Nightside [Diana Tregarde series] Read Free Page A

“Don't count your chickens, kiddo. I can be very nasty!"
    " Ma petite —I—” He suddenly sobered, and looked at her with haunted eyes.
    She saw his expression and abruptly stopped teasing. “Andre—please don't say it—I can't give you any better answer now than I could when you first asked—"
    He sighed again, less happily. “Then I will say no more, because you wish it—but—what of this notion—would you permit me to stay with you? No more than that. I could be of some use to you, I think, and I would take nothing from you that you did not offer first. I do not like it that you are so much alone. It did not matter when we first met, but you are collecting powerful enemies, cherie ."
    "I—” She wouldn't look at him, but only at her hands, clenched white-knuckled on the table.
    "Unless there are others—” he prompted hesitantly.
    "No—no, there isn't anyone but you.” She sat in silence for a moment, then glanced back up at him with one eyebrow lifted sardonically. “You do rather spoil a girl for anyone else's attentions."
    He was genuinely startled. “ Mille pardons, cherie ,” he stuttered, “I—I did not know—"
    She managed a feeble chuckle. “Oh, Andre, you idiot—I like being spoiled! I don't get many things that are just for me—” she sighed, then gave in to his pleading eyes. “All right, then, move in if you want—"
    "It is what you want that concerns me."
    "I want,” she said very softly. “Just—the commitment—don't ask for it. I've got responsibilities as well as Power, you know that; I—can't see how to balance them with what you offered before—"
    "Enough,” he silenced her with a wave of his hand. “The words are unsaid, we will speak of this no more unless you wish it. I seek the embrace of warm water—"
    She turned her mind to the dangers ahead, resolutely pushing the dangers he represented into the back of her mind. “And I will go bail the car out of the garage."
* * * *
    He waited until he was belted in on the passenger's side of the car to comment on her outfit. “I did not know you planned to race him, Diana,” he said with a quirk of one corner of his mouth.
    "Urban camouflage,” she replied, dodging two taxis and a kamikaze panel truck. “Joggers are everywhere, and they run at night a lot in deserted neighborhoods. Cops won't wonder about me or try to stop me, and our boy won't be surprised to see me alone. One of his other victims was out running. His boyfriend thought he'd had a heart attack. Poor thing. He wasn't one of us, so I didn't enlighten him. There are some things it's better the survivors don't know."
    " Oui . Drive left here, cherie."
    The traffic thinned down to a trickle, then to nothing. There are odd little islands in New York at night; places as deserted as the loneliest country road. The area where Andre directed her was one such; by day it was small warehouses, one-floor factories, an odd store or two. None of them had enough business to warrant running second or third shifts, and the neighborhood had not been gentrified yet; no one actually lived here. There were a handful of night watchmen, perhaps, but most of these places depended on locks, burglar alarms, and dogs that were released at night to keep out intruders.
    "There—” Andre pointed at a building that appeared to be home to several small factories. “He took the smoke-form and went to roost in the elevator control house at the top. That is why 1 did not advise going against him by day."
    "Is he there now?” Diana peered up through the glare of sodium-vapor lights but couldn't make out the top of the building.
    Andre closed his eyes, a frown of concentration creasing his forehead. “No,” he said after a moment. “I think he has gone hunting."
    She repressed a shiver. “Then it's time to play bait."
    Diana found a parking space marked dimly with the legend “President"—she thought it unlikely it would be wanted within the next few hours. It was deep in the