by Karen Chance
Despite the embroidery, it felt soft and filmy, almost like I wasn’t wearing anything. But it fully covered me from neck to feet. And the fact that there were only a couple of short slits at the sides that didn’t even make it to my knees, the modest vee of the neckline, and the full length, loose sleeves meant that, for once, I didn’t have to worry about flashing anyone. I might even be able to wear normal panties!
I found myself getting ridiculously excited by the idea, before calming back down.
I hadn’t seen what it looked like yet.
There was a full-length mirror in the bathroom, but I didn’t need it. The one over the dresser was big and showed something like two-thirds of my body from this far back. I kept my eyes closed, bracing myself, and uttering a little prayer that this would work, because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do otherwise.
It’s gonna be bad, I told myself. Just accept it. The question was, is it better than the others?
I opened my eyes.
Royal purple wasn’t something I normally wore. For years I’d dressed for the job, and that meant midnight blue, which is actually harder to see at night than black, or black, or—if I was trying to seduce a target long enough to get him away from his goons—bright red. But maybe I ought to rethink that.
Because purple . . . looked pretty good.
Make that very good, I thought, surprised. It was kind to my complexion and brought out heretofore unnoticed depths in my hair and eyes. The gold spangles, which had looked so gaudy amid sweaty tourists and a profusion of other colors and fabrics, looked strangely fitting here. The embroidery work was really very fine, and even the huge phoenix on the back didn’t take away from the whole. In fact, it added a merry, what the hell quality to it.
This was a happy, party sort of robe, swishy and fun.
And I was pretty sure that I even had the right shoes to go with it.
I got so involved in finding the goddess sandals, with flat soles and gold leather, that Radu had insisted on packing, and then doing my eye makeup—because when else were Cleopatra eyes gonna be suitable—that I failed to notice I had an observer.
Some sixth sense had me looking up, to find Louis-Cesare leaning against the door, holding a huge bouquet and smiling slightly as he watched me. I checked out the flowers in the mirror, which were beautiful but unnecessary, especially since it looked like he’d bought out the shop. I finished the eye I was working on, completing my over the top look, and turned around to lean against the dresser.
“That’s not gonna help you.”
He produced a ridiculously huge box of chocolates from behind his back.
“And neither is that.”
Then he brought out the big guns, and proffered a bottle, which initially confused me, because where did he get three hands? But it turned out that the flowers were actually in the crook of his arm, so that was all right. I walked over and regarded the bottle, which was a distinctive shape.
“You’re really sorry, huh?” I asked, taking the fat little jug of Louis-XIII, better known as the cognac of the gods.
And then he ruined it.
“I am sorry you were upset,” he informed me.
I looked up in surprise. “Oh. So, we’re gonna fight?” I waggled the bottle at him. “Then why bring out the good stuff?”
He frowned. “I have no desire to fight. But I cannot apologize when I did nothing wrong.”
I bent over and carefully placed the bottle onto the bedside table, because there was no reason to risk good cognac. Then I stood up and smiled. Louis-Cesare started to look worried.
“Nothing wrong?” I asked. “You’re seriously leading with that?”
His back straightened.
Yeah, we were gonna fight.
“And are you seriously telling me that you didn’t see that . . . thing . . . target you? It chased you halfway around the temple!”
“Because I was shooting at it—”
“Or because Jonathan told it to!”
I scowled. “You heard what it said; it didn’t take orders. And anyway, Jonathan doesn’t care about me. Jonathan probably doesn’t even remember me—”
“He remembers you.” It was grim.
“Isn’t it more likely that he was here for you? He’s obsessed with you—”
Louis-Cesare brushed it away. “It amounts to the same thing. If he caught you, he knows I’d do anything, give him anything, even betray the family to keep you safe.”
I’d been about to say something else, but I stopped, wondering how I was supposed to reply to that. It was often a problem with us; Louis-Cesare could be incredibly tight lipped when he wanted to be, but when he did talk, he just laid it all out there. He somehow managed to be infuriatingly stiff necked and completely vulnerable at the same time, and it never ceased to throw me.
