Tempt the Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t say, because I was busy grabbing Jonas and throwing us at the nearest door, just before the unearthly wind slammed into the hallway like a tornado.
    We crashed into the floor on the other side as it hit, boiling down the hall like a freight train of fury. Merely the wind of its passing was enough to rip light fixtures off the walls, to puff a week’s worth of ashes out of the fireplace, and to send china figurines plummeting to their doom. Half a dozen books went flapping madly through the air over our heads, only to tangle in the wildly twisting drapes as I dragged myself back up.
    Jonas lifted his head to stare at me. “What the—”
    “Ghosts!” I told him, staggering for the door.
    My ankle hurt, my lungs were still crying out for air, and my neck was on fire. But I didn’t stick around to assess the damage. I didn’t even wait until the storm was over. I stumbled out into the hall with Jonas on my heels, the two of us being buffeted here and there by late-arriving spirits.
    And then I stopped for a second in awe.
    Because there were no ghost trails here. The corridor in front of us was a solid rectangle of pulsing, angry green. There was no furniture dam anymore, either, just random bits of wood sticking out of the plaster like quills on a porcupine.
    There was also no pissed-off vamp.
    The one behind us was okay, judging by the renewed sounds of destruction battering the mound. But whoever had been on this end . . . well, I didn’t know where he had ended up. But I didn’t think it was a good idea to go looking for him.
    Because the train was headed back this way.
    “Run!” I screamed at Jonas, and sprang for the office door, just as the storm barreled back at us again, flinging a deadly cloud of debris ahead of it. He dove in behind me, damned spry for an old guy, as jagged shards of paneling whipped by outside like knives.
    And then he slammed the door.
    I stared at him incredulously.
“Ghosts, remember?”
    He looked a little shamefaced. “Right.”
    And then they were back.
    We hadn’t even made it into the inner office when Billy zoomed through the door, screeching something I couldn’t understand because an infuriated tornado was right on his nonexistent heels. Something tore through the outer office as we dove into the inner one, upending filing cabinets and sending a blizzard of paperwork dancing madly through the air. Jonas leapt for the hat rack, I leapt for him, and Billy grabbed me around the neck, still babbling something.
    “What?”
    “You owe me, you
so
owe me!”
    “Did you get it?”
    “Yes,
I’m fine
. Thanks for asking!”
    “Billy! Did. You. Get—”
    “Yes, damn it, yes! I got it! I got it!”
    “Thank you,” I told him fervently.
    And shifted.

Chapter Three
    “Don’t,” I told Marco, a decade and a half later, when he opened the door to the Vegas hotel suite I called home. “Just . . . don’t, okay?”
    Marco is my chief bodyguard. He’s about six foot five, maybe two hundred and fifty pounds, and built like a freight train. My legs aren’t as big around as his arms, which might feel weird except that most
men’s
aren’t, either. He’s a swarthy, hairy, foulmouthed, cigar-munching, example of machismo who is usually covered in weapons he doesn’t need because he’s also a master vampire.
    Which is why it’s annoying when he decides to play mother hen.
    Not that that appeared to be happening tonight.
    “Hadn’t planned on it,” Marco said, and yanked me inside.
    “What’s wrong with you?” I asked, because Marco was looking kind of freaked-out. That was worrying on someone who, I strongly suspected, had been assigned to lead my bodyguard because he was the oldest of Mircea’s masters. He’d seen it all and he didn’t rattle easy.
    Although he was kind of looking rattled now.
    “We got a problem,” he told me grimly.
    I shook my head, letting loose a little cloud of Tony’s lousy housekeeping. “No.”
    “What does that