Chasing Midnight

“It’s all over now, sugar,” Pepper was saying. “That bad man won’t hurt you again. Allie made sure of that.” She looked up with a smile. “And here she is now.”

Allie slid into a chair opposite the girl, pushing aside the empty glasses. “You mind giving us a little privacy, Pep?”

“Sure thing, darlin’.” Pepper went off to join a friend at a nearby table, leaving Allie alone with the girl.

“Are you all right?” Allie asked.

Miss Yellow-Dress met her gaze, and for the first time Alley saw that her eyes were a rich combination of brown, gold and green, large and expressive and filled with confusion.

“I…” She swallowed. “Thank you so much for what you did.” Her voice held the slight trace of an accent, made somewhat indistinct by the lingering effects of alcohol.

But Allie barely heard her. She was struck by a realization that had utterly escaped her until this moment, an awareness that made her skin prickle in a way it hadn’t done since a certain meeting in an alley off East Forty-second Street.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

The girl hesitated. “Ruby.”

“Ruby what?”

“Du…Dubois. Ruby Dubois.”

Kolya arrived with Allie’s drink, and she took a fortifying mouthful before she spoke again. “This is your first time at a speak, isn’t it?”

“Y-yes.”

“How old are you, Ruby?”

“Six…almost seventeen.”

“Do you understand the risks you took tonight?”

The girl stared at Allie’s glass. “Yes.”

“Does your family know where you are?”

“No.”

“Then hadn’t you better call them and let them know?”

“No! I mean…” Ruby hunched her shoulders. “I don’t want him to find out. Anyway, I’ll be home before he knows I was gone.”

“He?”

“My brother. He’d kill me if he knewI’d come here.”

I’ll just bet he would, Allie thought. “Why didn’t you fight harder when Jake tried to take you out? You could have overpowered him, just as I did.”

“I beg your—”

“I know what you are, Ruby.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “You do?”

“Sure. Amazing how easy it is to tell once you’ve got the knack.”

“Then you…you’re one of us?”

“Try again.”

“Oh.” Ruby flushed with mingled fear and excitement. “You’re a—”

Allie pressed her finger to Ruby’s lips. “You’re the only person here who knows.”

“Not even your friends?”

“That’s right.”

“But the way you fought…Didn’t anyone notice?”

“It’s amazing what people will accept if you act casual enough about it.”

Ruby considered that for a moment, chewing on her lower lip. “If you’re…one of them, why did you help me?”

“You mean, those old, outdated prejudices?” Allie buffed her nails on her thigh. “They bore me.”

“Oh.” Another thought captured her attention. “Do you know any other loups-garous?”

Once more Allie thought of golden eyes and a strong, grave face. “Not many.”

“I’ve never met anyone from the pack,” Ruby said eagerly. “My brother won’t let me.”

“Your brother?”

“Gerald. Gerald Dubois.”

“Don’t know him. Anyway, I thought all werewolves belonged to the pack.”

“Not us.” She sighed. “My brother doesn’t trust many people. He likes living alone.”

It was painfully obvious that Ruby was desperate to confide in someone, desperate enough that she would reveal all sorts of personal information to the first person who seemed to be on her side. Allie found herself prepared to encourage the girl for reasons she couldn’t quite acknowledge.

“What’s he like, your brother—besides being so eager to protect you?”

“He’s always serious. He almost never laughs. I know a lot of it’s because of the War. He was my age when he went over. I hardly remember what he was like before.” She ran her finger through a puddle of whiskey on the table. “He wants me to marry a rich man and become a member of New York society.”

“Human society?”

“He thinks I’ll be safer that way.”

“Because he doesn’t trust other werewolves.”

“Yes.”

“But you want to be one of them.”

“I want to be free.”

Allie felt an unwelcome stab of pity. She knewwhat itwas like to feel trapped, confined to a narrowlife with the obliviousworld going past you day after day. She’d been confined by her own body. Ruby was being asked—by her own kin, no less—to deny her very nature.

They had more in common than Allie cared to admit.

“Don’t worry, kid,” she said gently, “when you’re a little older, you’ll find a way to become what you were meant to be.”

Ruby sat straighter in her chair, as if bracing for an argument. “Will you teach me?”

“Teach you what?”

