Shades of a Shifter Read online

  Rowan placed his hands on her shoulders and squeezed so that she let out an involuntary moan and leaned her head against his forearm. “I tell you what,” he said, rubbing her shoulders, gently, firmly. “You never have to do anything for the Guild that you don’t want to do, that you aren’t comfortable doing. That being said” — he bent forward, forcing her to meet his gaze — “if you do complete the mission, I swear to you that we will take care of your sister’s medical costs for the rest of your life, and you will never have to make another kill.”

  Viola groaned and rose to her feet, jerking away from Rowan and putting some necessary distance between them. For whatever reason, Viola always wanted to do the things Rowan asked and, up to this point, he had never taken advantage of that. But there was a pleading in his eyes — why was this kill so different from all the others?

  “Please, Vi,” he said out loud, and she cocked her head to the side and stared at him. “Please, this is important.”

  “Why?”

  He parted his lips as though he were going to say more, but ultimately he demurred and shook his head. “Look,” he said at length, “just start following him. Learn his routine. Do everything you would normally do.”

  “Right, stalk the billionaire,” she said. “As though I’d ever even be able to get close.”

  “I have a solution to that,” Rowan said, and crossed the expanse of the studio space to where he’d abandoned his coat on the partition. He reached into one of the pockets and pulled out a slim black envelope, the size of a brochure.

  “What’s that?” she asked, canting her chin toward the envelope.

  “An invitation.”

  He made his way back to her then and set the invitation on the table in front of her. The black envelope had no addressee on it, so she pulled the card out. It was a fine white linen card with sharp black printing — simple, classy, elegant — and it read, “Benefactor’s Ball.”

  “How did you get this?” Viola asked, running her fingertips over the embossed print and reading it like braille.

  “We have our ways,” came his elusive reply.

  It was an Anybody Who’s Anybody event, meaning that Viola might be able to fly below the radar. That is, if she could find something suitable to wear. “This gig better come with a per diem,” she joked, but the joke fell flat. Her voice was faltering: she didn’t want to do it.

  Rowan reached into his pocket, retrieved a standard white letter envelope, and placed it on the table beside the invitation. “Call it a… costuming fee,” he said.

  She snatched the enveloped and opened it to reveal dozens upon dozens of crisp hundred-dollar bills. “Holy fuck.”

  “I actually need you to spend about that much on the night,” he said, crossing his arms across the firm contours of his chest. “Gown, jewelry, driver, the works. You have to blend, Viola.”

  “I can do that,” she said.

  “So, that means you’ll take the job?”

  She peered up at him through a forest of thick black lashes and searched those cat eyes for any indication of why this might be so important, why he seemed to be taking this personally. She frowned. “It means that I will see if it’s even possible. I’ll scout him, but I doubt I’ll be able to even get close.”

  “Just do what you can,” he coolly remarked, “and we’ll go from there.” Rowan turned on his heel and returned to where he’d kicked off his shoes, where he’d abandoned his jacket, and sat on the edge of the bed to put them on again.

  “Leaving so soon?” she asked, watching him as he moved.

  “Yeah, I… there’s work to do,” he said, tugging his jacket on and tightening his tie. He’d only been there for a matter of minutes, and he’d gone from sleek, sly businessman, to casual, lounging buddy, and into stiff suit. Viola narrowed her eyes.

  “You didn’t finish your tea.”

  “I’m not thirsty.”

  “I thought—”

  “I’ve gotta get going.”

  “Rowan.”

  “Viola.”

  They stared at each other for a long stretch of silence, before Viola finally turned her gaze away, conceding the win to Rowan. She heard him head for the door, his heels clicking against the hardwood. But she stopped him: “Do you remember when we first met?” She ventured a glance in his direction, and he was frozen with his hand on the door.

  “Sure,” he said, his eyes angled on the floor. “Sure, I remember.”

  “I was so scared of you back then,” she remarked, smiling. “It’s almost funny now.”

  “Funny,” he echoed.

