Seven for a Secret Read Free

her hand on her gun or slip a thumb underneath the holster strap to feel the outline of the wolf-fur belt she wore beneath it, prickly-silken, the heads of seven iron nails warm against her skin. She knew who would be waiting for her and Adele inside, and she was pretty sure he knew they would be expecting to see him.
    She could smell him through the door.

    Lady Abigail Irene Garrett had not expected Sebastien to return before dawn, but she was nevertheless only nodding over a book in her chair before the gas fire when the key rattled in the lock. She awoke with a start, hands clenching on bentwood arms, her spine popping as her head jerked up. She paid for the reckless motion in the protests of muscles along the left side of her neck and back, but as the door swung open, she found the wheel rims with her palms and spun the left one back, the right forward.
    She had grown so light that the chair spun in place without marking the old wood floor. Phoebe has taken up the carpets to make it easier for Abby Irene to move herself around. They had converted the back sitting room, which would have been Sebastien’s once upon a time, into a bedroom so she never had to manage the stairs. He would not hear of hiring a nurse to baby-sit her, and after a fashion she was grateful for that. If someone must witness the humiliations of old age, at least it would be someone from whom she had no secrets.
    She composed her hands on the arms of the chair. By the time the door opened and Sebastien’s dark, narrow body stood framed against the night, she was certain she looked as if she had only just glanced up from the monograph she had been failing to read for several hours now.
    He smiled tightly when he saw her, locked the door behind himself and shot the bolt, and dropped his key in a crystal bowl at the top of the hall. “Abby Irene,” he said, and covered the distance like a blown leaf to kneel beside her chair.
    He had not aged an instant, in the near-on forty years she’d known him. She should have envied him that immortality, she knew, but when she watched the expressions cross his face she felt only affection, and a tired sort of sorrow on his behalf. The pity had worn out years since, thank God. She did not wish to pity him.
    She laid a papery touch on his hair, marveling at how her nails grew long and curved now that she did not work with her hands so often. When she had been younger, and trying to be beautiful, she would have paid a great deal for unchipped and elegant nails.
    Sebastien said, “You are more beautiful than ever, my dear.”
    He might cast no reflection, but she could pick her own out of his glossy eyes. The skin drawn taut across her cheeks, the hollows under her eyes. Hair white and dry as feathers, carefully dressed away from her face.
    “You are one hell of a strange wampyr,” she answered, and leaned down to kiss his cool forehead. She had to steady herself against his shoulder to sit upright again, but he was a rock, unbending. “Where have you been? Did you find supper?”
    She knew from his pallor and chill that he hadn’t. There was more in that cold than the winter night.
    He shook his head, and stood—not turning away, though he moved closer to the fire. “I am still building a court in London,” he said. “I met Phoebe’s young friend the surgeon. Perhaps he will serve. Perhaps he has more personality when he’s at ease. But we parted ways after leaving the club.” He shrugged. “There is no great hurry. Abby Irene—”
    The tone of voice that only preceded a serious question, one requiring concentration and the application of intellect. She focused her wandering thoughts and said, “Yes, dear?”
    “What sort of magic would make a young girl smell of wolfskin?”
    “Wolfskin?” She didn’t really need to repeat it for confirmation, and he knew that. His curt nod of response was however a little courtesy. “I seem to remember a vampire telling me once that there are no more