For All Eternity (The Black Rose Chronicles) Read Online Free Page A

found herself in her suite, on the floor below. The housekeeper, Mrs. Fullywub, a chronic insomniac, was there, neatly folding the jumble of silky lingerie in one of the bureau drawers.
    The pleasant woman started at Maeve’s appearance. “Dear me,” she fussed, “I wish you wouldn’t do that. I don’t believe I’ll ever get used to it.”
    Maeve smiled, went into her walk-in closet, which had been a dressing room in earlier times, and selected a pair of tight blue jeans, a black leather jacket with studs, and a tank top that resembled a man’s undershirt. Scuffed boots completed the ensemble.
    Mrs. Fullywub shook her gray head. “Don’t tell me you’re going about with one of those American motorcycle gangs now,” she said. “They’re mostly bad company, those people.”
    Maeve changed hastily. “For my purposes,” she answered, “bad company suits best.”
    “I suppose you’re right.” The housekeeper sighed with motherly regret. “Still, I hope you’ll pay close attention to whatever is going on around you. You remember what happened to your brother, when he mistook a warlock for one of us poor, hapless mortals.”
    Maeve sprayed mousse on her hair and combed it through with splayed fingers, giving the formerly smooth tresses a wild, spiky look. She ignored the mirror above the dressing table, since it would not reflect her image anyway. “I’m nothing like Aidan,” she said, somewhat testily. “And you needn’t worry about me.”
    “You’re more like him than you think,” Mrs. Fullywub insisted, “and not a moment goes by that I don’t fret for your safety. You have powerful enemies, don’t forget.” Maeve raised her hands over her head, palms touching, fingers interlocked. “Good night,” she said, and disappeared.
    Moments later Maeve reassembled in a place Valerian had introduced her to long before, a bar called the Last Ditch. The term suited the filthy dive; “hell” would have been a more apt name, but that one was taken.
    Smoke filled the crowded bar, tinting the air a greasy blue, and the singular smells of unwashed humanity were more pungent than ever. Maeve twitched her nose, revolted, engaging in a brief and wholly idle wish that vampire senses were not quite so keen.
    She noted a warlock near the jukebox and nodded to let him know she was aware of his presence. He returned the courtesy and added a smile and a jaunty salute.
    Go to hell, Maeve told him. It was easier, with all the noise of the bar, to speak mentally.
    The warlock’s smile enlarged a little. If I get there before you, he replied, I’ll save you a seat.
    Maeve shuddered slightly in spite of herself. Long ago, in the eighteenth-century nunnery where she’d spent most of her childhood, the good sisters had taught her to fear the devil’s hearth to the very center of her being. It was a fixation that she, like Valerian, who had been human in medieval times, had never quite been able to shake.
    She said nothing more to the warlock, but instead scanned the crowd for a deserving victim.
    She passed over the ones who were merely misguided, and those who suffered from some hidden wound of the mind or spirit, looking for someone who relished evil and practiced it willingly.
    She was in luck, for there was a noted politician present, though he’d taken care to keep a low profile. He sat at a comer table, pawing a vacuous young girl who wore too much makeup and too few clothes.
    Maeve made a low, purring sound in her throat and sashayed toward the senator’s table, slim, rounded hips swaying, thumbs hooked saucily in the pockets of her leather jacket. “Dance?” she said.
    The girl stuck out her lower lip, and tears brimmed in her eyes as the politician clambered to his feet, upsetting his chair in his eagerness to accept Maeve’s invitation. Seconds later he was in her arms, and they were moving slowly to the music, swirls of smoke eddying around them, drifting even closer to the deep shadows next to the