  “It’s funny because we’re friends, aren’t we?” She was standing, inching toward him. “I mean, even outside the context of our bizarre business partnership. You’re my friend, and I’m yours. Right?”

  He cast a furtive glance up at her face and gave one quick nod in confirmation. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re friends.”

  “So then tell me what the deal is with this guy,” she demanded. “Don’t just bail because I start asking questions you don’t particularly like. I should basically be allowed to know everything about my mark, right? Up to and including why Somnus Sacrae wants him dead.”

  Rowan turned to fully face her then, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “If I thought it would help you to know, I would tell you,” he said. “But… I think it would just make the whole thing a lot harder.”

  “Rowan—”

  “Just be careful with him, all right? Just be careful.”

  “I’m always careful.”

  Rowan eyed her as though he were going to broach some argument, but thought better of it, kept his mouth shut, nodded his head. “I know,” he said, his voice hovering just above a whisper. He opened the door and stepped across the threshold. “I’ll be back to help you get ready for the event.”

  “I know how to put on a dress, Rowan,” she quipped.

  “Maybe, but the clothing is the least of your worries.”

  Chapter 2

  All things being equal, Viola St. James was not a particularly girly girl. She liked Converse sneakers, jeans, combat boots, fleece jackets. She owned precious little in the way of jewelry, and the only thing she wore with any frequency was a single sapphire gemstone ring in white gold. She had one, and her sister had one, and she rarely took it off. Only on kill days. She collected tee shirts with puns on them, and genuinely enjoyed ugly Christmas sweaters. She wasn’t exactly what one might call stylish.

  But she pulled out all the stops on the night of the Benefactor’s Ball. It was cool in early October, and she had chosen something simple but classy, understated elegance. It was a black chiffon gown, thin-strapped with a plunging neckline that featured the gentle curve of her breasts. The skirt was full and flowing, and it rustled when she moved. Her favorite feature was, however, the pockets. This haute couture gown had pockets.

  She wore no necklace, preferring instead to let the eyes be drawn up to her face, framed as it was by a pair of diamond chandelier earrings that glittered as though they themselves were their own source of light. Her black curls she had collected in a side chignon, a few errant tendrils left out to daintily frame her heart-shaped face. She lined her eyes, blue as aquamarine, in thick strokes of kohl, and made them pop with shimmering white shadow. Her lips, she glossed with pale pink. And finally, she wore a simple diamond tennis bracelet that caught the light with every graceful move of her hand. Smiling, she admired herself in the stand-up mirror, thinking that the effect was not altogether unpleasant.

  At six o’clock sharp, Rowan let himself into the apartment. Viola flounced happily into the center of the room and did a little spin, but her smile vanished when she saw the way he was looking at her.

  “What?” she asked, clutching her hands in front of her. “No good?” She peered down at the dress, smoothing the skirt over her legs. “I figured black would be safe, but—”

  “You look…” His stunned expression morphed then into something of a grin. “Christ, I do
n’t know how you expect to blend looking like that.”

  The assassin blushed very prettily, and attempted to remind herself that she was going this event to do a job, not to embark on some sort of ridiculous Cinderella story. “So, I look good, then.”

  “You know you do.”

  She wrinkled her nose, unable to keep from smiling. “I know, right? God, I love this dress. Please tell me I get to keep this dress.”

  “You can keep the dress.”

  “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

  “But the diamonds have to go back. They’re on loan.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him and really looked at him for the first time. It wasn’t uncommon for Viola to see Rowan in a suit, but this was the first time she’d ever seen him in a tuxedo. She drank him in with unabashed appreciation, noting how he held himself a little taller, perhaps a little more stiffly, than normal. “You don’t look so bad yourself,” she remarked.

  “Yeah, I’ll do.” He offered her his elbow, and she snatched her purse from off the sofa and darted toward him, sliding her arm through his.

