“You’ve participated in them?” She raised a brow.
He shrugged. “Because of my ancestor, I’m accepted as a member of a particular clan, the family descended from the aboriginal woman he married. But yeah, I’ve done my share with the men of the tribe. Done a passable bird, horse, camel . . .” He winked at her. “They said when I did the bird, I looked a bit frightening, this naked white thing flapping his arms and cackling at the sky. They weren’t sure I hadn’t been possessed by some kind of evil spirit instead.”
“You didn’t stay with them, though.”
“I’m welcome to walk with them on occasion, but they won’t let me stay with them. They said the white world has more need of a Gravedigger than theirs.”
Then that brief shadow passed, good humor returning to the hazel eyes. “I could imitate a bird for you, but I’d be afraid of offending my totem.” He flicked his eyes toward his chest, the raven they knew was concealed beneath his shirt. “His power might desert me.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” Sliding her hand up to his nape, she played under his hair as they turned together. His hand was low on her back, and she supposed it was clear to anyone watching they were intimate with each other. She’d seen more than one woman’s eyes seeking wedding rings and tutting when they didn’t find any.
Bugger them. They’re just in a blue because their husbands can’t take their eyes off your bum.
“Behave,” she reproved, though her eyes twinkled. “You still haven’t told me how you learned to dance.” He grinned. “Maybe it’s from sheep shearing. The key is keeping the sheep relaxed, so she’ll turn in your arms like a lady dancing.” He took her smoothly under his arm and then back to him again. “When the shears run along her fleece, you keep one hand ahead of the blades to pull the skin smooth so you don’t cut her, and so you’ll cut the fleece even. I expect that feels like a soothing stroke up a woman’s back.” His fingers drifted along her spine. “ ’Course, you’re spinning her this way and that on her arse. May explain why my first few dance partners didn’t take well to me.”
She chuckled. “Care to walk on the beach with me after this dance?”
Dev nodded, gave her another stylish spin to maneuver her off the dance floor and made her laugh again. He liked the sound of it, relaxed and almost girlish. She stopped at the boardwalk to hold his shoulder and remove her sandals, leaving them tucked in the shadows as they continued down to the shore. She’d worn a proper sun-dress tonight, and he liked the way it bared her arms, the flare of the modest skirt that fell to her calves. She’d clipped her hair back with a barrette on her shoulders. She looked pretty this way, a young woman walking along the beach with a beau.
However, despite her attractive but relatively demure appearance, he noted her direct gaze was disconcerting to most. Whether consciously or not, parents had a tendency to move their children to the outside when Danny passed, hurry them along and steal a nervous glance over their shoulders as if they’d encountered a dangerous lioness who happened to look like the Cinderella of the fairy tales.
In contrast, when they went down the stairs to the beach, he automatically took her hand, making sure she maneuvered the rickety wooden steps safely, though she was lithe as a cat in truth and probably could have vaulted down them.
They encountered another swagman a few feet away, up against the dune. He’d collected bits of trash off the beach and created a giant lizard made of wire, paper, string and other bits of debris, delighting the children and Danny. She circled it several times and made the old fella’s night, with her interest as well as the few dollars she gave him.
When another group of children came to see, they moved on toward the shore. Danny held up her skirt to avoid getting the hem wet, while the tide bathed her toes. He offered her his hand and she took it, wrapping her fingers in his as they ambled along in companionable silence.
“I’ve seen the world’s largest ball of string. And the world’s tiniest dollhouse. Why do you think people do that? Make things larger, or smaller?”
“Well, the miniature stuff seems easy to understand. Your own tiny world.”
“It always boils down to control.” She sent a smile toward him.
“Care for a swim?” he asked, nodding toward the ocean.
“No.” When he raised an eyebrow at her emphatic response, she grimaced. “Vampires can’t swim, Dev. Our bodies . . . there’s no buoyancy. We don’t float. We can walk along the bottom, but most of us don’t like getting our heads wet.” Which explained how cranky she’d been when he’d tossed her into the billabong. She snorted. “I heard that. I was not cranky.”
“If you don’t like what you hear in my mind, my lady, you can always change the radio station.” He drew her close enough to brush his jaw across her fair brow. Shaking her head at him, she bent to examine a shell. Her hair fell forward, baring the side of her throat, making him want to kiss it, blow on her nape. She tilted her head slightly toward him, telling him she was listening, still preferring to tune in to his channel.
