Free The Flash of a Firefly by Amber Riley Page B

from her.
    I got to the door and spun around to face her. “Flo, seriously, calm down.”
    “Calm down?” she hissed. “How can anyone be calm at a time like this?”
    “Meds?” Stu suggested quietly from across the room.
    She shot him a look, and I held up my hands. “Not right now. Don’t do this now. You can either get it together and come with me, or stay inside and not kill each other.”
    I flung the front door open, not sure if they would be behind me, and went out to see what Francesca wanted. She was standing on the stone walkway leading to the porch. The wind was whipping her polka-dot skirt around her legs, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail so tight that it would have given a normal person a headache.
    Davis was beside her, and another vampire was wandering around my lawn, looking down at the grass. My heart dropped into my stomach. The Marquis was here, complete with the same ivory cane he had been carrying around since I first met him. The devil himself had arrived at my doorstep.
    His face was just as delicate and kind as I remembered. His black hair trailed down his back, just hitting his elbows, and his smile alone would leave girls weak at the knees. The Marquis was the picture of innocent youth, changed into what he was at the age of sixteen while visiting the court of King Henry VII.
    But lurking behind those green eyes was a mind as sadistic as they came. As Phoenix’s torturer, he had free reign to abuse any vampire sent to him as he saw fit, as long as his or her face wasn’t permanently marked. He would keep some vampires for days, some for weeks, others for months. Locked within the walls of his chamber, there was no escape, and nothing too vile.
    “It took you long enough,” Francesca said with a forced smile. Her heels clicked onto the bottom porch step. “Why don’t you invite us in so we can talk things over?”
    I spared a second to be thankful that the invitation rule applied to vampire, as well as human, homes. “I don’t think so,” I growled. “What do you want?”
    “You know what we want,” she said flatly.
    “You can’t have him,” Flo spat from behind me. “Go back where you belong and leave us alone.” Stu tried to pull her back inside, but she hit his hands away. “Don’t make me say it again.”
    Francesca started to laugh. Even the Marquis looked up and smiled. “Still the same as always,” he called from the middle of the lawn. “I always liked your spirit. It would be fun to break.”
    Flo stormed forward, brushed Stu off a second time, and headed straight for the Marquis. I grabbed her wrist as she passed me and yanked her back. I wasn’t ready to fight anyone tonight.
    Davis nodded to Flo and Stu, acknowledging his former family members. “This is turning into a regular reunion. We’re just missing Sullivan now.”
    “Sorry,” I grumbled under my breath. Sullivan was the only one I could completely trust to have my back in any situation. It stung a little that he hadn’t come to help. “You’ll have to make do with us.”
    “Those two are easy enough to dispose of,” Francesca hissed. “We just need you.”
    The trees were creaking in the wind. All around me I felt the chaos. It surrounded me like a suffocating cloud. Flo’s anger behind me, Francesca’s in front, the Marquis’s eagerness to make something bleed. I needed to center myself. I needed to focus.
    “Phoenix said he changed me to save my life. He had me believing that my neighbors, my friends and family, had burned my house to the ground with my wife and daughter inside. He made me hate humans. I spent centuries getting what I thought was revenge.” I stepped off the porch so I was at eye level with Francesca. “Lies. It was all a lie. He sucked them dry and set the fire to hide what he had done. And, for what?”
    The Marquis popped up next to me and stroked my cheek. “He did save your life. You would have died a long time ago. He needed a strong second, and you