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“Two” A smile that creased his cheeks “Amelie arrived in time with a thunderclap one rainy day, Jöelle a year or so later in thereached the fringe of the Vampire Quarter, he drove around to the sate by pressing in a code on the keypad at the entrance

He parked, switched off the engine, then turned toward her, one ar accident when Amelie and Jöelle were only two and three, so it was just the four of us untilhe’d effectively become the head of his household for those seven years “How old were you when you began working?”

“The dates weren’t so well kept then—you understand, sugar? But I was old enough Seven or eight”

“So young?”

“It was nothing unusual, not then” A shrug “The man I worked for, he used to hit h; he’d kickof helplessness I experienced as a ser, stronger opponent”

Blood hot and hands fisted, Ashwini had to remind herself that he hadn’t been that s time

“You’d think I learned my lesson,” he continued, “but we both know I later made the decision to enter into another situation where I did not hold power, out of what I then thought was love” He sreen, so inexperienced in the ways of the world, and Shamiya was sensual, beautiful—and she told me incredible tales of lands far beyond the bayou”

A shake of his head “It was a deadly coin my soul, especially when she said such sords to me I did not understand that I was in the throes of infatuation, and that she was ”

Ashwini could see it, see the young ry to experience life and to prove himself “Did she help you become a Candidate?” A person couldn’t simply ask to be a vampire; he or she had to be chosen

“Yes She took hed “I have never been so sick as I was on that voyage The waters of the bayou never crashed and rolled as that ocean did, as if atte to throw an insect off its back”

The idea of the long journey, the things he ue, but she was even limpse into his path to vao to all that trouble,” she said, unable to iine how any woman could be so careless as to throay the loyalty of a man like Janvier “Even as a favorite, she still had to petition Neha” And the Queen of Poisons was an archangel, as ruthless and as deadly as Raphael

“She felt what a child does with a new toy” He spoke the words without rancor “I was different enough infor a period I, on the other hand, believedat hiuaze, nothing but an affectionate hu man he’d once been

Ashwini had asked him once if he loved Shamiya still His answer had resonated deeply with her