“To be like you.” She scooted forward, the pulse beating fast at the base of her throat. “To be beautiful and sophisticated and free.”

At another time Allie might have been amused, but the situation was beginning to get far too complicated. “I don’t take apprentices,” she said. “And your brother…”

“But he doesn’t have to find out! I was careful. Miss Spires is on my side. We’re not far from the train station, so it’s easy for me to get here.”

“And easy for you to get into trouble.”

Ruby lifted her chin. “It’s better to take risks and try new things than spend your whole life afraid of anything different.”

Like your brother is afraid, Allie thought. She leaned back in her chair. “You’re right,” she said, “you can’t spend your life running away.”

“Then you’ll let me stay, just for tonight? I promise I won’t be any bother.”

“Oh, let her, Allie,” Pepper said, returning to the table. “No one is goin’ to bother her now.”

“Sure,” Jimmy said, sprawling into an empty chair. “Poor kid probably never has any fun.” He grinned at Ruby. “Where d’you live, infant?”

“On Long Island,” Ruby said, gazing at Jimmy’s platinum hair.

“There you go,” Jimmy said. “Give her a break, Allie.”

Sibella pulled up another chair and took the pencil out of her mouth. “I’d like to sketch her,” she said.

“And I,” Kolya announced, “shall compose a poem on the death of innocence. She must remain as my inspiration.”

Allie frowned. It wasn’t as if Ruby—if that was really her name, which she doubted—would suffer any real harm from remaining with the group for a few more hours, now that she’d gotten through the worst of the night. And if “Gerald Dubois” really did have her future planned out for her—which Allie didn’t doubt in the least—she wouldn’t deny the girl the chance to experience a little precious freedom beforehand.

“All right,” she said. “You can stay. As long as you don’t give me any grief when it’s time to go home.”

Ruby grinned. “I won’t, I promise!” She practically danced with excitement, all memories of her ugly encounter with Greco happily forgotten. Everyone crowded close to welcome her into Allie’s circle.

The night was loud, bright and raucous. Pepper set about teaching Ruby the Charleston, whileKolya drank vodka and scribbled scraps of poetry on his notepad. Allie showed her howto apply lipstick with a fewquick strokes of the finger and coached her in how to kick a troublesome skirt chaser in the groin. The girl learned quickly, her innocent charm and unfeigned pleasure a surprisingly welcome change in such a jaded atmosphere.

Allie had been naive in many ways when Cato had Converted her. Ruby aroused feelings she’d almost forgotten…just like Griffin Durant. And maybe that wasn’t such a terrible thing after all.

By 3:00 a.m. Allie was beginning to regret that she would have to send Ruby home. She pushed through the gang of admirers who had become a permanent fixture around the girl and found Pepper standing over Ruby with a pair of shears in her hands. Half of Ruby’s luxuriant brown tresses lay on the ground at her feet; the other half still hung over her shoulders.

“There, now,” Pepper said. “We’re halfway there…”

“Pepper!” Allie snatched the shears out of Pepper’s hands. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Pepper’s small pink mouth dropped open. “Why, I…Ruby wanted a nice little bob, and I’ve had some experience with—”

“With angry brothers?” Allie stood in front of Ruby, hands on her hips. “This was your idea?”

Ruby was utterly unrepentant. “I hate my hair. I want it to be short, like everyone else’s. What’s wrong with that?”

“I thought the idea was to hide tonight’s adventures from your brother? That won’t exactly be possible now, will it?”

“I’ll tell him I just went to a barbershop.”

“In the middle of the night? I’m sure that will appease him.” Allie weighed the shears in her hand. “You don’t mind if I finish it, Pepper?”

Pepper stepped back, and Allie took her place behind Ruby. She was just putting the finishing touches on Ruby’s new bob when a sudden commotion began at Lulu’s front door. The doorman and a couple of bouncers were attempting to prevent a man from entering, but it was quickly obvious that they were having little success. The man cast them off like a dog shaking water from its coat and charged into the room, looking sharply this way and that.

Ruby let out a soft gasp and started up from her chair. Allie didn’t have to study the newcomer to know who he was or why he was here. Her heart began to race with unaccustomed anticipation.

