Chasing Midnight

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—”