  Downstairs, a black stretch limo waited for them, and Rowan opened up the door for her to climb in. She was borderline giddy when she climbed inside, never having had the opportunity to rent a limo for prom, or even to buy a truly beautiful gown. Rowan climbed in beside her and closed the door, and the car — driven by some unseen figure on the other side of a partition — moved forward.

  “Okay, one sec,” Viola said, and fished her cell phone out of her purse. She scooted closer to Rowan, and held the phone out, snapping a picture of the two of them in the back of the limo. “I can’t wait to show this to Verity. She’s just going to die of jealousy.” Viola immediately regretted the word choice, but she let it slide, and Rowan said nothing of it.

  Instead, he opened up a briefcase and pulled out a few items, which he pressed into Viola’s hands. “All right, here,” he said, and she examined them: a pair of glasses, a headset, a black leather zippered folder.

  “What is all this…?”

  “I wasn’t kidding when I said I thought you were too beautiful to blend. Put those on.” He indicated the phone and the headset. She obliged, and placed the thick-rimmed glasses on the bridge of her nose before donning the headset, which covered her left ear and left her right free. A microphone curled around in front of her lips. These items would allow all the fancies in attendance to essentially ignore her. The gown was a costume just as much as the glasses, folder, and headset were. “McCallum will be arriving shortly after we do, according to the press release. And he has brought his cousin as his date, as she partnered with him in his latest investment venture. He’s mostly there to be thanked for being awesome, so he’ll be easy to watch, easy to stay away from. Everyone’s going to want a piece of him tonight, so it’ll be natural to keep your eyes on him. The hard part will be following him home without being seen, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Burn it?”

  Rowan grinned. “That isn’t the expression?”

  The limo pulled to a stop and Rowan climbed out, holding the door open for Viola and taking her hand to help her. She had the dainty chain strap of her clutch over one shoulder, and she gripped the folder to her chest, her eye makeup hidden behind the glasses, her lip gloss hidden behind the microphone.

  “Oh, here,” Rowan said, reaching into his inner breast pocket and procuring a very nice pen, which he handed over to her. “There’s a notepad in that folder. No one will pay you any mind so long as you look like you’re part of the event staff.” Event staff. Did event staff wear diamonds this fabulous?

  She smiled and took the pen before turning to peer up the grand staircase in front of her. It was the Natural History Museum, and it was all alight. Searchlights twisted and turned, casting bright columns of light up into a sky mottled with clouds. The building itself was lit in bold hues of green, purple, and blue, and as she took her first few tentative steps toward the entrance, she found herself engulfed in a sea of the elite, whose heels clicked on the stone beneath their feet as they took long, easy strides toward the event. Yes, their easy gaits seemed to say, I belong here.

  And Viola’s gait said the same. She clutched the folder to her chest, pressed the earpiece into her ear, and bent her head forward, moving at a pace that was just slightly faster than the other guests. She moved with purpose, falling easily into the role she’d been given.

  When she reached the top of the steps, she looked up and noted a woman who was similarly equipped with a headset, though where Viola was clutching paper, she was clutching a tablet. The woman — stern looking, wearing a pencil skirt and black silk blouse (slightly underdressed, if you wanted Viola’s opinion) — immediately approached Viola, looking down her long beak-like nose at her.

  “Who are you?” she barked. “Did the agency send you?”

  And without missing a beat: “Je m’excuse,” Viola said. “Je ne parle pas l’anglais.”

  The woman blinked, leaning in to try to spy some sort of credential. “I’m going to have to see your ID, miss, ah…”

  “Un moment,” Viola said, and held up her finger, turning her gaze away to indicate that she was listening to some unheard voice in her headset. In fact, she was.

  “Getting into trouble already, are we?” Rowan’s voice came in loud and clear. She could barely contain the grin threatening to light up her face. But contain it, she did.

  “Oui. Oui, je comprend.” She turned a pair of uncompromising eyes back on the woman, and lied through her teeth. “Madame, je représente l'ambassadeur français, un invité de l'événement de ce soir. J’ai été envoyée à l'avance pour en savoir davantage sur les aliments préparés avec des arachides. Il est terriblement allergique.”

