I left before she could change her mind.
• • •
I always forgot how small she was.
Lulu Bell was just over five feet tall, with a slender build and athick bob of dark hair that scooped at an angle around her face, and that she was forever flipping out of the way.
She wore a sleeveless top in dark gray over calf-length leggings, and flats with toes so pointy they could probably be used as weapons.
She stood in front of an enormous wall—twenty feet long and at least fifteen feet high. Half the wall was filled in—streaks of wild color dancing around curvy female shapes. The other half was still what I thought was the base coat of paint, where light pencil marks created shapes that hadn’t yet been filled in with color.
With a yellow pencil, she drew another waving line across the unpainted portion of the wall. “Thanks, but I don’t need any more coffee, Berna,” she said without looking back.
“Good,” I said. “Because I didn’t bring any.”
Lulu glanced back, hair falling over her right eye. Her skin was pale, her eyes pale green in a heart-shaped face. Her lips were a perfect cupid’s bow, and there was stubbornness in the set of her chin.
For a second she just stared at me, as if trying to reconcile the fact that I wasn’t Berna. And then her scream cut through the air like a knife. She dropped the pencil, ran toward me, and jumped into my arms.
“Lis! You’re here!” she said, wrapping her legs around my waist like a toddler.
I put my arms beneath her and tried to keep both of us upright. “You might be tiny,” I grunted, “but you’re way too heavy for this.”
Even this close, I couldn’t detect a hint of the magic I knew she carried as the daughter of two powerful sorcerers. Her parents had embraced their magic; Lulu was a teetotaler. I wondered if the apparent absence of it meant she’d lost her skill completely—or she’d just gotten better at hiding it.
“You’re a vampire. You can handle it.” She pressed a kiss to my cheek, then unfolded her legs and hit the ground again. “Let me look at you.”
Before I could argue, she took a step back, gave me an up-and-down appraisal. “Your hair’s long.”
She’d come to Paris to see me a couple of years ago, but our communications had been mostly electronic since then.
“Yeah. It’s better that way.”
“So much. You trying for theSabrinathing?” she asked with a grin. “The one with Audrey Hepburn? Full of newfound sexiness and charm?”
I gave her an arched eyebrow worthy of my father. “You’re saying I wasn’t sexy or charming before?”
“You didn’tbelieveyou were sexy, and you can’t convince anyone else of something you don’t believe.”
“You’re really good at backhanded compliments.”
She patted my cheek. “Honesty is an undervalued commodity in this day and age, Lis. If people were a little more honest, the world would turn a hell of a lot smoother.”
I didn’t think this was the time to bring up her hidden magic, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Anyway, it looks like Paris did you some good. And I’m glad to see you.”
“I’m glad to see you, too.”
Then she held out a hand.
I looked down at it, then up at her. “What?”
“Where’s my souvenir?”
Damn it.I should have gone with the airport macarons. “Still in Paris?”
She made a noise of exaggerated frustration. “You owe me a drink for that.” She pointed at me with a paint-smeared finger. “And colcannon.”