He had already reached the interior hallway while her hand was still reaching for the doorknob, and he held the door open for her with a courtly flourish. Her smile widened, and she dipped her head to conceal it as she joined him inside the house.

It had been smart to visit—Klaus was very nearly irresistible in person.

Vivianne lit a candelabra, and then turned to him expectantly. Klaus flashed her his most charming smile, then stepped forward and reached for her hand to kiss it. “I said five minutes,” she reminded him, stepping back out of his reach, “but I would certainly appreciate it if you took less.”

“I don’t believe that you truly would, Vivianne,” Klaus disagreed. “I don’t believe that a woman of your spirit and intelligence could possibly be happy in the life that has been laid out for you here, and I think that you understand on some level that meeting me is an opportunity for much, much more.”

An emotion flashed through her black eyes, and Klaus felt sure it was recognition. “It may have been laid out for me since birth, but that does not make it an unworthy life,” she countered. The words were persuasive, but her voice was not, and Klaus studied her face carefully. How could someone as clever and high-spirited as she was become so placid and docile at the thought of being used as a pawn? “It’s an honor to help bring the fighting and death in this city to an end.”

Someone had told her that, he knew, and probably had repeated it often. Klaus stepped closer to her, feeling drawn toward her in a way he could not quite describe. If she was torn she would not show it. “It is your life, my lady,” he told her, “not some abstract honor.”

“My life,” she repeated, a shadow falling across her pale face. He lifted a hand to her cheek almost without realizing it, but she stepped away from him again, her shoes making no sound on the thick blue rug of the drawing room. He let his hand drop back to his side, tingling with the false hope of contact. “It must seem so insignificant to you. We live and die in no time at all, compared to your kind.”

“That’s not true.” His voice was heavy with honesty. If that was the reason she’d kept herself so aloof from him, then he needed to make her understand that wasn’t the case. “A year is still a year to me; a lifetime is a lifetime. Having had more than a few of my own makes them no less vivid or important to me.”

“And yet you end them, left and right, in order to sustain those lives of yours.” Her mouth turned downward in disapproval. “I have no wish to get involved with your kind, however well-meaning you might be tonight. I want to end bloodshed, not befriend a creature who must survive by it.”

It took him a moment to even understand what she meant, and when he did he struggled to remain composed. The comparison between the nameless people he drained for food and her shining, crackling bonfire of a life was so ludicrous that it was all he could do not to laugh. But her moral qualms about his existence were apparently a real concern for her, and so he tried to remain serious.

“My kind are not what you think. I’m not what you think—yes, I must kill to live, but you make me want to be different. After decades of emptiness, you make me feel complete. I feel I have known you my whole life, Vivianne, and I can understand you as no one else can,” he said. He lifted her chin with one hand until her endless, unfathomable eyes met his, and she did not recoil from his touch. He could feel the delicate line of her jawbone through the warm, supple flesh that stretched across it. “I know you have a kind and willing heart, and I also know you long to be free.”

Her eyes closed for a long moment, and Klaus held his breath. “I remember when you first came to this city,” she said finally, and he frowned in surprise. He released her, the heat of her skin lingering on his own. Whatever he had expected to hear, it wasn’t that. Her eyes opened, but she looked everywhere but him. “You destroyed whatever peace was left in the city. Until now.”

She must have been a child, he calculated frantically. Surely she had been afraid of the rumors that had spread on his arrival. And it was true that he had taken it upon himself to control the werewolf population for the first couple of years—her father’s family. That had perhaps been rash, although there was certainly no shortage of the beasts in New Orleans. It was past time for his little massacre to be forgiven and forgotten. “Vivianne, do you know why Elijah and Rebekah and I came here?”

“No one else would have you?” she guessed tartly, reminding him without quite saying so that he’d not exactly been welcome in her house, either.

“Our father hunts us,” he explained, and the edges of her teeth bit down on her full bottom lip. “He will not rest until we are dead. We fled here, and were met with suspicion and open hostility. The witches were generous enough to accept our presence, but the werewolves made no such allowances. They saw us as their natural enemies, so that’s how I treated them. I couldn’t let them drive us out, Vivianne, that was all.”

Her face had softened, just a little. “But then nothing has changed,” she argued, although it sounded halfhearted. “You—we—are still natural enemies, are we not?”

He saw his opening and pulled her close to him, feeling the race of her heartbeat against his chest. “Are we?” he murmured, bending down so that his breath stirred her hair. “If you and I can find common ground, I’m sure that the rest of our kinds can be persuaded to do the same. We could lead them by example into cooperation and coexistence. We could create a legacy of peace that will be a beacon to the world.”

He almost had her, he could see it. If he kissed her now, she would respond. Her lips were parted, wet, waiting. But she’d come to regret changing her mind so quickly, he knew: She would distrust this kiss and doubt her judgment if he pressed too hard. Making her wait would be smarter. Let her think about him, miss him, want him...and compare him to that fool Armand every time the stupid werewolf opened his mouth.

When Klaus won her, he would win her completely.

He reached down and lifted her unresisting hand to his mouth, completing the more formal kiss she had denied him earlier. He could feel a faint trembling in her skin, and he smiled to himself as he released it. “I think my five minutes have passed,” he murmured. “I will not trouble you any more tonight. Just know, Vivianne Lescheres, that if you allow me, I will give you the world.”

He turned and left before she could answer. He felt suddenly inspired to take up his painting again—he knew exactly what the last canvas was missing.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ELIJAH SUSPECTED THAT the edges of the city would be the most likely spots. Witches and werewolves had eyes everywhere in the center of town, and the new residential neighborhoods were too orderly and visible for a purchase to go through unnoticed. But the outskirts, where the city faded into the bayou and the untamed forest, were still a half-wild paradise and the perfect place for a vampire to call home.

He rode out at night, while Klaus sank ever further into his lovesick misery and Rebekah gallivanted around with the French army. One of the Mikaelsons had to keep an eye on their true purpose and, as usual, the task had fallen on him.

Where the houses and shops gave way to patchy fields and makeshift farms, Elijah rode, surveyed, and occasionally made the most discreet of inquiries about land for sale. He had not yet met with any success, and in fact had been chased away by several suspicious residents. But he only needed to be lucky once, and he had a lot of ground left to cover.

There were still traces of the setting sun in the sky, but candlelight glowed in several spots, dotting the stretch of land he intended to ride over that night. One man, stooped and white-haired, was still outside, struggling to lash a wide piece of canvas over some barrels stacked at what Elijah judged to be the very edge of his land. There were full, heavy clouds on the horizon, and after watching him for a moment, Elijah rode toward him.