  She rattled it off at such an impressive pace that the woman was beginning to lose interest. However, the words “l’ambassadeur français” had made something of an impression, so the woman simply bobbed her head. “Fine, fine,” she said, scanning through a list of names in front of her and waving Viola through without a second glance.

  “Why didn’t you just show her the ticket?” Rowan asked through the headset.

  “Because my way was more fun,” she said quietly enough not to be overheard by those around her.

  “Fair enough. Say, is the French ambassador really allergic to peanuts?”

  “Beats me.”

  Viola made her way through the front doors and entered the grand hall of the museum, a wide-open space that, for the time being, housed only the following: marble columns, buffet tables, a seven-piece band, waitstaff bustling around with trays of champagne, mingling guests, and the bones of a long-dead Tyrannosaurus rex. The lighting was largely warm and indirect, dots of candle light flickering here and there on the tables. The band was playing something cheery, a throwback to Sinatra, but nobody was dancing.

  “Hey,” she muttered into the earpiece as she scribbled a few lines of gibberish onto her notepad to make herself look more official, “get me an iPad for this next time.”

  “An iPad?”

  “Sure. That other lady had one. Why shouldn’t I?” She heard him chuckle wryly on the other end of the line, heaving a sigh to punctuate it.

  “Okay, princess. Whatever you want.”

  Viola spied a few familiar faces, prominent business people, B-list celebrities and musicians. It was the type of event major Hollywood stars would have been invited to, and had to actually think about it before sending their gracious declinations. Viola roamed the periphery, by habit noting the exits and the best places to slip into the shadows.

  “The eagle has landed.”

  “What on earth does that mean?” Viola demanded. But he never had to explain, because in the next moment, she saw him.

  He arrived wearing a sort of abashed smile as people with cameras swarmed around him to snap his photograph. He waved, perhaps somewhat half-heartedly, and tried to look at ease under the weight of all that attention. Clad in a Giorgio
Armani wool crepe four-season suit, Graham McCallum looked stiff, but undeniably handsome. He had on a white shirt, white pocket square, and black tie, and his glasses and scruff gave him a youthful, hipsterish appeal. But he was broad and muscular, like he spent his afternoons felling trees in the park. He relaxed a little when he passed through the metal detector and was able to put some distance between himself and the paparazzi; he reached out, offering his arm to his date — his cousin, presumably — who was (poor creature) instantly outshone by him. In fact, Viola couldn’t take her eyes off of him, and neither could most of the other women in the room. He had a magnetic quality, a good-natured boy-next-door sort of thing, except this boy could probably bench press your car after he offered to clean your gutters.

  She was standing there, slack-jawed, like she was a teeny bopper who had just seen her favorite heartthrob, and she became immediately aware of how ridiculous she was when he stopped and stared back at her. There was a flash of recognition in his storm-sky eyes, and he parted his lips as though he would call her over. It broke the spell, and Viola glanced from side to side, making sure that he was actually looking at her. He was; why?

  Her heart skipped a beat, and she turned on her heel to vanish behind one of the many stone columns that lined the perimeter of the room. Leaning back against one, she found that her heart was racing, and her breathing came in short, drowning gasps. Also, it appeared that Rowan had been squawking in her ear the whole time.

  “Hello, earth to Viola, come in, Viola.”

  “Yeah,” she said at last, pressing the earpiece into her ear. “I’m here. What is it?”

  “I just wanted to make sure you’d spotted him.”

  “Oh, I’ve spotted him all right.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She peeked out from around the column and watched Graham shaking hands with people, gesturing to his date to introduce them, accepting a glass of scotch from a waiter who’d no doubt had it at the ready. “Viola?”

  “Radio silence, Rowan,” she said, and plucked the headset off, abandoned it — and the notepad, glasses, and purse — at the foot of the column. She’d been seen, so very, very seen. There was no sense in trying to hide when the first thing her mark had done was drink in the sight of her like a man dying of thirst.