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Julian just laughs and kisses the tip of my nose.

“I’ll see you tonight, ma souris,” he says before letting me go and stepping backward. “I’ll be sending Sebastian with you today as your bodyguard.”

“I thought Sebastian was your driver?”

“He’s also an excellent bodyguard. You will be safe with him. Or I’ll kill him,” Julian says while walking away down the hall.

He’s joking. Or at least, I want him to be. But a tiny voice whispers it’s not a joke.

Well, time to get to rehearsal. For my sake and Sebastian’s, I’ll hope nothing happens to me.

Chapter 18

Julian

I may have made a miscalculation. I am almost certain that Andi isn’t a danger to me. Her lame attempt to use powers that she doesn’t even seem to believe she has has convinced me. Oh, she’s definitely got powers, and she has used them, but it would seem that they only come out when she’s particularly emotional. She’s like a fawn on shaky new legs with powers that she can’t even use on purpose. There’s the small issue of the binding from her blood, but now that I have had time to think, I don’t mind the obsessive feelings, though they are annoying in their intensity. They are just the next logical leap in emotion from the lustful feelings I already had for her, after all. And now she’s as bound to me as much as I am to her. My Fraternity is safe from her, and I wouldn’t mind being caught in her clutches. Too bad that will not happen anytime soon.

Perhaps I should not have sent her to the holding cell. I have lost a lot of ground with Andi in my seduction, which is particularly painful now that I am desperate for her. She was in the palm of my hand, warm and willing and trusting. I could have had her at any moment. But now she’s acting like I am the biggest threat she’s facing, and though she kissed me back when I pressed my advantage, I get the feeling that she will not make it easy to get her into bed anymore.

I can’t really blame myself, though. What’s done is done. In that moment of discovery, I had no way of knowing whether she was a threat or not. Her innocence could have been an act. For all I knew, she was an assassin or another power player come to take over the city. But I don’t think that any longer. But now, I am annoyed that I have a long way to go before I can get her where I want her. I had to change my strategy because there’s no way that she would willingly become the aggressor in our relationship now. So I need to reassess and go back to that gentle taming, giving her space, and then taking it away at the right moment. The space irks me, though.

I get to my office and shut the door, closing it and then leaning against the sturdy wood. It is harder than I would have thought to let Andi go away from me. If I didn’t trust Sebastian almost as much as Gaspard, I would be going out of my mind. If my control wasn’t iron, I would march out to the car and make her take me, bargain be damned. But I want her blood again, soon, and taking it by force would surely ruin what little relationship I have left. I also want her to stay in my house where I can keep an eye on her and have access to her whenever I want, without her trying to escape. So the bargain stands, and I will merely have to content myself with being snarling and surly while she’s gone.

Some things need to be done, anyway, that can take my attention. I need to find out more about sirens and their true powers, not the vague warnings detailed in my old manuscripts. I almost wish my maker were still alive, bastard though he was, because he would know about these things. He, at least, was the one who warned me about sirens in the first place. I don’t think that he ever met a siren himself, but he knew what they were capable of.

There’s a knock at my office door.

“Come.”

Gaspard enters, looking serious as always. “Your orders, Commandant?” he asks as usual.

“I need a full background check on Miss Smith,” I tell him. “Nothing is off limits. Unseal anything sealed. Find anything the authorities know about her birth parents. Find out if they’re still alive and if not, how they died. I want everything.”

“It will be done, Commandant. I will have Garnet start right away.”

Garnet Laurent is our in-organization private eye. Young in vampire terms, she is only about a hundred years old, but this makes her more comfortable than most of the vampires in my organization with technology and changing trends. She can track people with the computer almost as easily as Zelda, who is a techno-witch. Once she’s on the scent of someone, god help them.

“Good,” I nod. “Also, have her bring the one that Andi calls Granny Jean to me. I have a suspicion that that old woman knows more than she’s letting on. Do it quietly, so that Andi doesn’t find out.”

“And if the old woman doesn't want to come?”

“Then make her understand that it’s not a request,” I say simply. When Andi first mentioned her foster mother, I wasn't suspicious that she was Other, even though she is Wiccan. But after Andi told me that flimsy tale of having some elusive, latent heart condition as the reason that she couldn’t donate blood, my alarms went off. That old woman knows something about Andi being a siren, I’m sure of it. And I aim to interrogate her until she breaks.

“Send backup with Garnet,” I continue, “when she gets the old woman. She may just be human, but there’s a chance that she’s a witch of some sort and that could spell trouble.”

Gaspard nods. “I’ll tell them to be cautious.”

“Good. Now go. I expect a report by the end of the day.”

Gaspard nods and exits, purpose in his posture. He will not fail me. He never has. But with that small distraction gone, I am left with my longing for Andi. I fear that I may have lied to Gaspard just now. That having Andi in my life will change everything. Her blood has already rewritten me in a way. I am feeling things that I thought were impossible for one such as I.

At any rate, I cannot focus on the paperwork needed to run my organization. The reports on our fronts, things that need my signature. I should be focusing on what is important, building my empire, but all I can think of is her. I push away the paperwork in disgust. While I am here pushing pencils, she is out there with Colton hunting her. Sebastian is with her, true, but he is not me. Perhaps there is a happy medium that can be reached. Andi doesn’t need to know that I am still guarding her, but my feelings can be assuaged.

It has been a long time since I stalked prey, but the instinct is still there. I remember the feeling of lurking in the shadows well, the anticipation of the hunt. Perhaps it is time to start again.

Chapter 19

Andi