Page 564 of Flirting with Darkness

She had been trying to warn him, too.

Her words rang in his ears, even now.

It was more than the words. It was the feeling.

Still, he managed to dismiss most of what she’d told him from his mind.

Well, he managed it at least as long as he remained on the train.

When he disembarked, everything changed.

He walked leisurely down those iron steps, his ivory-tipped cane gripped in one hand, and immediately faced a sign with his name on it.

It was held by a man he had never seen before in his life.

* * *

Ghost halted, dead in his tracks.

His foot hung in mid-step. He had been descending the stairs from the first-class train car, about to set his foot on the snow-dusted wood planks of the station platform.

He stared at the man holding the neatly printed sign.

Ghost’s eyes went from the sign to the man’s face.

And back again.

The printing there was impossible to miss.

It was even more impossible to misunderstand.

Lazarus Chronos Aslanov

Son of Count Yaroslav D’Yavol Aslanov

Ghost’s heart hammered in his chest.

All right, whatever this was, they’d managed to unbalance him.

That thought and his tightened breath were fleeting, however.

The fear that rose there was the brief, instinctual, nearlyanimalresponse of one entirely out of practice in being caught. Ghost had not been caught in the midst of some lie or cheat or charade for years, really since he’d been a child. Once it sank in that hehadbeen caught, that hehadbeen outmaneuvered, a strange calm fell over his mind.

He walked directly up to the man holding his sign.

Giving the foreign-looking mustache, suit, and furred hat a leisurely once-over, he favored the man with a small smile.

“I see my father has a sense of humor,” Ghost remarked. “I admit, thatisa surprise.”

The man holding the sign blinked.

From his expression, he had been told nothing.

He knew nothing.

That, or he was an accomplished actor.

As to the latter, Ghost had his doubts.

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