Lover's Knot

by Karen Chance

  She shook her head. "No, he doesn’t know. But . . . but we have to find them by midnight."

  "Why?"

  She broke off, blinking at my back, and then up at me.

  "Elise?" I growled. "Just say it!"

  She swallowed. "Because that's when they plan to kill them."

  * * *

  "I still don’t like this," Elise said, half an hour later. "We should wait until Heinrich sends help."

  "You said it could be an hour," I pointed out.

  We'd been on our way to see him, at his compound outside Paris, when Louis-Cesare's message arrived. Only the cab had just been meant to take us to where Elise parked her car, because it was a lengthy trip. One I was relieved we hadn’t taken, because we might not have been back in time.

  "He likes to be conservative. It's probably less—"

  "It doesn’t matter," I told her. "After the trip back to Claude's for the outfits, we have less than two hours to finish this. What if they're not here?"

  She looked unhappy. "I'm more worried about if they are."

  Marlowe muttered something, which I didn’t hear because I was being cut in half.

  "Damn it! I just want to cover the scars, not make them worse!" I said, as the freaking corset ate into my wounds.

  "It would look better cinched tight," Radu pointed out.

  "And I'll fight better if I can breathe!"

  "Oh, yes. I always forget you need to do that," he murmured, but let it out a little.

  His own corset was breathtakingly perfect, because of course it was. It matched the sheer, Gaultier-esque black-tinged playsuit he had on, with tight black shorts, a voluminous silk trench coat, and a top hat. Because Amour, it seemed, had a dress code.

  Unfortunately for my back, said dress code seemed to be a little high fashion, a little goth, and a little Rocky Horror Picture Show. And a whole lot of pretentious twats who thought they were cooler than they were. I was going to eviscerate someone for making me wear this!

  But I had to admit, it was almost worth it to see Marlowe in fishnets, which were fashionably shredded considering that Radu and Elise had had to practically sit on him to get him into them.

  I didn't know what he was complaining about. His legs weren't bad, and he had the least weird getup of all, considering that he wasn't even in a corset. Just a perfectly normal tux, sleek and black and surprisingly well-fitted—including the short shorts it came with instead of trousers, hence the hose. He'd flat-out refused heels, however, leaving him in regular dress shoes which ruined the lines, and had caused Claude to throw up his hands in disgust.

  But between my corset and underwear combo, Elsie's catsuit—which I’d have fought her for but it was more skin than lace—and Radu and Marlowe's Daisy Dukes, we were all set.

  Except for one little thing.

  "All right," Elise said, looking determined. "But remember what I said. We have fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Definitely no more. And possibly less if I lose my concentration."

  "I want to see it before we go in," Marlowe told her stubbornly.

  "Did you not hear what I just said?" she demanded, her voice a little high. Because I was getting the impression that Elise was more the paper pusher type of op, instead of the bang bang version. She seemed a little . . . stressed. "It's exhausting. I do it now and it shortens our time inside, and it's short enough!"

  "And if it doesn’t work, our time will be zero, and we'll be dead." Marlowe crossed his arms. And somehow managed to be intimidating, despite the hosiery.

  "Oh, all right!" Elise whisper shrieked, making Marlowe raise an eyebrow. And then raise both of them a second later when—

  "Okay," I told her. "That's seriously cool."

  "Who is your master?" Marlowe murmured, watching the colors in the air above us swirl and shift and change.

  "Why?"

  "I'm thinking of acquiring you from him."

  I caught Elise's fist, because she appeared to have the same reaction to Marlowe that I did. And while I’d love another go at him, especially with help, we were running low on time. "Later," I told her.

  She nodded.

  From her expression, it was a promise.

  "Oh, that's quite nice, isn’t it?" Radu said, batting at the clouds of masters' power that were floating about, but not fighting with each other as they had on the plane. Because they were no longer from different families.

  Somehow, Elise had wreathed all three vamps in the same slightly effeminate pink haze.