For once, I decided to reply in kind.
“And if he caught you, do you really think I wouldn’t come after you? That I’d just sit around and let him do whatever he wanted? That I wouldn’t gut him for touching you?”
Louis-Cesare blinked, and I wondered just who the hell he’d thought he married. Did he think Dorina was the only savage part of me? Did he not realize that, on most of my hunts, she hadn’t even been awake?
And there’d been plenty of carnage, all the same.
“I’m a hunter,” I reminded him. “It’s what I’ve done most of my life. I’m good at it.”
“I know.”
“Then let’s hunt him together.” I put a hand on his arm. It was tense, but it had already been that way before I touched him, and he didn’t pull away. I tightened my grip. “I can track him. I can track anyone. Together, we can—”
“No.”
It was flat—and exasperating. And if I’d thought it was coming from a place of ‘me man, you woman, you do as I say,’ we’d have had a problem. And in fairness, I didn’t know that that wasn’t what this was.
But it didn’t look like it. His jaw was hard and set, but his eyes were haunted. Something about the expression made me want to protect him, which was absurd. Louis-Cesare didn’t need anyone’s protection. But it didn’t feel that way right now, and emotion softened my tone.
“We complement each other,” I said. “You can do things I simply can’t, especially now. I can do things you won’t, or wouldn’t think of. And Dorina is my sister. He knows where she is. We find him, we find her, or at least where to look for her—”
“I said no!” The blue eyes, so vulnerable a moment ago, blazed. And he did pull back then, an angry, abrupt gesture.
I let him go. “And you think that ends it?” I demanded. “That you forbid it and that’s it?”
“I think I know Jonathan a little better than you do! If you would listen—”
“I can’t listen when you’re not talking to me.”
“I’ve told you all I can—”
“You’ve told me nothing—”
“Damn it, Dory! Let it go!” He threw out an arm, which happened to be the one cradling the flowers. They went tumbling to the floor and, apparently, the silken ribbon keeping them all together hadn’t been tied properly, because they scattered everywhere. I got down on my hands and knees to gather them back together, and after a moment, Louis-Cesare joined me.
For a moment, we just picked up flowers.
“It isn’t enough,” I finally said.
He didn’t reply.
“Why is this so hard?” I asked. “I thought we were a team—”
“We are a team.”
“But not on this. I want to understand. Explain it to me.”
More nothing. It was starting to piss me off. I felt for whatever he was going through, I really did, but I was going through something here, too.
“Okay, then I’ll explain it to you,” I said, sitting back on my heels. “Dorina is my responsibility. Ray is my responsibility. I don’t know what happened to either of them, but I’m going to find out, and Jonathan is the key.”
“The fey—�
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“I don’t know the fey. I can’t track the fey. I can track him.” I met his eyes. “And I will—with or without you.”
I had expected anger, possibly even an explosion considering how things had been going. I didn’t get it. Instead, Louis-Cesare looked . . . bewildered, as if he’d never before been confronted by someone he couldn’t simply order around. You, sit there. You, come with me. You, hang out and do your nails until I return.
Assuming I ever do.
“Boy, did you marry the wrong woman,” I told him frankly.
“I didn’t.” It was rough. “I love your spirit, your independence—”
“Except right now.”
He paused, but he was fundamentally an honest person and always had been. “Except right now,” he agreed.
He sat down among the profusion of flowers, some of which were clinging to his trousers. I picked off a rose that had gripped him by its thorns so that it wouldn’t stain. It was blood red and velvety soft—the petals, anyway. It reminded me of the ones he’d scattered on our bed on our original honeymoon, which had been in the room I was renting from a friend, because things had been too crazy to allow us to get away right then.
They had stained, too, crushed and ground into the sheets by morning to the point that I’d had to throw that bedding away.
