hafeza. “Or do I misunderstand?

Are you just into the clothes or—”

“No,” she confirmed. “I was born in the wrong body.”

“There is no such thing!” Vayl bel owed.

“See there?” I pointed at my boss. “He never yel s. Or swears. But lately that’s al I get.”

Vayl stepped forward, his brows a straight line, his eyes nearly black. “I have had it with the both of you! Now, tel me how it is that you are masquerading here as a Sister of the Second Sight before I tear you limb from limb.” Sister Hafeza’s hand fluttered to her massive, wel -

constructed breasts. “You are a forceful one, aren’t you?

Wel , basical y, I went to the initiation. And Sister Lizia, that’s the Highness right now, wel , she touched me and, of course, she knew right away who I was and where I belonged. Because I am a Seer. Only”—Hafeza gestured at her large frame—“somewhat unique among women.”

“And not even Moroccan,” Vayl said bitterly.

“Nope. I’d place your accent at, um, Atlanta?” I asked.

Hafeza nodded, her broad smile letting me know how pleased she was that I’d recognized her roots. “But you didn’t come here to discuss me,” she told Vayl, laying her red-nailed hands gently on the countertop.

He stood stubbornly silent, his fists clenched at his sides.

Hafeza nodded at me, though she kept her eyes on my currently questionable prize. “I see you’ve tasted recently of your companion here,” she told Vayl.