Page 28 of Kissed the Mark
She threw her head back in laughter, thelong majesty of her neck on full display. “I spent a lot of timepicking those just for you! I couldn’t resist.”
“Asshole. Get off of me.”
“No.”
There was a moment where I consideredsummoning a bunch of vines to strangle her, but it passed. “Thentell me why you needed your past self removed from hertimeline?”
Leandra scowled. “It was that Francescawitch. She did what I asked for and then chickened right out andlet her loose. Luckily all versions of me seem drawn to you. Untilyou lost her, of course.”
Right. “Lost” her. Figuring out how much orlittle Leandra knew about the situation made my head hurt. Leandrahad no idea about the golem, still, so she must not have overheardus talking about it. “But why did you ask Francesca to do it?”
Her face lit up. Not quite the response Iwas expecting. “Can I show you?” she asked.
“Show me?”
“Sure, we’ll go to my lair. If you take usout of Faerie, that is.”
“I know where your lair is from here whenI’m in Faerie. Let me lead the way.”
She raised herself from the dirt, lookingflawless as ever after a tussle without even trying. “It’s not thatlair. I’ve got two.”
I kicked apart the circle of stones from themortal world and we were thrust back into the women’s restroom ofthe club. Ears ringing with Patricia’s words about the intimacy ofbeing invited to someone’s lair, I followed her.
Chapter Fifteen
Home Sweet Lair
LEANDRA LED ME DOWN BUSY downtown streets bustlingwith activity. It was so different from the setting of her suburbanlair that I half-expected her to leap into a sewer grate like oneof the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and tell me her second lair wasdown there. We passed bars and cafés, restaurants and antiqueshops. It seemed like half of Mayfair was out, odd for an earlyTuesday morning. Things would be wrapping up soon for everyone ofthe supernatural persuasion.
“Here,” Leandra said. She held open a glassdoor that led to one staircase going up and one going down. Thedoor was painted with golden letters that shimmered off the streetlight: WILBUR BONES, ESQ. It was similar to the last name she’dgiven me for herself; I wondered if she actually chose it based onthe familiarity. Then again, she could have lied to me about allthat too.
We descended the stairs to a small platformin front of a door with a number pad latched above the knob.Leandra entered a long string of numbers, the beeps of each keypress unbearably loud against the illicitness of me lingeringaround a potential fugitive, until the door opened with a softclick.
“This lair is where I really live. The otherone I kind of use to just get away from the others.” She bowed asshe flipped the light on, like a chauffeur helping me out of acar.
There was so much going on in this lair thatit took me a moment to process it all. Where the other lair hadbeen well-decorated but a bit sparse, this lair was brimming withpersonality. Books lined every wall, many of them in states ofdisarray, piles on the floor and some books open to certain pageswith a random object used as a bookmark to keep them open—a pieceof string, a feather, in one case a snow globe. There was a desk inthe center of the room with a two-monitor setup, replete with amechanical keyboard that had a rainbow backlight. I had never seenLeandra use her phone and for some reason had not pictured her everusing a computer, either.
“This is my research,” she said, and I sawthe room in a whole new light. This was not a cozy reading nook,nor was it a representation of Leandra’s personality—it wasevidence of the haphazard research technique of a madwoman obsessedwith her goal.
“What were you researching?”
“I’m still working on it.” She lifted an oldbook that said something long in French along the cover. “Have youheard of Nicholas Flamel?”
“I watchedFullmetal Alchemistbackin the day. Does that count?”
She blinked at me like I was the crazy one.“I don’t know what that is but it sounds incredibly dorky. Anyway,alchemy, yes. He was an alchemist, and allegedly he discovered thestone of the philosophers and became immortal.”
This was not a direction I expected theconversation to take. It was as though Leandra had told me shebelieved in Santa Claus. “Is alchemy, like, real? Isn’t it turningthings into gold? I guess a witch could do it, but…I don’t follow,”I confessed.
“That’s okay. I did a lot of reading to getto where I am now,” she said, gesturing to the room. “I’m morefocused on the immortality thing. I don’t believe in a fountain ofyouth or anything like that. But I remembered a legend about thisvampire and thought I would look into it.” She positively beamednow: a scholar proud of her work. As unsettling as the topic was,I’d never seen Leandra exude pure joy like this before, and I hadto admit that it was charming. “Stop me if I’m being too boring oroverwhelming you with information.”
“Um, not yet. Go on.”
She retrieved a different book from hershelves, this one newer and less fancy. When she opened it, I sawit was more of a notebook than a book—someone’s scribbles in fadedblue ink against yellowing paper. “This is the diary of ViktorLehmann,” she said proudly. “It took a long time to procure it fromhis collection. I finally got the follow-up diary just this lastweek and it has been illuminating.”
“Who is that?” I asked, as she held out thebook for me to see. Our shoulders were touching, her long hairtickling my cheek.
“He’s a vampire who went into the past andkilled himself—or the younger version of himself. When he did, he’ssaid to have exited the timeline we all exist on. He becametrulyimmortal, unkillable, untouchable.” Her eyes shimmerednow. It scared me that I couldn’t tell if it was just from passionor actually greed. “No one has accomplished it since, but it’s saidhe still lives in his villa in Austria. I went there and didn’tfind him, though. I figure if you live that long, you may as wellhave multiple hideouts. I think I just happened to find the biggestone. He may not have been there anymore.”