“Why did Ruskin want to take your blood that night? Does it give him the same access to your mind as you have to mine?” Putting the shell back down, she moved on, her footprints leaving a trail in the wet sand. “Yes and no. If he took just a small amount, he could locate me in his territory, have some sense of my thoughts or intentions. But more than that, and he can get deeper into my mind. It’s not as easy. I could block him in a way a human can’t, but it would take fairly constant effort. For instance, vampires have used a forced blood exchange, combined with torture, to find out secrets from other vampires. Council plans, family fortunes, et cetera. Most vampires in a territory don’t have a choice, and it was set up that way to help Region Masters and overlords enforce our tenuous order. But if you have a choice, you don’t willingly give a vampire access to your mind.”
“Have you ever?” At her wary look, he squeezed her hand. “I want to get at that family fortune. You know I prefer the finer things in life.”
“Idiot,” Danny muttered, though she didn’t know which of them it was directed at. She could trust him, she knew that. “Two. One was a first crush. He . . . I was a total bogan, about thirty-five, which is like a teenager to vampires. I did it in a flush of feeling, sure that he was everything, my whole life. My father killed him when he tried to make me do things for him by manipulating my thoughts.”
“How long did it take you to forgive your father for that?” He lifted a shoulder at her surprised expression. “Most kids, it would take them a while. They wouldn’t see anything but their feelings.”
“It was long ago, and there was nothing to forgive. My father saved me from disaster. It taught me an invaluable lesson.”
“Hmm.” He wondered at the flat tone of her voice, but let it go. “And who was the second one?” Danny picked up another shell, held it up to the light, showing him the delicate lavender interior. It reminded him of the delicate shell of her ear, and he bent, nuzzled into it, seeking it with his mouth as she leaned into him. While she was still looking at the shell, he could sense her body humming with the contact, the way she pressed her hip against his thigh. “Her name is Lady Lyssa,” she said at last. “She’s the only direct line royal we have left. Used to be, vampires were in clans, headed up by royalty. Dukes, kings, queens. She was Queen of the Far East Clan. She’s very old. Over a thousand, some say, but no one knows for sure. You’ll get to meet her in Brisbane. Though I’m fond of Alistair, the Queensland Region Master, I admit she’s the real reason I’m stopping there.
She’s come to Australia to stay with Alistair for a couple months, and wanted me to visit if I came to the area.” He glanced at her, amused. “So you and she are mates. Like for girly stuff. Shopping and whatnot.” Danny laughed. “I’m not sure how she’d react to that. Oh, her servant is a monk.” Dev’s brow lifted. “As in celibate, a church monk?”
“Are there other kinds?” she responded dryly. “But yes. She’s married, so some of us figure that’s why she chose Thomas, but then, she was with him before she decided to marry Rex. He won’t be with her this visit, though. Rex,” she added.
“Sounds like you’re not unhappy about that.” Dev was watching her face closely.
She shrugged. “He’s not a very easy person.”
“Considering the majority of you are big mobs of fun, that’s saying something.” She elbowed him. “He used to be better. He’s been . . . changing. Remember, I mentioned the Ennui? Vampires, as they get older, can get a bit sick of life. If we have a predator of any significance, it’s that. Many vampires succumb to it when they reach five or six centuries. The vampire gets tired of everything and either self-destructs by running him- or herself into trouble, or chooses to walk into the sunlight with dignity.”
“That’s what your mother had.”
She nodded. “She was a bit younger than Rex, but I don’t think she ever got over my father, not really.”
“How did he die?”
A shadow crossed her gaze. “Vampire hunter.”
He stopped and looked at her. “There are vampire hunters? Here? In Australia?”
“They’re everywhere.” As she laid her shell back down again, she squatted in the sand looking for more. Gathering her skirt up beneath her, she kept it from trailing in the wet sand.
“But I thought you said the Ennui was your greatest predator, after other vampires.”
“It is. Vampire hunters are mainly fringe groups who don’t always know what they’re doing, easily killed if they stray where they shouldn’t go.” Her tone was flat, emotionless. “But because there are so few, it’s hard to stay vigilant against them.” He thought of the way she had watched everyone who passed her on the boardwalk, how she insisted that he be armed, even when they were traveling on Stuart Highway or in the desert.