  "Don’t let it fool you," she told us. "Razzanti is . . . formidable. But they’re the least well known here, rarely leaving their own compound outside Florence." She glanced at Marlowe. "Do you speak Italian?"

  He looked vaguely annoyed. "Some."

  "Some won't work. Just stay—"

  "Why? This is Paris."

  "But we're supposed to be Italian!"

  "Look down your nose at them, say their accent is terrible, and that you'd rather speak their language than have them butcher yours."

  "What?"

  "It's what the French do."

  She pinched her nose. "Just . . . stay to the back, and keep quiet."

  He looked like he was going to say something else, but she didn’t give him a chance. "How about you?" she asked Radu.

  Who promptly told her how beautiful she was in fluent Italian, and how much he liked her shoes.

  She smiled at him. Because women always smiled at the men of our family. Well, except for Drac.

  They'd only smiled at him when he went away.

  Sort of like Marlowe.

  "You said we were in a hurry?" he reminded her.

  She ignored him. "And you?" she asked me.

  "Certo."

  "Va bene. You'll go in front with me. Razzanti is led by women; no one should find it odd if I do the talking. Try to stay in front of the men as much as possible. Your uncle, while charming, is often in Paris—"

  "And Marlowe is Marlowe."

  She nodded. "Someone may recognize him, but we'll have to take that chance."

  "Tick tock," the man himself reminded us. "Or should I say that in Italian, too?"

  "You shouldn’t say anything!" she said viciously. "We'll do the talking!"

  And with that, we were off.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Present Day, Dory

  Amour, Paris

  The nightclub/command center of the Pentacle was hard to miss. Unlike most underground operations, which tried to slink around the edges of society and stay in the dark, Amour was bright, loud, and in-your-face. And that was before we even got in the door.

  We rounded the corner from the next block, where we'd left the cabbie snoring behind his wheel, and were confronted by three eighteenth century buildings that had been gutted and turned into one. I stared at them, wondering if this was a case of hiding in plain sight. Because the large, neoclassical façade was practically vibrating from the music throbbing inside, and was painting the buildings opposite with neon flashes and huge, leaping shadows.

  There were two guys at the double doors, I noticed, as we picked our way across the street. Big bruisers in tuxedos, standing at the top of an expansive set of stairs, and strobed by multicolored flashes and a blast of sound every time the doors opened. Which was constantly, with a steady stream of people moving inside from the crush on the steps, while being replaced by more from a long line of shiny black cars stretching the length of the street.

  It looked like a damned red carpet.

  But nobody, as far as I could tell, was being relieved of hardware, even though many were wearing weapon-like accessories, or were trailed by bodyguards bristling with them. But the door guys never even blinked. Until a couple of clueless and fairly astonished-looking tourists tried to get in, and were velvet roped right the hell out of there.

  This, it seemed, was a private party.

  Good, I thought, and hoisted one of Claude's signature cloth bags further onto my shoulder. It was serving as a replacement for my
leather jacket, which in turn had been serving as a replacement for my duffel bag of nasty tricks. It would have made it through customs all right, with the right wards, but might have gotten rerouted to Tijuana, so it had had to stay home. And I had clinked through security without so much as a raised eyebrow, thanks to a witch I know.

  And would hopefully clink through the front door here as well, despite the skimpy outfit, because weapons seemed to be not only tolerated but expected.

  A shame these are the bad guys, I thought.

  It was my kind of place.

  Well, except for the fashion.

  "Is this a costume party?" I asked Elise, watching a couple in what could only be described as eighteenth century drag head up the stairs. The outfits were black and blood red, the stacked heels were maybe a foot tall, the faces were powdered and littered with sparkly little beauty marks, the legs were bare except for silk thigh highs, and the pompadours were high—on both sexes.

