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I should be ashamed. More than mortified at where I’ve let my mind wander and how it makes me feel, especially right in my center.
But this Romanian girl is not ashamed, not even in the slightest…
Chapter 3
Botosoni
I tug on the collar of my jacket and pull on the sleeves of my black sweater as I lower myself into my black sports car. There’s still a little time to talk to a few more people before Descallia and the rest of the crew arrive. I should transport, but keeping up appearances of assimilation in the human world is important to Overmaster Descallia. And it’s not like I really mind. I rev the powerful engine and head out into the barely dusk evening, giving a wave to the guardsman who allows me through before closing the gates.
After learning Sheba and his packs of shifters were the ones responsible for hiding the rogue vampires all this time, talking to every lord who works for me in the region, and trying to get as much information as possible with no luck, only to come home and learn that the mangy shifters dared come near my estate last night and then disappeared without a trace, sleep today was next to impossible.
After hours of tossing and turning, a relentless swim in the pool in the lower level, a brutal workout with the weights, and a hearty meal, my anger has definitely not subsided. Instead, it continues to grow into a wrath that the rogues will not want to deal with when we finally come face to face.
If those bastard shifters and rogues think they can come into my territory and throw their weight around, they’ve got another think coming. I will bury the fuckers in the ground. The stakes hanging from my waist belt ensure that I am prepared for that very thing if the opportunity should present itself, because whether Overmaster Descallia wants to admit it or not, we’ve been duped by none other than a sheisty shifter leader who we thought was our friend.
Fucking Sheba.
We may have been fooled, but fuck if we are soft. I don’t blame Descallia for trusting Sheba. We were all taken in by the global leader of the packs. We all believed he was trying to keep the peace between all the factions of the underworld. But that doesn’t mean we won’t tear the night apart in our pursuit of him and the rogue bastards who threaten our world and everything that we hold dear.
All the small pieces of information gathered from the Lords, in themselves inconsequential, and nothing I blame them for not alerting me to before. But compiled, it confirms exactly what we thought. Sheba and the rogues have to be heading deeper into the forest and the Carpathian Mountain range, where vampires, werewolves, and witches have often hid from various plights in the past. But Descallia’s comments about the bastards hiding right in plain sight continues to wrestle in my mind.
There is no hiding from me, no matter where they are. When we find Sheba, we will right this wrong. I will avenge my brother’s death at the hands of the mangy shifters at the very same time. I pull up to the curb, right outside the small café from last night, the image of who I’m looking for burned into the front of my mind. If I had known what I know now, last night, it would have saved time and a trip back into town, but seeing the dark-haired beauty will not be a hardship.
Those mesmerizing chocolate eyes, almost as dark as my own but hers with glints of gold flashing in the light, her long, dark wavy hair falling to her waist in smooth ringlets. No, I won’t mind putting my eyes on the girl who sat quietly ogling me as I got a cup of coffee last night at all.
I open the door to the café and look toward the back left corner where she was yesterday, but she’s not there yet. I’ve never been one to believe in the power of psychics, the reading of your future through Tarot Cards, palms, and the like, but all the lords tell me the same thing. Catina will have the answers if you let her read for you. So here I am hunting down one of the fortune telling travelers who makes her living reading palms in a coffee shop.
I blow out a breath, turning quickly to head to the coffee counter. Hot coffee splashes across the front of my jacket and burns my hands. The wide-eyed woman I’ve come to see looks up at me, her bright red outlined lips wide, her mouth agape with surprise and more than a little fear. “I’m so very sorry. I didn’t see you. I was just going to put some of my own sweetener into the coffee when I got back to the table, so I didn’t have the lid on. Here, I have napkins; let me help,” she says, as the pounding of her heart beats a million miles a minute.
I grab her hand. “Stop, there’s no time for this. I’ve got it,” I tell her, taking the napkins from her hand and grabbing another handful from the ledge in the middle of the shop filled with creamers, sweeteners, stir sticks and napkins. I quickly sop up the rest of the liquid from my jacket. I glance down and she’s soaked; the navy sweater that she wears has been fully saturated by the coffee. “Did you get burned?”
Catina looks down at herself as though only now realizing that the majority of her coffee splashed back on her and not on me. “No, I’m fine.” She grabs the napkins and soaks the coffee up while I struggle with the unfamiliar feeling of wanting to do it myself, to make sure her skin is not burnt underneath the faded and pilled sweater she wears.
Her heart begins to beat faster, and her eyes grow wide as she probably begins to recognize just who I am.
I wait, giving her a moment. Of course, then the conversation will change. It will be my fault that she got splashed with the coffee; her skin was burnt from my negligence and any other thing she can conjure up that will add up to a nice little payday for her. Of course, I’ll pay whatever the attorney thinks is her due; far be it from me to squabble over a few dollars that mean nothing to me. So I wait to see what she has to say, but she doesn’t say a word.
And I don’t have all day. There are things that I need from this woman who stands looking at me like a doe caught in a pair of headlights while sneaking across the highway in the middle of the night. “I’m Master Botosoni. I’m told you can read fortunes, see the future, and have the power of all kinds of sight. I want you to help me find someone, look into the future, do whatever it is that you do, but it has to be quick, now.”
Catina lifts her eyes, the long, lush lashes don’t bat at me with caked-on mascara but instead flutter naturally with the movement. They look so soft and long that I have a sudden desire to reach out and stroke them with my touch. “You want my help?” she asks.
I laugh. Here it is. I knew it wouldn’t take long. Now will come the injured routine, ‘I can help you, but it’s going to cost you more than I charge for a hundred clients because you can afford it.” She places the cup on the edge of the counter and rummages in her bag. I grab it to toss it in the garbage, but her hand wraps around my own. “Please don’t. There’s a little left,” she says softly.
My throat constricts, swallowing over a lump of guilt watching as she pulls a small handwritten card from the bottom of her clean but obviously old and outdated bag. I don’t think she doesn’t want me to toss the small little bit of coffee left because she’s made it the perfect color. I think that’s all she can afford. She gestures to the back corner with a dainty hand devoid of the usual nail color or jewelry, but yet the softest looking hands that I’ve ever seen. “I’m Catina. I usually set up in the back. Come with me, Master Botosoni, and I will try to help you if I can.”
I nod. “I know who you are. The lords recommended you highly, but we have to be quick.”
She lowers her voice and looks around, but no one’s paying us any mind, all too busy paying attention to their phones as they stand in line waiting for their next fix of their favorite sinful delight. “As long as I’ve paid for my coffee they usually don’t say too much if I hang out.”
It’s impossible not to discern the heart shaped ass even half hidden beneath her bulky sweater. I follow the soft sway of her ass all the way back to the corner table. Catina slides in between the wall and the chair, leaving me with my back to the door. She sets her cup down and pulls out some cards that she arranges on the table, before standing again. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to get out of this wet sweater while you look at the cards.”
I grimace. “Look, I don’t have too much time.”
Catina gives me a smile. “Think about the ones you want me to find, about where they were last, colors, numbers, or anything symbolic that means anything to them while I’m gone. And don’t spill the rest of my coffee, or I might have to hurt you.”
I smirk, turning in my chair to track her movement to the restroom door. My eyes at first follow the sway of her ass but mesmerized too by the long waves of lush dark hair moving from side to side down the length of her back.
A waitress stops by to take my order and places a coffee next to the one by Catina’s spot. The red head smacks her gum and points to the chair where Catina was sitting. “I’m Aleah. Just don’t tell her it’s from me, or she won’t take it.”