I grinned.
Worth it.
“Why are you smiling?” Louis-Cesare asked, watching me.
I twirled the rose around in my fingers. “I was thinking about Radu,” I lied, because I wasn’t ready to make up yet. “He’d love it here. He’d be in full-on Napoleon-during-his-Egyptian-campaign mode: flowing burnoose, silk cummerbund, turned up shoes—”
Louis-Cesare’s lip twitched.
“—maybe he could even talk some sense into you.”
The smile faded. “I’m not the one who needs to see sense. I want you protected!”
“And I want to find my sister—”
“I will find your sister. I promised—”
“To never treat me like an inferior again.” I looked at him. “Or did that only apply to Dorina?”
I was referring to another, similar incident, when Louis-Cesare had taken it on himself to try to fight one of my battles for me. That had not ended well, with Dorina coming very close to attacking him for the implication that she couldn’t handle herself. That sort of thing was not only incredibly rude in vamp circles, it was dangerous.
In a society where people were constantly jockeying for position, appearing weak was an open invitation.
Louis-Cesare didn’t answer. But, this time, there was a pregnancy in the silence that hadn’t been there before. He was finally listening, and he was thinking. I just wished he’d do it out loud, so I could figure out how his mind worked.
But my hubby was not a talker.
“If we do this,” he finally said. “If we hunt him together . . .”
“Yes?”
“I take him down. When I tell you to back off, you back off, no questions asked. You do not engage him yourself—”
“Is this about his magic? Because I know about magic—”
I suddenly found my wrist grasped in a hold of steel. “This is about you doing as I ask! Promise me!”
There was something in his face that stopped the response that trembled on my lips, something that kept me from pulling back and telling him off. It wasn’t anger, or even the wounded pride of a master not used to being challenged. It was worse.
It was fear.
I searched those blue eyes, but couldn’t tell if it was fear of Jonathan or for me, or a combination of the two. I only knew that this issue frightened my husband when nothing else did, so it frightened me as well. Which only made me more determined that, whatever had put that look in his eyes, he would not face it alone.
“Of course. He’s your kill.”
“I mean it, Dory. I know how you are—tenacious, brave, stubborn. But no arguments. Not on this. When I say you leave, you leave. Immediately.”
I sat there for a moment, wanting to ask what the hell Jonathan had done to him, what there was that I didn’t already know. But I bit my tongue. He would tell me when he was ready, or he wouldn’t. He’d already made a big concession tonight, one that he obviously did not want to make.
It was enough.
“I promise,” I said.
Chapter Sixteen
Dory, Cairo
Finding Hassani, I realized, might be harder than I’d thought. The party that we joined after a quick trip upstairs had spilled out onto multiple rooftops, with vamps casually jumping from one to the other on a whim. That wasn’t such a big deal in some cases, where the buildings were basically sitting cheek by jowl, but with others there was a significant gap. Giving me the visual of men in tuxes and women in sparkly, high fashion gowns leaping through the air like gazelles.
Not that everybody was all dressed up. I’d worried about my outfit being too touristy or too spangly or too something, but it would have been hard to pick something that wouldn’t have fit in here somewhere. Because each rooftop seemed to be doing its own thing.
One had sleekly dressed people in mostly Western clothing holding champagne flutes, although they were probably filled with the same nasty, non-alcoholic stuff we’d been served since we got here. Hassani did not approve of the devil’s brew, despite the fact that vamps can’t get drunk, at least not off Earth hooch. But the partiers made it look good, quietly talking or slow dancing together as if they were at a high-end supper club or a refined house party.
Another gathering, right next door, had the vibe of a bunch of old friends, casually attired and sitting on plastic chairs, playing cards, smoking hookahs, and relaxing. Well, except for the three guys in the back. They were trying to hide the keg they’d smuggled in by nonchalantly throwing a tablecloth over it and planting a candlestick in the middle.
Damn, I thought enviously.
