“It’s the dress and the makeup.” Pleasure glowed briefly in her eyes before she turned away. “It should get us into the party.” She offered him a jacket made of gleaming black leather and too many zippers. “I found this in his trunk. It should fit.”
He didn’t want any other eyes on her but his. “Forget this Stryker. We can be in Paradise in an hour. Let me take you there.”
“I want to.” And she did, he could hear it in her voice. “I think if it was just you and me, I would. But we have to find these emeralds. Not for Tremayne, and not for the council. We’ve got to do it for the right reasons. To keep everyone safe.”
“Very well. We will talk to Stryker together. If what he knows leads us to the gems, we will decide then what to do with them.” He stepped closer. “But when this quest is finished, Christian, I am taking you away with me.”
“You don’t take a tresora away with you,” Chris said slowly. “I know, because I’ve memorized all the rules. You do something like that with a girlfriend, or a lover, or a sygkenis.”
“I am not your master, and you are not my servant,” Jamys said quietly. “We were friends, and we always will be, but now I want more. I want you as my woman, and my lover. I want to give you my heart, Christian. I want yours to be mine.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” Her mouth tightened. “It’ll change everything between us.”
“Will it?” He touched her cheek. “We have slept in the same bed. We have kissed, and touched, and given pleasure to each other. Are we not lovers now?”
“Don’t play with me, Jamys,” she whispered. “This isn’t my job we’re talking about. I’ve only got one heart, and it’s already been broken a bunch of times.”
“I will never hurt you.” He folded her into his arms. “You can trust me.”
She trembled, her face hot against his neck, and then she nodded. “All right.”
Tall, wide gates protected the entrance to Sundown Estates, but as Jamys reached for the door handle to get out and open them, Christian retracted the window and pressed some numbers on a small keypad.
“I got the code from an old friend,” she said as the gate swung inward and she drove through to a small shack. “I might need your help with this guy.”
The uniformed guard had a gun on his belt and a clipboard in his hand, and bent over to give them an unfriendly look. “Help you, ma’am?”
“We’re here to have anonymous sex with a lot of people,” Christian told him. “Can you point us in the direction to the latest orgy?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you have the wrong place.” The guard straightened as Jamys got out of the car, and looked over the roof at him. “Sir, I have to ask you to get back in the vehicle.”
“Yes, of course.” He walked around the car. “I merely wish to change places with my lady friend. She is a terrible driver.” He held out his hand. “Enjoy the remainder of your evening.”
The guard hesitated before taking his hand. The moment he did he went still.
“You wish to tell me where Stryker is,” Jamys said.
“Seven-five-one Albatross Avenue.” The guard smiled at Christian. “Your lady sure is pretty.”
“She is beautiful,” Jamys corrected. “You want to return to your station and forget about this conversation.” So that Christian couldn’t hear, he added one last mental command. When you see our car drive out of the complex, you will telephone the police and report to them Stryker and his activities here.
“Sure.” The guard wandered back into his shack.
Expensive cars had been packed into a vacant lot beside the mock-plantation home at the end of Albatross Avenue. A bored-looking man dressed in formal wear didn’t remove the white buds blocking his ear canals as he gestured at a spot by the curb.
Christian turned off the motor and looked at the draped windows of the house. “Did they have orgies back in the Dark Ages?”
“They have them in every age,” he assured her. “I have seen mortals engage in such acts, but I have never taken part myself. The Kyn prefer privacy.”
“One more reason to love you guys.” She got out of the car.
The man who answered the doorbell wore a black spandex bodysuit and a red-lined black cape, and flashed pointed canine veneers at Chris. “Welcome to the Dark Side. May I see your invitations?”
“We’re just here for the cookies.” Chris pushed past him.
When the doorman started after her, Jamys clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You wish to be silent, go home, and never again dress like this or work for Stryker.”
The man’s mouth clamped shut as he nodded and walked out.
Jamys joined Chris, who was looking around the room. The home’s furnishings were being used by several dozen mortals in various stages of dress and gathered in loose groups. A third were engaged in physical intercourse; the remainder were watching the couplings, drinking, talking, and laughing. Waiters, nude but for small black aprons tied around their waists, circulated with trays of champagne, liquor, appetizers, and baskets filled with small shiny packets. Nude females and males in the center of each group were in the process of climbing down from black-painted platforms.