  I suddenly felt serious underdressed. Like a sad, brown wren in comparison to a couple of blinged-out peacocks. Maybe I should have listened to Claude and gone with the goth wedding gown, I thought, watching a woman in a similar ensemble laugh with a guy in a sparkly black unitard. And then sweep inside on the heels of a woman in a playsuit studded with a few thousand sharp, silver-tipped spikes.

  Elise didn’t say anything.

  I looked up to find her staring around, biting her lip. Her hair was currently pink, from the latest splash of color, and half her face was green. But it was the expression that worried me.

  She looked gobsmacked.

  Like maybe this wasn't what she'd expected, either.

  "Elise?" No response. "Elise!"

  She blinked that time, and her head jerked around. She was already taller than me—no surprise, most people are. But the shiny black stilettos Claude had provided put her blonde head a foot above mine. Which might explain why she didn’t look at me, but above me.

  Or there may have been another reason.

  I turned to see a freaking palanquin being carted up the stairs by four burly human types in little leather skirts and Greek sandals. And reclining on the silken pillows within, was a creature in pure white silk, except for where it was splashed by the ever changing colors. Including a white veil, just sheer enough to make out the perfect masculine features inside.

  It was complete theatre, and weird as hell, but I didn’t get a chance to enjoy it.

  Because the next second, I was being jerked around, to face the other way. Where a guy in a black speedo and a black-and-white checked fur with a train so long it rippled down the entire flight of stairs was passing by. Only I guess he wasn't the point.

  But something sure was.

  Because Elise was about to leave an imprint of her hand permanently imbedded into my arm.

  "What is the problem?" Marlowe hissed, joining us.

  I guess he'd noticed her expression, too.

  Elise didn’t answer.

  "Are they always so brazen?" I asked, trying to knock her out of whatever the hell. And because I just couldn’t get over it. I’d expected a small, dark venue, filled with shifty-looking types, not whatever this was.

  It looked like a paranormal circus, and that was before the guy with the black leopard got out of a car.

  "And so distinguished?" Radu murmured. "I've already seen two senators."

  "Where?" Marlowe said sharply.

  I couldn’t blame him for overlooking them, super spy or not, because there was so damned much to see. But once you did notice, they were hard to miss. Radu nodded at the other side of the half mile of stairs, at a dark-haired beauty dressed in what was mostly a bunch of thin, black silk strands hanging from a jeweled collar, surrounded by a crowd of sycophants, also in black. Marlowe's eyes narrowed.

  And then flicked up the stairs to where another woman was standing, also in the midst of a retinue. She was a tall redhead wearing a mass of crimson veils so sheer and so light, that they shifted on every breeze. Making her look like she was wearing a bunch of red smoke.

  Her coterie were a bunch of tall, willowy types, with model pretty faces, if you didn't count the fangs. But they were dressed in columns of plain scarlet, I guess so they didn’t draw attention from the boss. They were standing around, posing like they were waiting for the Vogue photographer to show up.

  "Jaqueline and Aagtje," Marlowe said, with a tone I hadn’t heard from him before. Almost wary.

  "And Heinrich," Elise said, finally finding her voice. And sounding strangled.

  "What?" That was me, trying to keep up.

  "Where?" Marlowe snapped. And then answered his own question when his eyes fixed on the vision in white. The elegant profile had turned, to watch us as he was carried through the front doors, causing Marlowe to curse. And then to show off his vocabulary again at the sight of a squad of leather-clad guards—in black, of course—with bared arms and bared weapons, heading our way. They looked like the fashion police, in their overly styled outfits, but the power radiating off them wasn't funny.

  "Go dim," Marlowe snapped, and Radu threw the trench over the still stunned-looking woman, and then the two of them—

  Disappeared.

  Master powers, I thought enviously, and then Marlowe threw out a hand, demonstrating his own. The first four guards were suddenly a lot flatter, and went smashing back into the pack—or the ones who had made it through the door, anyway. But there were about a hundred more behind them, and while Marlowe was good, I didn't think he was that good.

  "Run?" I offered.

  "Run!"

