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dead& and totally black.
Black roses, I said unsteadily. You ve found out thatChernoye Roza s hit
man is here in Maplesburg. You don t care about Brook or me& it sDmitri
Malkovich you re after.
Chapter 10
Oh, tis too unfair! Jasmine s lips formed a disappointed pout. Now that
you have guessed my secret, surely you would not warn him? Be assured, madam,
that the members of the murderous society he has sworn fealty to do not warnus
before they attack.
You better believe I intend to warn him, I said tightly. I know Black Rose
wouldn t extend the same courtesy, but we re not talking about Black Rose,
we re talking about a human being. Maybe I ve turned enough so that silver
doesn t reflect my image anymore, but I haven t turned enough to stand by
while a vamp attacks a human. I advanced toward her, my muscles tensed, but
to my surprise she stood back to let me pass.
Go, then, she said with a shrug. Perhaps I shall regret my graciousness
later, but I find myself unwilling to engage with you over such a trifle.
I paused in the doorway. Really? See, I kind of thought that the reason
you re chickening out is because you find yourself unwilling to flash-fry, I
said with a flicker of satisfaction at her predicament. I mean, we both know
how risky it is for a vamp to get into a knock-down, drag-out fight when a few
steps in the wrong direction could burn you to a crisp. But hey, if you want
to pretend you re doing this out of the goodness of your heart, be my what
thehell? !
A friggin bee had stung me, I thought as I jerked my arm in toward my body.
And it had friggin hurt, not to mention it had ruined my triumphant little
speech to Jasmine. I examined my forearm, but instead of the tiny red puncture
wound I expected, I was shocked to see a raw, red wound about the size of a
dime. The edges of the wound looked seared and bubbly, and from the center a
wisp of smoke rose. It disappeared into the pin-size shaft of sunlight coming
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through a minuscule rip in the awning above.
I heard the sound of a lock falling into place behind me. I spun around to
see Jasmine on the other side of the store s iron-grilled door. She flipped
the Open sign around so that it read Closed, and took her sunglasses off to
reveal irises as red as blood.
But I was too busy kicking myself to care that she d dropped her Mrs.
Moneybags mask. Smoke and mirrors those were her tools and she d used them to
the hilt. And I d been stupid enough to fall for them. From the start she d
kept me off balance by one means or another; first with Suzanne, then with her
veiled threats toward Brook, and finally by her trick with the roses to make
me think Dmitri was her target. But all along she d been maneuvering me into
the very position I was in now. It was no use asking myself how she d known
before I did that I d become as vulnerable to daylight as any other vampire.
That didn t matter. Getting out of here without turning into
Tash-on-the-barbie did.
And that wasn t going to be as easy asI d& well, actually I hadn t thought it
was going to be easy. I still didn t. Time had flown while I d been in the
store I m a girl, I was shopping, so sue me, okay? But timehadn t been the
only thing that had flown; the sun had, too, across the sky. And instead of a
blessedly dark chunk of shade under the awning, now there was only a slice of
shadow where I was standing by the door.
And I was sharing that meager safety zone with Jasmine s vamp chauffeur, I
realized as he stepped away from the wall of the building and came toward me.
She s locked the door, I informed him. Here s the deal. She wants me to
burn and you re expendable. Got any bright ideas about how we can
His foot came up in a swift, arcing kick that caught me under the chin and
sent me reeling backward. My hands flew out instinctively to break my fall and
pain seared across my left palm.
There was no mistaking it for a bee sting this time. Agony slammed into me
with all the force of a freight train, and I felt myself pitching farther
backward toward the glare of the midafternoon sun. Pure adrenaline raced
through me, giving me the strength to twist out of the fall and throw myself
forward onto the sidewalk by chauffeur-vamp s feet.
I can hear you asking now: hey, girlfriend, where were all the normal people?
You know, the ones who don t have problems with their teeth going all sharp
and pointy at inconvenient times, the ones who actuallylike strolling around
on a sunny afternoon, window-shopping or walkin to the soda shop to share a
cherry coke with their gal or just pausing by the hardware store to pass the
time of day with
Hold on a minute. I said Maplesburglooked like a Norman Rockwell painting, I
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