“Yeah.” Boaz glanced up from the map. “How did you know?”
“That’s the last hundred years of my life.” She swallowed hard. “That’s the path I took that led me here.”
Concern twisting my gut, I stroked her back. “Who would have followed you all this way?”
“Sydney Delacorte.” A shudder rippled through her shoulders. “I thought he was dead.”
The name was unfamiliar, and that troubled me. “Who is that?”
“The man who had me resuscitated.” She wet her lips. “My first master.”
The same master she had refused to talk about, even to me, her best friend.
“Your master?” Parker scowled at her. “Why didn’t you mention this connection sooner?”
“She didn’t know,” I defended her. “I told her Boaz was working the case here because they mirrored an ongoing investigation in Savannah. I found out later the killer had come down from Maine, but I didn’t tell Cass. Savannah is hours away. How could she have put together this had anything to do with her?”
“Ari.” Pinkish tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “I should have suspected when they took Ari.”
Of course, she skipped right to blaming herself instead of the person responsible.
“You had no connections to the other victims,” I reminded her. “Other than them being vampires too.”
A town this small, of course they all knew one another, but that didn’t make them buddies.
“We need all the information you can give us,” Boaz said gently. “Starting with a description.”
“Yeah.” She shook it off. “Of course.” She cloaked herself in aloofness. “I’ll tell you everything.”
The details she relayed made it clear why he had been able to move around undetected.
Brown hair. Brown eyes. Five foot six. No tattoos, no birthmarks, no freckles, no moles.
The picture she painted of him was startlingly dull, but he had proven he excelled in one area.
Too bad, according to her, he had also burnt to a crisp when she took her revenge.
“I’ll call this in to Chambers.” Boaz pulled out his phone. “He can verify whether Delacorte is still around. There would be records of a fire that took out a master vampire. The Undead Coalition is a stickler about that kind of thing. They track their new masters closely to ensure they’re not growing their clans more quickly than they can control.”
Abernathy, who had moved closer to offer her comfort, asked, “Why would he be after you?”
“Like I said, he footed the bill.” Her hands flexed at her sides. “He thought that meant he owned me.”
I got a bad feeling where this was headed, but Boaz beat me to asking the question, and I was grateful.
“He had you resuscitated against your will,” Boaz surmised at the hitch in her voice.
“Yes,” she murmured, a bare whisper. “He was a customer of mine. He thought I loved him, but it was the act, you know? A good whore knows how to keep them coming back, and I was one of the best.”
“That’s all we need to know.” I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You don’t have to dig deeper.”
“I should have told you.” She shut her eyes. “He…beat me.” Her voice trembled. “He paid extra, so I didn’t get much say. The boss drew hard lines, she didn’t want me out of work, and he never crossed them. Until that night.” She drew in a long breath. “He went crazy, spouting all this nonsense about how we were going to be together forever. He was so riled up, he got carried away and almost killed me. There was blood everywhere. I begged for a physician, but he laughed and said it was all part of the plan.” She shook her head. “When I woke, I was a vampire, and he was my master.”
“Cass.” I brought her into my arms, and she curled around me, sobbing. “I’m so sorry.”
“One night I pumped a donor full of opium. Delacorte drained him and passed out.” Her fingers dug into me. “I evacuated the house, set it on fire, and it burned down around him.” She exhaled. “Or so I thought. Until tonight.”
Parker rubbed his jaw. “Were there any witnesses?”
“None.” Cass unwound from me. “We were a clan of two. It was always only him and me.”
How awful that must have been, to be the sole focus of his possessive fervor.
“Why would he wait so long to come after you?” Boaz tugged on his ear. “You said it’s been a century?”
“Thereabouts.”
“The killings started six months ago.” Abernathy drummed his fingers on the map. “That doesn’t line up for me.”
“Did anything change for you six months ago, Cass?” Honey sipped her tea. “Any anniversaries? Things like that?”
“No.” She let me help her into a chair. “Even if there was, why wait a century to act?”
“Can you think of anyone else who might have wanted revenge for his death? Any common enemies? Anything at all to help us narrow things down?” Parker frowned. “We’re missing something here.”
“I had a girlfriend, a real one, not a client, back when I was human.” She dropped her face into her hands. “She worked at the same brothel as me. When he found out, he went ballistic. He bought her one night and paid extra to take her home with him.” Her bottom lip trembled. “I begged Madame not to let her go, but she said if I couldn’t beat his price for the night, I had to allow it.”
Most vampires spent a good bit of their lives accumulating wealth. I doubted this guy was any different. If Cass had bought her girlfriend for the night, it would have likely meant the difference in whether or not she ate that week. While he had a vampire’s resources to return until he bankrupted her.
“The sheriff came by the next morning at dawn.” More pink tears fell. “They found her swinging from the limb of an oak that wrapped around another until they merged. It overlooked a lake.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “If it’s