Should have brought the cognac.
Their group, in turn, were bordered by some pretty raucous, nightclub type celebrations, one playing jazz, one with a thumping disco beat, and a third blasting Top 40 karaoke, while a vamp who ought to know better tried to hold a tune.
Our roof was somewhere in the middle, with a bunch of musicians with colorful tablah drums and a dozen female belly dancers in bright yellow and gold spangled outfits. And, okay, what the heck was the rule, I wondered, sizing up the low-cut bras and bare bellies of the dancers. I thought we were being restrained!
But all bets were off tonight, it seemed, because there was some serious shimmying going on.
“It is an interesting art form, is it not?” Louis-Cesare asked, watching one girl’s impressive undulations.
She had smooth golden skin, washboard abs, and a belly button piercing. She also had hair, not as much as Maha, but enough to hit the small of her back. And, like a lot of Egyptian women’s hair, it was thick, dark, curly and beautiful.
“Yeah, interesting,” I said, and pulled him off to what passed for a bar.
The rooftops were open to the stars, although there were numerous wooden pergolas with diaphanous draperies scattered around, as well as some big, square boards that looked like massive T.V.s or small movie screens. They were neither; there were no wires or cables around the bottoms and I didn’t see any projectors. But something was being shown on them nonetheless.
“What the—” I stopped to stare at one on the next roof over, which was big enough to be perfectly visible from here.
“Oh, yes. I forgot to mention,” Louis-Cesare said, handing me a glass of non-alcoholic punch.
“You forgot to mention what?”
He shrugged. “This is a celebration. They wanted to show people what they had to celebrate.”
He drank his own punch, and then frowned at the glass.
“Yes, but—” I stared at the big board some more. It was currently showing me in all of my crispy-fried glory: clothes blackened and half missing, skin burnt, hair—what was left of i
t—a complete disaster, and mouth open as I thundered across the room on a bright red motorcycle, yelling obscenities at an ancient god.
It was as embarrassing as all hell, and it wasn’t the only one. Similar boards were scattered around the rooftops as far as I could see, playing the greatest hits from the day’s event. We were all there: Louis-Cesare, climbing up a massive cobra’s body with a sword on his back; Hassani, doing his Gandalf routine at the top of the stairs; the vamp squad, carving their way through zombies like they did it every day; and me, trying to shoot a god.
I put my weak-ass punch down and started to look around for a way out of here, but Louis-Cesare knew me. “Not a chance,” he said.
And the next second, he’d pulled me into his arms, taken a running leap, and—
“Hey! Some notice next time!” I said breathlessly, as we landed on another roof maybe twenty feet away, but so lightly that Louis-Cesare didn’t even spill his drink.
He just laughed and kept going, jumping from rooftop to rooftop all along the block that Hassani owned. In the process, we dodged a trio of dwarves with musical instruments, a line of well-dressed conga dancers, and then almost collided with some more dancers in orange and red fluttery outfits, who streamed across our path without warning. I looked back to see their bodies painting a glittery rainbow across the darkness for a moment before we landed—
In an all-out bash. This one had party horns and confetti cannons, and dancing boys as well as girls. One of the latter came up and tried to dance with us, despite the fact that Louis-Cesare hadn’t put me down yet. He was pretty impressive, with a bare chest glistening with sweaty muscles, dark brown eyes with long, thick lashes, and a blindingly white smile.
His dance moves weren’t bad, either.
“You know, I’m starting to see what you mean about art,” I told Louis-Cesare, who grimaced and jumped to another roof.
And almost landed in the middle of a troop of six male dancers, who were doing an amazing tanoura. The Egyptian folk dance had also been performed at the reception given on our arrival, but that one had been staid and solemn by comparison. These guys were really going for it, with multicolored skirts flinging out like whirling dervishes’, and including a huge top skirt that they brought up their bodies and over their heads, manipulating it like a great umbrella to mirror the movements of the skirts below.