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Ah. Valen felt a stab of satisfaction. He liked where this conversation was going. “Were you jealous?”
Peri rolled her eyes. “Yes, but not in the way that you assume.”
Valen concealed his disappointment. He was genuinely curious what was troubling his beautiful mage.
“Tell me.”
“She saw you and reacted like a woman who is attracted to a gorgeous male. It was so…” She seemed to struggle for the word she wanted. “Uncomplicated.”
“You think I’m gorgeous?” Valen swept his gaze over her upturned face.
“Youaregorgeous. And you know it,” she said dryly. “But while she was fantasizing about getting you naked, she never once feared that you might crush her mind or stab your fangs into her neck and drain her blood.”
Valen stiffened. Suddenly he didn’t like the conversation nearly as well.
“You don’t fear me.” It was a statement, not a question.
She wrinkled her nose. “Probably not as much as I should, but from the moment I fled my mother’s ranch I was forced to accept there were demons in the world. And that vampires walked the night.”
Valen didn’t doubt it had been a shock. Before her wild magic sparked to life, Peri wouldn’t have been capable of seeing the auras that surrounded demons, or to sense the power of the Gyres. Being alone and on the run from her homicidal mother would have been bad enough, but to suddenly discover that there were creatures from horror movies walking among the humans must have terrified her.
“Would you have preferred to live in ignorance?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
“Sometimes I wish I could have been normal,” she admitted. “It would have been fun to go to college and do a bunch of stupid stuff with the blind belief that nothing bad could happen to me. I might have even found a nice guy and settled down.”
Valen scowled. A nice guy to settle down with? Never.
“You could never have been normal,” he informed her in clipped tones.
“I suppose that’s true.” Her magic swirled through the air, as if she was battling back an unwelcome memory. “Even if I hadn’t been a mage, my mother would have made sure I never escaped the coven.”
Valen reached to cup her face in his hands, feeling her tremble at his light touch. “Your magic makes you a mage, but it’s not what makes you special, Peri Sanguis.”
“I’m…” Her lips remained parted, but no words came out.
“Speechless?”
With a sharp motion, Peri stepped back, her face reddening as if she was flustered. Valen savored the sight even as he accepted that Peri’s rare moment of sharing was at an end.
“Never,” she said, her tone unnaturally brisk. “I’m wondering why an auction house that’d been around for years suddenly decided to close its doors without warning or explanation.”
“It has to be connected to the statue your mother purchased here.” Valen grudgingly returned his attention to why they were standing in the empty building. “But I don’t know why that would cause the business to close or the owner to disappear.”
“I suppose we should check upstairs before we leave,” she said. “Richard Pascal might have left something behind that will give us a clue how to track him down. I have a few questions for him.”
Valen hesitated. It was still dark, but he could feel the heavy press of the sunrise.
“We need to be quick. Dawn is rapidly approaching.”
Peri glanced through the open door, as if searching for the sun. “I can look around if you want to wait in the car.”
“No.” Valen moved forward, heading across the storage room. There was no way in hell he was leaving Peri alone in a place where they suspected the miasma had once been stored. Who knew what else might be hidden in the darkness? “We do this together.”
Peri hurried to match his long strides. “Stubborn,” she muttered under her breath.
Valen sent her an incredulous glance. This woman could give a mule lessons. “Did you callmestubborn?”
She waved her hand in an airy motion. “If the shoe fits.”