She steered Ruby back to the table, took her own seat and waited while her friends settled around her. An instant later the newcomer’s eyes found Allie—yellow eyes filled with startling intensity and seething emotion—and then focused on Ruby. He strode toward them, long legs eating up the distance, and came to a halt beside Allie’s chair.

“Miss Chase,” he said, “what in God’s name are you doing with my sister?”

Chapter Four

ALLEGRA CHASE STOOD UP SLOWLY, undeniably majestic in spite of her scandalously short dress and painted face. She met Griffin’s gaze without flinching, and he felt alarm and astonishment give way to very different feelings over which he had not the slightest command.

He had never expected to see her again, and certainly not like this. Oh, he’d known at their first meeting that she was wild—a true child of the bold new generation, no matter when she’d been Converted. But he’d assumed that she had briefly escaped the authority of her patron and would soon return to the protection of her own kind.

He’d clearly been wrong.Whoever her patron might be, he must have no objection to his protégée making a spectacle of herself in a very human public place.And Allegra Chase was a spectacle, flaunting her nearly naked legs, commanding the attention of every male in the room. Griffin understood at once that she ruled this seamy hotbed of Bohemians, dissipates and addicts.

It would have been disconcerting enough to meet her again under such circumstances, but to find her with Gemma was nearly inconceivable. What were the odds of such an occurrence?

What were the odds that Allegra Chase could plunge him into confusion with a single glance of those remarkable eyes?

“Your sister is perfectly safe,” she said, her voice cool and reasonable, as if nothing were at all out of the ordinary. “Why don’t you join us, Mr. Durant?”

He steeled himself against the powerful allure of her nearness. “Did you bring Gemma to this place, Miss Chase?”

She lifted one dark, sculpted brow. “I never met her before tonight. She walked in on her own. My pals and I just happened to be here at the time.”

“Yet you don’t seem surprised to see me,” he said, keeping a tight rein on his anger.

“Ruby—Gemma—mentioned that she had a brother, and I put two and two together. There is a family resemblance, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“You knoweach other?” Gemma said in a small voice.

Griffin’s glare silenced her immediately. “Our acquaintance has been brief, Miss Chase, but I had assumed you to be an intelligent woman. If my arrival has failed to surprise you, you must have guessed that I would hardly approve of my sister coming to a dive in the middle of the night. Or are you so accustomed to the habitués of such sordid environments that you mistook Gemma for one of them?”

A muscular young man rose from the table. “Hey, you—”

“It’s all right, Bruce.” Miss Chase toyed with the oddly old-fashioned locket that was her only jewelry, swinging the chain between her fingers. “It’s no wonder she has to sneak around, Mr. Durant, if this is the way you treat her. And anyway, since she’d already gotten here by herself, I didn’t figure she would become much more corrupt if she stayed for a few hours.”

One of Allie’s “pals” smothered a laugh. Griffin gazed at the faces about the table, men and women who considered illegal clubs their natural homes. Gemma, in her flimsy dress and bright-red lipstick, did indeed, look just like one of them.

A woman like Allegra Chase would draw Gemma to her as a blossom lures a bee. She was beautiful, witty, willful…and obviously contemptuous of the civilized standards that gave life its structure. It would be an easy matter for her to lead an innocent girl like Gemma to her ruin, even if she weren’t a vampire.

Griffin circled the table, ignoring Miss Chase, and stood over Gemma with folded arms. “Miss Spires admitted everything,” he said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Gemma sank down into her chair. “I…I didn’t mean—”

“Do you know how many places like this Mal and I have searched tonight? I was beginning to think you…” He took a steadying breath, remembering that he mustn’t let any of them, his sister least of all, see him lose his composure. He picked up one of the numerous empty glasses on the table. “How much have you been drinking, Gemma?”

“We haven’t given her a thing,” Allegra said.

Gemma cast Allegra such a look of gratitude that Griffin was sure she was lying. He carefully replaced the glass and stared at Gemma until she lowered her gaze. “Where did you get that dress?”

“I…I ordered it two weeks ago. Griffin—”

“And your hair. How did that come about, might I ask?”

“I cut it for her,” Allegra said. “I think it’s very becoming.”

Griffin swung toward her, his tongue tripping on harsh words he couldn’t bring himself to speak. “You had no right,” he said. “She is my sister. My responsibility.”

