Smile not dimming a fraction, Giorgio put his arm around Brooke. “Of course.” Kissing her uninjured cheek, to the possessive stroke of her hand over his chest, he left the room.
“Ash,” Janvier said, “will you wait with Marie and the others while I speak to Brooke?”
“No problem.”
• • •
The instant he was alone with Brooke, Janvier focused on the butterfly bandage high on her right cheek. “You’ve been hurt.”
“I did it myself,” Brooke answered without hesitation, heat under the pale cream of her skin. “It was foolish and done in a moment of pique. I’m so very sorry to have brought you out here for nothing.” Twisting her hands in front of her, she hunched her shoulders inward. “Giorgio is a wonderful master and I am ashamed of my actions.”
Stepping closer to her, Janvier lowered his tone to the same gentleness he’d used on Marie. “No one will do you harm.” As far as Janvier was concerned, the abuse of women was an unforgivable crime. “You have my protection. Speak the truth.”
Brooke’s eyes shone wet, her lower lip trembling. Raising her hands, she placed them against Janvier’s chest. “I am,” she rasped. “From the bottom of my heart, I am. If there is to be punishment for wasting the Tower’s time, I will take it.” She inhaled a shaky breath, her smile piercing. “My Giorgio is innocent of all but loving me even when I am foolish.” A single tear hit Janvier’s hand where he cupped Brooke’s cheek, her other cheek holding a trail of wet.
She couldn’t have appeared more romantically tragic if she’d tried.
Janvier spoke to Brooke for another ten minutes, but the most senior of Giorgio’s cattle stood firm in her assertions. Releasing her, he talked to Marie, Leisel, Laura, and Penelope one at a time. All backed up Brooke’s statement that she’d done the injury to herself and that Giorgio didn’t mistreat his women.
The five held hands when united again, unanimous in their declaration that Giorgio was a good and fair “master.”
“We aren’t prisoners, Janni,” Marie said, eyes bright and naïve and fervent to Ashwini’s gaze. “Any one of us is free to do as she wishes. Laura’s leaving in a few days, aren’t you?”
The brunette nodded, her smile poignant. “I’ll miss Giorgio and the rest of my blood family desperately, but I’m homesick. The master bought me a first-class ticket home to Nebraska, and he says he’ll pay for me to return if I ever change my mind.”
“I’m thinking of joining her.” Penelope squeezed her friend’s hand, her fingernails decorated in gold polish with a tiny constellation of diamantés in the top left corners. “At least for a visit.” A sweet, affectionate kiss to Laura’s cheek. “Giorgio knows how close we are. He’s offered to pay for me to go to visit her.”
“He treasures us.” The words were Brooke’s but the sentiment was clearly shared by all five women.
The fatuous devotion on their faces made Ashwini’s skin crawl.
“Brooke and the others,” she said to Janvier when they left the town house five minutes later, “are as much junkies as those mainlining coke.” Not every vampire could give pleasure with his bite, but the thrill of having fangs at the jugular or the carotid was rush enough for many. “Add in Giorgio’s kind of beauty, and they mistake dependency for love. It’s like he has his own miniature cult.”
Janvier straddled the bike, passed her a helmet. “Let’s ride. I need to get the sickly devotion of it all out of my head.”
Initiating the throaty roar of the engine once she was on, he took them through Greenwich Village to Chelsea Piers, then hugged the edge of Manhattan until they reached the George Washington Bridge. Powering over it in the winter dark that had fallen while they’d been inside the town house, he drove to the cliffs of the Angel Enclave, his bike obviously well known enough that none of the angelic guards stopped him.
When he brought the bike to a halt, it was mere feet from a snowy cliff that overlooked the river they’d just crossed. Ashwini couldn’t see any houses, only towering trees on either side of this narrow clearing, so either this land was unclaimed or—more probably—on the far edge of an angel’s property line. Taking off her helmet as Janvier removed his, she swung off the bike, placed the helmet on the ground, and walked to the edge of the cliff. The lights of Manhattan sparkled on the other side of the water that moved slumberous and sullen tonight.
Drawing in deep drafts of the bitingly cold air, she tried to shake off the crawling sensation she’d felt inside Giorgio’s elegant town house. New as the house was, she’d picked up nothing from the walls, no embedded whispers of horror. Her response derived solely from, as Janvier had put it, “the sickly devotion of it all.”
Having remained on the bike, Janvier said, “Giorgio’s household has little to recommend it.”
Ashwini frowned, shifted on her heel so she could see his face. “You say that like the cattle-master relationship isn’t a bad idea full stop.”
“It’s not always about exploitation.” He leaned forward on the handlebars, leather jacket unzipped and hair a sexy mess. “I know vampires who have had the same cattle for decades. They truly treat the men and women as family, are more loyal to them than to other vampires, mourn each who passes. Some of the most haunting memorials I’ve seen in the graveyards of New Orleans are to blood family members.”