Holden lived in a rent-controlled SoHo loft not too far from Rain Hotel. If New Yorkers ever wondered why rent-controlled apartments were almost impossible to find, the reality was they were greedily protected by the cheap undead.
I circled the block three times before I found a parking space.
Holden’s loft was one of two on the sixth floor of an old brick beast of an apartment block. The building’s elevator was in a sorry state of disrepair, leaving me to hike up the cruddy, cracked tile stairs in my Stella McCartney boots. The clomping sounds were really stealthy. No way a two-century-old vampire would hear me coming.
The vampire in question had graciously left his front door open.
“Oh, just you?” He was leaning against the frame of the floor-to-ceiling windows running the length of the back wall. “I figured you’d have a pack of elephants with you.”
I closed the door behind me and surveyed his domain. The room was massive, no surprise since his suite took up half of the sixth floor. The floor had been refinished in a blond hardwood, and the walls were painted green-gray. On the far side of the room was a wall of Japanese-style paper-screen sliding doors. I was willing to bet he had a sun-safe sleep chamber back there somewhere.
“Looking for the bedroom?” he asked, giving me a sly smirk.
“Yeah. Where do you keep your coffin? Or are you strictly a black-satin-sheets-on-a-four-poster-bed kind of cliché?”
“Are you asking for an invitation?” His grin faded and he gave me the once-over, his gaze trailing and lingering the way some men might use their hands.
I shivered. “I came to talk business.”
He pushed away from the windows and crossed the room in quick, easy strides until he was standing in front of me. Instinct told me to step back, but I fought against it. We might be in his house, but according to hierarchy, I was the biggest, baddest vampire here. Tribunal leaders don’t let sentries intimidate them.
Bastard was testing me.
“Does the business have anything to do with our little bargain, by any chance?”
Ever since I’d agreed to spend the night with him, I’d known my relationship with him sat on a ticking time bomb.
My breath hitched in my throat, and he definitely noticed.
“No. And don’t hold your damned breath on that either.”
“As you’ve mentioned on several occasions, I have no need to hold my breath.” His smile was thin and predatory. It gave me a chill that had nothing to do with fear.
“I’m not here for that,” I whispered.
“Then perhaps you should get to the point.” He dipped his head so his lips were against my ear and the tip of one sharp fang grazed the lobe. Under normal circumstances I might have found it erotic, but it slammed me back into the memory of being under Mayhew’s spell the previous night.
I pressed a palm flat against Holden’s sternum and pushed him back. My hand was trembling.
“I need you to come with me tonight.”
He caught my wrist in his hand and pressed his thumb against my throbbing pulse. His nostrils flared, and inky blackness made his pupils double in size. Anyone who didn’t know the signs would think he was exhibiting telltale hunger pangs. They’d be wrong. He was smelling my fear.
I tried to pull away, but he held fast.
“What are you scared of?”
“I think I know who might have taken Lucy.”
“Who?”
“Her Medieval Literature professor. Oliver Mayhew.”
“I thought you talked to him already.”
Looking past Holden into the wide space of his living room, I focused on the giant black-and-white photo canvases hanging on the back wall. Anything so I didn’t have to meet his eyes. The evocative prints were lurid enough to make a Bosch painting blush.
It took me a moment to realize one of the nude men—with several female arms of varying skin tones wrapped around his most private parts—was Holden himself.