Miss Chase continued to gaze at Griffin through half-lidded, kohl-rimmed eyes. “What bothers you most, Mr. Durant, Gemma’s clothes and hair, or the fact that she slipped out of your control for a few brief hours?”

“I beg your—” He broke off, refusing to take her bait. He cupped Gemma’s chin in his hand. “Do you have any conception of the trouble you’ve caused?”

“I…I didn’t think it would be dangerous…”

“You could have been hurt, Gemma. Don’t you understand that?”

All at once the noisy room seemed very quiet. Gemma set her jaw. “Allie wouldn’t let anyone hurt me.”

Griffin hesitated. Perhaps Gemma didn’t know what Allie was. Not all loups-garous could recognize strigoi by sight or smell. “Did you go out tonight expecting you’d find someone to take care of you? Is that it?”

“She didn’t come running to me,” Allegra said. “But if she were to find herself in a position where she couldn’t fight back, whose fault is that?”

“I don’t believe I take your meaning, Miss Chase.”

She shrugged, as if to dismiss her own comment, but the redheaded woman across the table snorted loudly and pulled a face. “You ought to know, sugar, that if it hadn’t been for Allie, you’d have had a real reason to worry.”

Griffin’s mouth went dry. “Gemma,” he said, “did someone…bother you tonight?”

“Allie took care of it,” said the man called Bruce, his mouth twisted in contempt.

“That’s why she took your sister under her wing,” said the slender man seated next to Bruce. “None of us meant any harm, Mr. Durant.”

Griffin well remembered how Miss Chase had been prepared to take on the muggers for the sake of her maid, but he found it hard to believe that any of these people knew of Allie’s true nature. “Who was this person?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Allegra said. “He’s gone, and he won’t be back.”

“I see.” He held her gaze. “It seems I owe you an apology, as well as my thanks, Miss Chase.”

She smiled with familiar mockery. “I accept your apology.”

“I hope you’ll allow me to repay the debt.”

“Let’s just say we’re even now, Mr. Durant.”

He looked away so she wouldn’t see how much he’d felt the sting of her rebuff. “In that case,” he said stiffly, “Gemma and I will be leaving.”

He helped Gemma out of her seat and draped his overcoat around her. She shivered in the crook of his arm. As he started for the door, he heard raised voices outside the building, and suddenly the men standing guard at the entrance turned and dashed for the bar. The bartender and waiters scrambled toward the darkened rear of the speakeasy. Men and women at the tables shouted questions and craned their necks to determine the source of the disturbance.

Allegra appeared beside Griffin. “It’s a raid,” she said. “The cops won’t arrest any of us, but you probably don’t want Gemma involved.”

“A raid?” Gemma said. “I want to see—”

“Out of the question,” Griffin said. “Do you have any suggestions, Miss Chase?”

“Come with me.”

She started at a fast pace toward the back of the room, leaving her friends chattering at the table. There was a scarred wooden door behind the bar, barely visible behind stacks of seemingly innocent fruit crates. Allegra opened the door and moved aside, ushering Griffin and Gemma into an unlit alley. The sour stink of urine struck Griffin with the force of a storm. A drunken man lay sprawled across the filthy ground; Griffin lifted Gemma in his arms and carried her to the end of the alley, setting her down on the sidewalk.

“You don’t have anything to worry about now,” Allegra said. She pushed a stray lock of hair out of Gemma’s face. “Your brother is right. You’ve had enough adventure for one night.”

Gemma tried to assume a sophisticated air, but it dissolved in a helpless yawn. Allegra’s eyes sparkled with a devastating combination of mischief and sympathy. Griffin looked at her and did his best not to let his body control his mind.

“Once again I owe you a debt of gratitude,” he said. “Even if you refuse to accept my obligation.”

She laughed. “You wouldn’t like it if I held you to that obligation. Anyway, Gemma made the evening considerably more amusing.”

“Is that truly all that matters to you, Miss Chase? Amusement?”

“What else is there?”

Her insouciant response troubled him past all reason. He’d seen plenty of evidence that she was a most unusual vampire, but he’d also begun to realize that she was not as lacking in character as he had at first chosen to believe.

“May I ask you a personal question?” he said.

“Shoot.”

He began to walk in the direction of the street, where Fitzsimmons waited a few blocks away with the limousine, supporting a sleepy Gemma with his arm about her waist. “There weren’t any other vampires at Lulu’s when I came in.”

