Devil at Midnight by Emma Holly

hand and sat on the other side of Christian. “By the way, my friend, I believe you have a new admirer.”
    Charles tilted his head to indicate the murky corner just past the hearth. Herbs hung in drying bundles from the rafters there, casting broom-head shadows on the smoke-stained walls. At the farthest table, a figure sat, sprawled casually back in a slatted chair.
    Christian’s shoulders tightened. He had not noticed this person when he surveyed the room. He—or she—was dressed all in black, from pointed shoes to short velvet tunic to the ebony ostrich feather that curled on a small round cap. Built very slightly, the figure leaned forward. Christian saw it was a woman, despite the male attire. When the firelight hit her features, they were surpassingly delicate.
    That she had been staring at Christian, she did not try to conceal.
    “Traveling minstrel,” Charles informed him. “Her lute is resting against the wall.”
    “Minstrel?” William turned his shaggy head to look. “That is a peculiar occupation for a woman.”
    When the woman’s gaze slid over William, his hulking shoulders jerked as if he perceived a threat.
    “Brr,” he said. “She has funny eyes.”
    They were dark eyes, almond shaped and slanting like a princess who had been carried in a fancy litter down the Silk Road. Odd lights glinted in her irises, swimming up and sparking in a rhythm that did not match the dancing of the fire.
    Christian was carrying his rondel dagger rather than the larger cinquedea—or five-fingered blade—that he kept under his pillow. Without thinking, his fingers curled around the grip. His thumb slipped between the ears of the pommel, which were designed to impart more force to a stabbing blow. The rondel was a favored weapon among assassins. Christian had always been fond of it.
    “I will see what she wants,” he said, rising.
    “I daresay I can guess,” Charles joked.
    As Christian reached her table, the woman reclined again in her chair, her strange eyes seeming to laugh at him silently. She showed none of the fear most woman would have when caught alone, but instead an almost masculine bravado. Up close, she was uncannily beautiful, her skin smooth and perfect and ivory white. Her small bowed lips were red as blood in all that paleness.
    “I was wondering when you would notice me,” she said.
    Her hands were as dainty as the rest of her, her fingers slim and graceful as she stroked the scored table top. Her hair hung as loose as Eve’s in the Garden, straight and black as the finest silk. Until he stepped to her, the strands had disappeared into the inky velvet of her tunic.
    “Do you desire a service of me?” Christian inquired.
    When her lips stretched around her smile, her teeth were as white as Grace’s. Unlike Grace’s, her incisors looked like a cat’s, a fraction more pointed than they should have been. Christian’s gaze snagged on them until she spoke.
    “I desire quite a lot of you, as it turns out.”
    In spite of his native caution, the archness of her manner stirred an answering warmth in his groin.
    Sensing this perhaps, the woman licked her lips and leaned forward. “Your soul is a roaring flame on a cold, dark night. You have no idea how your hunger glows before eyes like mine.”
    Christian did not remember deciding to sit, but he was seated—on a hard little stool opposite her chair. His forearms were on the table, to either side of a bejeweled goblet. Her goblet, he assumed. The Crowing Cock had nothing like it on offer. Between his arms, the surface of her wine shivered with the hard beating of his pulse.
    “You make me glad I stopped here,” she said. “Geneva itself cannot offer such charms as you.”
    Her voice curled into his ears like a mystic’s smoke, but when she touched his hand with her tiny seductive fingers, he jerked back as William had. He had felt something drawing on him at the contact, as if she had the power to suck the strength of life from him.
    “A