people.”
He backed away. Every nerve in his body was prickling with the shock of her taste. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t ingested her orgasm-inducing venom.
Prophets spare me. She was delicious.
He grinned. “That wasn’t doing. That was a peace offering.”
“Huh?” Her fist clenched, as if she wanted to slug him.
“A kiss instead of more argument.”
Her eyes sized him up in a new way that brought heat to his skin. For an instant, he felt the pull of attraction between them like a physical tug, guessing that she felt it as much as he did.
The moment didn’t last long. The corners of her mouth pulled down. “Do you think a kiss will make me confess everything?”
Lore frowned, her accusation stinging all the more because it was true. “The cops want you for murder. Your sire wants you punished. I’m trying to help you. Throw me a bone here.”
She gave him a look of contempt that seared him to the quick. “You handcuffed me. Now you want to be my friend?”
“You felt that kiss as much as I did,” he growled.
“As a human, I also felt food poisoning and root canals. We can’t always pick and choose physical sensation.”
Lore growled.
“Dog spit. Great.” Wiping her lips, Talia took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of the bed again. Lore remained standing. She swayed a little, looking exhausted, but then pulled herself tall, as if mustering her dignity. “Tonight, I’ve been through an After-Christmas Blowout sale, the murder of the only person who cared for me, imprisonment, escape, and imprisonment again. Please leave me alone.”
She really did look like she might fall over. Sadly, he didn’t think kissing her again would get them any closer to a confession.
“If you answer one question.”
“What?” She blinked at him. Fatigue pulled at every line of her body. Vampires were physically resilient, but they were subject to the same emotional storms as everyone else.
“Why won’t you let me help you?”
She gave a shallow sigh. “Because you’re like every man I’ve ever met. You’re not happy unless I’m under lock and key.”
“Nice guilt trip. I can’t let you go.”
“Because you don’t trust me.” She lay down on the bed, her arm shielding her eyes from the overhead light. “I can’t trust my jailer. It’s a matter of principle.”
“Then we’re at a standoff.”
“Lock me in on your way out. I’ll look forward to an exciting evening of counting carpet lint. You should try hanging some pictures. Do you know how boring your bedroom is?”
Lore raised an eyebrow. “I’ll let that sleeping dog lie.”
A beat passed. “Oh, great. Now I have to wash my brain out with soap.”
Chapter 12
Lore set wards on the bedroom window and door, using the power over entryways that came effortlessly to the hellhounds. The wards would keep Talia in and everyone else out. He feared a door-to-door search by the police, so he set more at the front entrance, but these were designed primarily to make someone pass by. It wouldn’t do to blow up the local cops.
The downside of using magic was that other magic users could detect it. Handcuffs, while primitive, were a better choice for that reason. However, he couldn’t bring himself to put them back on Talia’s wrists. His doubts had shifted. Now he was less convinced that she was a murderer, but he was dead certain that she was in deep trouble—and had been for a long time. He’d seen that kind of grief in people’s eyes before. It didn’t come from a single tragedy. It came from circling the drain for years.
There were people who had done extraordinary things to make his life better, and for no other reason than that they could: Constance Moore, Perry Baker, Alessandro Caravelli, and Mac, the fire demon who had helped to rescue the hounds from hell. Talia needed someone to be her champion, whether she trusted him or not. How could he let her go until he knew that she would be safe? Besides, wasn’t clearing the name of an innocent woman the sort of thing a deputy sheriff was supposed to do?
The fact that he’d noticed Talia time and again in a very unsheriffly way had nothing to do with his protective instincts. Not at all. And nothing to do with the fact that the bow of her mouth drove him crazy.
Twenty minutes later, Lore stamped his feet as he pushed open the heavy oak door of the Empire Hotel restaurant lounge. A blast of heat and babbling voices swirled against the wall of frozen air outside. He took a moment, blinking the snow from his eyelashes. Christmas lights ringed the room, and pine swags adorned the walls. Frost veiled the windows, reflecting the lights in sparkles of red and green. Lore brushed the last of the melting flakes from his coat and headed into the gloom.
“Winter sucks. Can half demons get frostbite?” he asked the man behind the bar.
“You tell me,” Joe replied. “It’s coming down like crazy. You got your truck on the road?”
“Just. If this keeps up, the parking lot at the condo is going to be snowed in by morning.”
Joe put a mug of black coffee on the bar and splashed some brandy into it. Lore hitched himself onto one of the barstools, resting his feet on the gleaming brass rail of the bar. He gratefully wrapped his hands around the steaming drink, inhaling the brandy-soaked fumes.
“Snow sucks,” Lore said. “I thought it was supposed to be fun.”
“This storm is nothing,” Joe replied. “You should see the Caucasus in January.”
“Where’s that?”
“Mountains by the Black Sea. The most beautiful place in the world.”
Lore shot Joe a glance. The bartender was slicing lemons, each cut quick and exact. They looked about the same age, but Joe—Josef—was a cursed immortal, part vampire, part werebeast, although he looked like a healthy human male in his early thirties and had no problem at all with sunlight. He’d been an inmate of the Castle, escaping a few years before Lore had.
“Why did you not go back to your homeland?” Lore asked.
Joe gave him a wry smile, the same one that advertised his doomed-but-definitely-available status to the human women who came into the Empire. They lapped up his charm like starving cats would a bucket of cream. Lore always wondered what Joe lapped up in return.
The barkeeper swept the lemon slices into a metal bowl. “They have not forgotten my old mistress in Trencsen. If they figured out I’d been part of her household, I’d either become a tourist attraction or a throw rug.”
Lore had heard the stories of the Hungarian princess Joe called ecsedi Bathory Erzsebet. Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess. She’d been rumored to bathe in the blood of virgins. That was likely more hysteria than fact. She’d probably just snacked on them.
“Besides.” Joe shrugged. “I have friends here. Opportunities. I’m an entrepreneur now.”
Lore followed Joe’s gaze around the lounge. The place was filled with dark paneling and upholstery. The heavily carved bar ran the length of one wall, the elaborate mirrored cabinetry behind it a masterpiece of craftsmanship. Lore knew every inch of that antique oak shelving. He’d restored it himself.
“Business must be good,” Lore said. “Only a few tables are empty.”
“I’m open. The snowstorm’s closed a lot of places.” Joe refilled Lore’s coffee. “What brings you here?”
“I’m meeting someone.” He’d made some phone calls on the way over. By human standards, it was an odd hour for an appointment, but some people were only available in the middle of the night.
“Better grab a table, then.”
Joe turned away to serve a couple of werebears that had lumbered in for a beer. Lore slipped off the stool