“He’s over there.” Chris nodded to a well-dressed, indolent-looking male being attended to by a group of adoring young women.
He caught her arm. “I will speak to him.”
“I need to do this, for me. Please?” When he nodded, she squared her shoulders, gripped his hand, and started toward Stryker.
The man seemed wholly preoccupied with the girls competing to use their mouths on his genitals, but as soon as he glanced up at Chris, he smiled and began pushing their heads away.
“Patience, my darlings,” he chided when they began to plead with him. “It seems for me Christmas has come early this year. You are looking exquisite, Tian.”
Christian inspected the pouting faces around him. “You’re looking at about twenty years for statutory rape.”
“I’ll have to advise the district attorney. Perhaps I’ll wait until he’s finished sodomizing the circuit court judge over there.” Stryker’s eyes shifted, and he fastened the front of his trousers. “Who is your delicious-looking friend, and does he have an open mind?”
“Don’t even go there.” Christian eyed the girl closest to her. “Where did you get this bunch? The beaches, or the bus station?”
“These are courtesy of a local church.” He picked up a martini glass from a side table and sipped from it.
Jamys frowned. “You take these children from a place of worship?”
“No, dear boy. Every Saturday the church feeds the homeless in a park not far from here.” Stryker plucked the olive from his glass and fed it to one of the girls. “I find the selection often overwhelming.”
“Stryker likes to hire runaways,” Chris said, her voice flat. “He knows how desperate they are. The younger the better.”
The mortal raised his martini glass. “You told me you were twenty-one, my darling. How was I to know you were such an accomplished underage liar?”
Chris faced Jamys. “I was wrong. We need to get out of here before I jump across that table and yank his tonsils out through his nostrils.”
Jamys glanced back at the smirking mortal before he drew her out of Stryker’s hearing range. “I will not permit him to speak to you like this and live. But if I kill him, the information he has dies with him. I will have to get closer to him and use l’attrait to compel him to talk.”
“Then I’d have to spend the rest of the night spraying you down with Lysol.” She took a deep breath. “Look, I know the jerk, and I can handle him. Trust me.” She turned around and went back to the table. “Stryker, we’re here about the old journals you sold to Professor Charles Gifford.”
“Did I? Let me recall.” Stryker sat back and slowly fondled the girl beside him as he pretended to think. “You mean Father Bartley’s earnest but largely boring chronicles of life among the wild native islanders?”
“Yes. We want to know who sold them to you,” Chris said.
“A lovely, rather dangerous man who collects precious things,” Stryker said. “He had the oddest obsession with emeralds, and had amassed a collection of them that was simply breathtaking. I recall three in particular that he had in his safe. He claimed they were cursed and had to keep them locked up.”
Jamys exchanged a look with Chris. “When did you see this?”
“I can’t remember the exact date. Some years ago.” Stryker eyed Christian. “You know, I think it was just after you left me, my darling.”
“Give us his name and we will leave.”
“But you’ve only just arrived.” Stryker rose, displacing his adoring acolytes as he approached Chris. When Jamys stepped in front of her, he halted. “Your boy plays bodyguard. How charming.” He inspected Jamys from head to toe and back again. “How does he look without the clothes?”
“Sorry,” Chris told him. “You’ll just have to dream.”
Jamys’s attention strayed to two men in dark suits who had entered the house and were moving quickly in their direction. Both fit the description of the men who had pursued Christian from the blood bank in Miami. “Tresori. We should go.”
She followed the direction of his gaze. “Damn it.”
“Not to worry, my darlings.” Stryker made a deceptively lazy gesture, and four men converged on the pair, discreetly disarming them before escorting them over to Stryker.
“We are Interpol agents,” one of the tresori said with convincing authority. “This man and woman are wanted for murder. You will put them in our custody.”
Stryker smiled. “Dear man, Interpol agents do not personally arrest suspects. They investigate, they coordinate, and then they issue warrants and arrange for local authorities to do the dirty work for them. I suggest the next time you decide to impersonate a law enforcement agent that you first read up on their procedural methods.”