  And then we were pelting off the side of the stairs, knocking Senator Red Smoke into the bushes along with half her ladies. And I guess they weren't used to that sort of hoodlum behavior at the illustrious European court, because it caused quite a stir among the well-dressed crowd. Or maybe that was the power bombs Marlowe kept throwing behind us, spilling guards down the now cracked steps half a dozen at a time.

  People were screaming, more were running, and somebody in the bushes below wrapped a hand around my ankle, trying to drain me.

  I looked down at the well-dressed senator, and put a stiletto heel through her perfectly made up face. And then left it there, when Marlowe grabbed my arm, jerking me away. Probably because of the hundred or so more guards coming at us from around the building.

  So we went up—somehow. It happened so fast, it felt like Marlowe scaled the side of the building like Spiderman. What I guess actually happened was something less Marveliscious: he used the decent-sized gaps between the large stone blocks as grips for his feet and free hand, and dragged me up with the other.

  I could have helped, but frankly, it would have been slower. And right now slow was dead. Because Marlowe wasn't the only one who could climb.

  I felt a hand grab me before we even reached the roof, and kicked out viciously, losing my other shoe and sending someone I didn’t even see sailing back into the night. And then we were up and running, tearing across the roof and sliding through an open dormer window, into a small, dark room. And then fleeing from there into a tight hallway and down some stairs, before running into a bunch of people who looked at us in surprise.

  And then surged past us to attack the guards on our heels, en masse, while Marlowe and I just stared at each other.

  "Razzanti," Marlowe said, as the clash turned into an all-out brawl. And I suddenly realized that I could see a faint pink cloud around our rescuers, if I squinted.

  Thank you Elise, I thought fervently. And then we were moving again, before our defenders figured out we were fakes. Down another hall and then through a series of tiny rooms, where we finally came to rest—

  Somewhere. Everything had happened so fast, that if felt like my brain was trying to keep up with my eyes. But when it finally managed it, I realized that we were in a closet.

  And that Marlowe was talking to somebody.

  The silent grimacing of a vamp phone call seemed to go on forever, although it was probably
just a few seconds. But vampires could cover a lot of ground in a few seconds. I poked him.

  "Radu," he told me briefly.

  "Are they—"

  "They're all right. And they’re in. On the main floor." He listened some more, and the scowl he'd started with grew exponentially. "Where a giant sized screen is showing another party," he told me grimly. "One taking place at our senate in New York."

  "What?" I stared at him. "Why would they—"

  But Marlowe wasn't listening. Marlowe was cursing in a vicious undertone, at me, at Radu, at himself—I wasn't sure. But the vocabulary was frankly astounding. As was the passion.

  "I should have known!" he told somebody. And then he cursed some more.

  "Should have known what?"

  "The pythia warned me—"

  "What pythia? That weird seer?" He still wasn't listening, so I grabbed him. "Marlowe! If you don’t start making sense—"

  "The pythia warned me that I either retrieved Anthony, or our consul would also die," he told me harshly. "That's why I'm here, instead of in New York. That's why I broke away in the middle of some extremely delicate negotiations to come here myself. I couldn’t trust another operative with this—"

  "Trust them with what? What are you—"

  "The pythia couldn’t tell me that. She just said that Anthony's fate was linked to the consul's—our consul's. But now we know, don’t we?"

  "We do?" I said, still lost.

  Until he spelled it out for me.

  "This isn’t just an attack. It's a coup. They’re going to take Anthony out at midnight, and thereby also kill our consul, his twin—"

  "—because what happens to one happens to both." I stared at him, finally getting it. "You think they have the full spell."

  "Heinrich is Anthony's spymaster. Of course he'd have shared it with him!"

  "And now they're going to show the deaths on the big screen, to let everyone know there's a new power in town."

  He nodded. "And not just here. If the consul dies in front of the leaders of the other senates—" He cursed, and broke off. Because yeah, I didn’t know what that would do, either.