“So?”

“So where is your patron, Miss Chase? It was my understanding that vampire patrons are notoriously jealous of their protégés and hardly encourage them to wander loose around the city.”

She fell into step beside him. “That may be true of most protégés, but not me.”

“How is it that you have a choice?”

She hesitated, obviously weighing her answer. “My patron’s dead.”

Griffin missed a step. “But you told me—”

“I know. It got rid of you, didn’t it?” Her voice lost a little of its lightness. “Even when Cato was alive, he let me live as I chose. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“How long since you were…altered?”

“Two years. And you don’t have to dance around the word. It doesn’t offend me.”

And why should it, Griffin thought, when she so obviously hadn’t suffered from the transformation? “So now you choose to associate with humans rather than your own kind.”

“Just like you.” She cast him a sideways look. “You’re curious, aren’t you…about how we live and what we do? Even though you hate us.”

“I hardly hate you, Miss Chase.”

“But it disgusts you, the blood drinking and all. That’s one of the reasons you were so upset that I was with Gemma.”

Griffin glanced down at Gemma’s tousled head, regretting the direction the conversation had taken. “Surely you couldn’t Convert her.”

“Couldn’t even if I wanted to. We’re of different species, after all, and I’m not mature enough to create my own protégés. That usually takes a few years.”

“But you could have…taken her—”

“Blood? That would have been a novel experience. But I’d already fed, and we don’t have to drink more than a couple of times a week.”

“I see.” He tugged at his collar, reluctant to hear any more such confidences. “Whatever your personal habits, I don’t think Lulu’s is an appropriate venue for my sister.”

“You really think bobbed hair and a short dress will ruin her?”

“Rebellion for rebellion’s sake is not an admirable quality.”

They walked half a block in silence. “She guessed what I was, you know,” Allegra said. “She wasn’t afraid.”

“I’m hardly surprised, Miss Chase. Gemma has no experience of your worlds, either of them.You were compelled to rescue her from someone who meant her harm. That’s proof enough that she doesn’t belong here.”

“Only because she doesn’t know how to be what she really is.”

Gemmamuttered a garbled protest and subsided back into her half sleep. Griffin lowered his voice. “She isn’t an animal, and I don’t intend to let her behave like one.”

“An animal? Is that what you think you are?”

Griffin remembered how tempted he had been in the alley…tempted to Change and rid the world of two humans the city would never miss. “I prefer civilization, Miss Chase.”

“Civilization as in the rich snobs on Long Island.”

“If you like.”

“Then you do plan to keep Gemma locked away.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“Isn’t it true?”

“I dislike being rude, Miss Chase, but—”

“You’d prefer I kept my nose to myself.” She shook her head. “Where did you get such a hard view of the world, Mr. Durant? Was it the War?”

Griffin forced himself to keep walking. “What drives you to waste your life on fleeting pleasures and unthinking nonconformity?” he asked.

She said nothing. The sound of her footsteps stopped, and for a moment he thought he had driven her away with his inexplicable rudeness. But then he heard the tap of her heels coming up behind him, and her sweet, earthy fragrance swirled about his head.

“I know what it’s like to live in a small room with no hope of escape,” she said. “I swore I’d never go back to that room.” She caught the sleeve of his coat. “What’s your cage, my friend?”

Her question left Griffin mute. He estimated the distance left to the limousine. Once he had Gemma safely transferred to Fitzsimmons’s care, he would wait for Mal at their rendezvous site on Sixth Avenue. Miss Chase would surely become bored with baiting him and go back to her friends. They would go their separate ways once and for all.

He would find nothing to miss in her unfeminine frankness, her brazen choice of clothing, the firm curve of her calf, the obsidian silk of her hair, the sparkle of aqua eyes…

His thoughts stuttered to a halt. He lifted his head, detecting the faint scent that threaded its way among the city’s common odors of gasoline, steel and refuse. The hairs on the back of his neck stood erect.

“What is it?” Allegra asked. “What’s wrong?”

He took her wrist in a rigid grip. “Stay close to me,” he said. “Don’t interfere.”

“But—” Her eyes searched the darkness as she sensed the others’ approach. Gemma’s face emerged from Griffin’s overcoat.