If she wanted to keep suspicion off herself, she’d have to pick the right wrong man. She could compel Eric to believe her, but she knew from experience that lies acquired lives of their own, and one lie always led to more.

She glanced at the caged men. Perhaps she could make some kind of guess based on which were the least filthy? It was not an easy distinction to make. Then, to her delight, she realized that she actually did know one of the faces...and had seen it the night before she’d killed the wagoner and his wife. Green eyes glittered brilliantly out of his swarthy face, and his left arm was bound in a grimy sling. Elijah had broken it, she remembered, when Solomon and his pack had surrounded her brother and ambushed him, six to one.

“That one,” she said confidently, raising her hand and pointing. “That’s the man who attacked me. I would know his face anywhere.”

Eric looked pleased, but the caged werewolf looked murderous. “The bitch lies,” he snarled, throwing himself forward to grab the bars between them, and she thought she detected some yellow starting to blossom in the green of his eyes.

She clutched Eric’s arm and pressed the side of her body against his, for good measure. “It’s him,” she whispered, and her apparent fear snapped him into action.

He spun her outside before slamming the door decisively behind them, then gestured for Felix to approach. The wind caught at Rebekah’s gray gown, twisting its skirt around her legs. “Bring the one with the broken arm to my tent,” Eric ordered. “I need to question him, and then I will carry out the execution myself.”

Felix saluted sharply, then cast one more lingering glance at Rebekah before he moved to obey. She wondered if he was jealous of the time she had spent with his captain, if he worried that he might be replaced as Eric’s confidant. If so, though, surely the wisest course of action would be for him to perform his duties more smartly and expediently than ever before. As if he had reached the same conclusion, Felix pulled a ring of keys from his red coat and marched stiffly back into the jail.

So that the captain can question and then kill the prisoner. Rebekah could only imagine how confused the werewolf would be by Eric’s questions. But he wouldn’t say anything that might incriminate her—of that she was sure. No lowly pack member would take it upon himself to reveal the existence of his kind to humans, and in protecting his secret he would have to protect hers as well. How fortunate that any werewolf would rather die than betray his kin, because die he would. And it would serve him right.

As they escorted the struggling werewolf out of the jail, Eric bent to pick something up off the ground. It was a fallen tree branch, and as she gasped he snapped it across his knee. Eric held one splintered half up to the light, and she knew exactly what it was: a stake.

Rebekah felt a sudden tightness in her throat. What would Eric want with a stake? The only reason he’d need one would be to kill her kind. All of a sudden the good Captain Moquet was looking less like an eccentric scholar of the occult and more like a fledgling vampire hunter. She raced back to the warmth of her tent to remove herself from any further involvement.

It was hours before she heard enough of a disturbance to peer outside. Four soldiers were carrying the werewolf’s lifeless body toward the edge of the camp. Even from a distance, with night having fallen across the bayou, she was sure she could see the broken tree branch still protruding from the left side of the man’s chest.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE STATELY THREE-STORY white house that rose before him belonged to the Lescheres family—Klaus was sure of it. It had taken him half the night to find, but it wasn’t as if he’d been capable of doing anything else. Vivianne was the only thing on his mind. He balled his fists tightly, feeling rough patches of stray paint smears all over them. He had tried to lose himself in the art that usually soothed and consumed him, but every canvas his brush touched turned out dull and lifeless. The whole world had been dull and lifeless, without the sight and smell of Vivianne to breathe new energy into his endless nights.

In spite of his very confident hopes, he hadn’t run into her again, and his siblings were an insufficient distraction. Elijah’s quest for a homestead had made him moodier and more withdrawn than usual, and Rebekah had apparently decided to just enlist in the French army; she had been gone nearly a week without bothering to send word of her progress. There was nothing to take Klaus’s mind off of the absence of Vivianne, and so he had decided to take the initiative and find her himself.

He had circled the witches’ quarter for hours, skulking, eavesdropping, and tailing, and finally had narrowed it down to a single street, and then a single mansion. Now he hesitated, though, trying to decide what to do with his discovery. Somehow he had imagined that Viv would be sitting in a lighted window, gazing longingly out into the street when he arrived, but of course she was not. It was unreasonable to knock on the door, but it would be irrational to stand outside of a young woman’s house with the hope that she might leave it.

If she was home at all. She might be out somewhere, just as he would be, normally. She was probably out with her depressingly serious fiancé, in fact. His hands clenched, his nails biting viciously into his paint-streaked palms. Armand Navarro might be pretty useless, but even he would have the sense to steal a kiss from Vivianne on a hot summer night in New Orleans. She would probably feel obligated to allow it, and let him put his stupid paws all over her.

Klaus caught sight of a flash of white movement in the courtyard, and he scaled the latticed fence and dropped down on the other side before his heart could even skip its next beat. It was her, stealing carefully toward the house. She seemed to have just snuck in through the back gate. Out without her parents’ knowledge, he guessed—Viv was definitely his kind of girl. The nickname suited her, as vivid as she was.

She was watching the ground, placing her feet carefully on the damp grass to avoid stumbling in the dark, and the soft smile on her face made him wish that it were for him. Then she looked up and froze, her whole demeanor changing. Instead of joy at the sight of him, she looked afraid. The thought of her fearing him gave him a strange, secret thrill, but in the next moment she glanced nervously at the house, then quickly back to Klaus. She gestured at him and then at the gate, urging him silently to leave.

She wasn’t afraid of him at all, only afraid to be caught by people who would have expected her to be in her bed, sleeping. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had prioritized her reputation above him. It was maddening, and it was indescribably attractive.

Of course, leaving was not an option. Instead he crossed the distance between them faster than her eyes could follow, positioning his body between hers and the elegant manor house. “I came only to talk.” He offered her his most dazzling smile to apologize for the lie, but she didn’t look in a mood to be charmed.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she whispered urgently. “Go now, before you’re seen out here.”

“I ask only a few minutes of your time, Mademoiselle,” he persisted. He would not let her pass, but he noticed that she did not especially try. Perhaps curiosity was finally winning out over her well-bred stubbornness. “If you’d prefer, we can go inside, away from prying eyes and gossiping tongues.”

She was silent for longer than he would have liked, considering the options he’d left open to her. “Five minutes,” she agreed at last, her tone terse and businesslike in spite of the concession. “We can use the drawing room. No one will notice us in there. I left that door there unlocked.” He stepped aside, and she ran lightly across the grass. It crossed his mind that she might attempt to trick him and escape into the house, but when she reached the door she turned, and he could see the outline of an irrepressible smile on her lips. “Come into my home, Niklaus,” she said, as formally as a person could sound while whispering.