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medicine for three days at a time. At the end of each vial, if not more often, she had to take her lover to carnal ecstasy—the price for the next allotment.
    It seemed madness. What possible payment could this be?
    What could Mrs. Holt gain from her sexual adventures with a string of young gentleman?
    But she had done it. Now those men—the five men who had been her lovers—were all dead. And an earl wanted to know what had happened to his brother.
    She wished she knew what the medicine contained. But she had taken it to a dozen apothecaries in London, and none could determine what was within it.
    Mrs. Holt inclined her head. “The price is the same as always.”
    “Who—who will it be?”
    Mrs. Holt glanced at the man waiting in the corner. And crooked her finger so Vivienne had to move closer. “His name is Lord Blackmoor,” she rasped. “This particular man will be very hard to seduce.”
    Vivienne lifted a brow. She had yet to find the man who could resist her. She knew every erotic trick there was. Once upon a time, she had wished she could engage in them for love. But all that mattered now was Sarah. She slipped the vial into a secret pocket inside her bodice. “I am very, very good at seduction. Where will I find this gentleman?”
    “Oh, this one you won’t find, dearie.”
    Vivienne gritted her teeth. “Then how do I seduce him? Mrs. Holt, do not play with me, not with Sarah’s life at stake. If she dies, I—” Her heart screamed with pain. She was tired of this witch’s games. She
hated
this woman who controlled her like a puppet by dangling Sarah’s life in front of her eyes.
    “He will find you. I believe, in fact, he already has.”

2
     
    H e had been transformed into the undead by drinking a quart of blood from a stranger’s neck, had been given a demonic curse, and condemned his brother to endless darkness, yet
this
almost knocked Heath off his feet.
    The voluptuous blond woman was supposed to seduce him, as payment to this old crone for the vial of medicine. And the blonde was the seductive beauty he had seen in the pool with Raine. The one who had slithered down his own body in the reflection and taken him into her hot mouth.
    With his heightened vampiric senses, he’d heard the entire conversation from the corner. Heard the blonde’s cool, crisp voice become angry, desperate, frantic, frightened. And the old woman answer her, brimming with power, confidence, and the damn perverse amusement he’d discovered permeated the demon world.
    The old woman wasn’t mortal. She could shield her thoughts from him.
    Just as the blond beauty he’d rescued could. He’d tried to open the gates to her mind and read her thoughts, but he hadseen nothing but a void. Which meant her thoughts were blocked to him, and apparently not to Julian.
    None of this made sense. But as the blonde shoved past him and ran out the door, Heath had time for one swift glance back at the apothecary’s mistress. She smiled at him, a smile that flashed surprisingly white teeth. He moved to her in the blink of eye, but when he reached her untidy counter, she was gone.
    What did this woman know about him? Obviously a few things. Why else would she warn he would prove hard to seduce? After all, he carried a curse—one that prevented him from ever gracing any woman’s bed twice.
    He’d heard the blonde ask what the price would be this time. Did it mean she had seduced other men for the medicine? Was it too mad to speculate she could be the one who seduced and killed the five peers? That his two quests were connected?
    “Let me go!”
    He jerked around as the blonde kicked wildly at Julian’s shins. He had to intervene. Julian, the pup, didn’t yet know his own strength, and he’d grasped the woman’s arm so hard, she had dropped to her knees. The younger vampire was white faced and looked ready to rip out his own heart in remorse.
    Heath stalked out the door, letting it slam in his wake. He could return to the