Dark Needs at Night's Edge by Kresley Cole Page B

to be unhappy later.”
    “Are you usually unhappy?” he asked.
    “It’s not my nature to be, but my present circumstances are hardly ideal.”
    “Then we have that in common. Néomi, when my brothers return, I want you to steal a key to my chains.”
    She breathed, “Steal? Moi? Never.”
    “I saw you taking things from them already,” he said. She gazed up at the ceiling, resisting the urge to whistle with guilt. “Why did you exchange pebbles for your thefts?”
    “Well, it’s one thing to take something from the living, another to give. I wanted to hear someone say, ‘Now, where’d this pebble come from?’ well after the fact—it would be like a record of my existence. I thought it would prove me real.”
    “And now, because I interact with you, you know you’re real?” When she nodded, he said,
    “Then you’d think you’d be more appreciative, more inclined to help me. Néomi, I’m going mad just lying in this room hour after hour.”
    “You’re already mad.”
    He cast her a glower. “Aren’t your kind supposed to be territorial? Get me that key, and then you can be all by yourself again.”
    “I’m not always alone here,” she said. “Families live here at times. And contrary to most ghost stories, I adore having people here. Even if they can’t see or hear me, they at least entertain.”
    “When were the last ones here?”
    “Ten years ago. A charming young couple moved in.” The husband and wife had been dazzled by the incredible bargain they’d gotten on Elancourt—having no idea it was the scene of a
    “grisly murder-suicide,” as the papers had called it.
    The two had worked diligently to restore and modernize as much as they could themselves.
    When their first baby had come, Néomi had cosseted the little girl, rocking her cradle and putting on floating puppet shows, helping out the exhausted parents as much as possible. Yet when the toddler had begun to cry for an invisible puppeteer, the parents had gotten spooked and moved.
    Néomi had been heartbroken—and alone for the next ten years... until Conrad and his brothers had come.
    “You’ve never frightened anyone away?” he asked, as if that was precisely what he would’ve been doing in her position.
    “In truth, I do get very territorial with vandals. I scare them off—and they never return,” she said proudly.
    “I’ve already done much more damage to your home than some vandals. Yet you won’t help me leave?”
    If she gave him a key, he would be gone before the chains hit the ground. And she knew she would never see him again.
    Merde, that pang hurt. She inwardly shook herself. “Even if I could get it, why would I give it to you? So you could make good on your threats against your brothers?”
    “You would give it to me because, if you don’t, then I’m as much your prisoner as theirs.”
    “Why are you so keen to get away from them, Conrad? They’re only trying to do what’s best for you.”
    “You know nothing.”
    “Then tell me why you hate them so much. Because they turned you?”
    He gave a bitter laugh. “That’s not enough?”
    “It was a long time ago, and they’re doing so much for you now. They aren’t sleeping. They trace across the ocean, warring against evil vampires when it’s night over there, and then they rush back here to try to help you.”
    His expression inscrutable, he asked, “Do you hate?”
    “Pardon? As in hate a person?”
    He nodded. “Picture who you hate most in the world.”
    “That’s easy—Louis. The man who stabbed me.”
    “Imagine dying and then waking, only to be bound to that miserable fuck for eternity. Would you not resent whoever put you in that situation?”
    Oh, Lord, he has a point.
    “They took from me my mission, my comrades, my life as I knew and wanted it—”
    “Would you rather be dead?”
    “Without question.”
    She could see there was no convincing him of anything different in this matter.
    “You’ve heard that I have all kinds