by Karen Chance
“Came where?”
“Here. The estate he just bought. It’s like eight miles from the consul’s place, so it wasn’t a long—”
“But why are we here?”
“If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll get to that,” Ray said. “So he runs in, right? And this is where the crazy part starts, ’cause he begins helping you—”
“Helping me do what?”
“Attack the Senate guards.” Ray saw my expression and nodded. “Yeah. Like I said—crazy. And then people really started freaking out, like they were more worried about you two than the damned burning zombies that were still wandering around. And more were spurting out of the portal every minute until finally somebody wised up and shut it down, and then your father showed up—”
“Great.” So much for showing him how in control I was these days.
Or for getting rehired.
“And then he did something, I don’t know what, but you passed out. That was about the time the consul came in and ordered you to be taken to Lord Mircea’s rooms—I guess he’s got a suite there or something—’cause of course they’re gonna want to question you about what happened at Central—”
“So why am I here and not there?” I asked, cutting him off. Because I really didn’t want any more details.
“’Cause Louis-Cesare told her no.”
I’d been halfway through a swallow, and almost choked. And then Verrell was back, clapping me heavily between the shoulder blades. Which would have been great, except the only thing I had stuck in my throat was surprise.
“What?” I finally managed to gasp.
“Yeah.” Ray nodded. “That was kind of everyone’s take on it.”
“Is he crazy?” I hissed. “He’s in enough trouble—”
Verrell made some kind of French sound, and went to get me some water. “He is Louis-Cesare de Bourbon,” he said, with a Gallic shrug.
“He is an idiot! He should have left me there!”
“He should have done no such thing. You were hurt, no?”
“He’s going to be hurt more!” The consul was a vindictive bitch, and that was on a good day. And if she’d just had her place trashed courtesy of us and the zombie brigade, it was fair to say that this wasn’t a good day. And even if she overlooked that, getting contradicted in her own house—
Goddamn it. Sometimes I thought the damned vamp had some kind of death wish.
Verrell made another of those sounds, the kind that defy translation. But this one sounded amused. “Zey need him.”
“They won’t always! And if he keeps this up—”
“And he was right. Zee atmosphere, it was driving you mad. Had you woken up zere, you might ’ave gone the crazy again. And ’ow could you rest and sleep and heal in zat place?”
“I’d have managed,” I said grimly.
“But why must you? He ’as beeg shoulders,” Verrell said, clasping mine, his hands gentle. “And you are so small, so delicate. I cannot believe what zey say—”
“Oh, believe it,” Ray said drily.
“I don’t need him fighting my battles for me,” I said, and shrugged him off.
The small chef looked sad. “But perhaps he needs.”
“What?”
He sighed and licked rosy lips. “I nevair say this, but…you know about zee salope, non?”
“What?”
“Zat witch, zat—Christine.” His expression looked like he’d just gotten in a side of beef crawling with maggots.
“I take it you didn’t like Christine?”
The chef made a fugue of gestures, rolling his eyes, shaking his head, waving his hands. Like he was having a small fit. “Like? Like? Non! We do not like. She was no good for heem. She use heem. For years and years and—” He made another noise. “But he feel the guilt, you comprehend? He think she need heem. And she let heem think this way, to bind heem to her. But there ees no help. She ees mad. She wants only to harm, and she hurt heem, so much—”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
“Do you not?” Verrell tilted his head. “But you must. He could not help her, non. No matter how much he tried. But you—”
Ray cleared his throat. “Uh, Verrell—”
I stared at the chef. “What are you saying?”
He beamed at me. “You are like her, you know. Pretty and petite and in trouble—”
Ray stood up. “Verrell!”
“—but not evil. He could not help Christine, but you—” Verrell nodded happily as the kitchen spun and the world came apart. “He can save you.”
Chapter Thirty
“I don’t think they tailored this thing right,” Ray said, sliding me a look.
I didn’t answer. I was staring out the window of a shiny black car—I hadn’t even bothered to notice what kind—that was taking us back to the consul’s. Her people had called an hour or so ago, rescinding my reprieve and ordering me back. For that interrogation, I assumed, although I didn’t really care.
I didn’t care about much right now.
Which was probably why I’d let Louis-Cesare’s people dress me up like a French Barbie doll. And because it had been that or wear the damned bathrobe. And because I knew they weren’t doing it for me. They were so happy to help their beloved master with his latest hard-luck case that it had been almost pathetic.
Damn, I thought. How bad had Christine had to be for a dhampir to look good?
“You, uh,” Ray said, and then he stopped in order to tug on the jacket of his sharp blue pinstripe. Which regardless of what he believed, fit him perfectly. Just like the gray Dior-esque skirted suit I was in, complete with black kid gloves. Because it might be August and hot as hell, but damn it, they matched the outfit.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. Of course Louis-Cesare had his own tailor. Of course he did.
“Um, so,” Ray said again, as beautiful Adirondack scenery passed outside the heavily tinted windows, looking vaguely spotty because of the veil on my chic little hat.
Screw it. I took it off and tossed it on the seat, ignoring the disapproving look I got from the chauffeur. I’d just trashed the consul’s house while half naked and shoeless. I didn’t think a missing hat was going to scandalize anybody.
And I didn’t care if it did.
“You know, it’s like this,” Ray said.
“Shut up.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. I should shut up. And I will—”
I laid my aching head back against the seat.
“Just as soon as I point out one thing.”
Of course.
“He’s a cook, all right? I mean, like he knows anything.”
“He’s a master. And he’s been with Louis-Cesare for years.”
“So? I’m a master, and I been with Cheung for years. And he never told me shit. And I doubt Louis-Cesare was having heart-to-hearts with the kitchen staff. The guy was probably just talking, you know? Like people do—”
“Like people who said they were going to shut up?”
“Fine. Be that way. But he’s stupid about you. And it’s not because he wants some kind of redemption for Christine.”
“You don’t get it. He thinks he killed her.”
“He did kill her, but only trying to save her. And if he hadn’t done anything, she’d have died anyway. Those damned dark mages had almost drained her dry.”
“Dark mages she’d have never met if Louis-Cesare hadn’t sent her to the guy who sold her to them.”
Ray narrowed his eyes. “Are you blaming him? ’Cause he couldn’t have known that. That mage was supposed to be legit—”
“I’m not blaming him,” I said wearily. “I’m telling you how he thinks.”
He’d tried to help Christine, a wandering, sick, clueless witch that his vampires had stumbled across, by seeing that she was nursed back to health. And by then sending her to a supposedly upstanding mage for training and integration into the magical community. She had been born into a human family who viewed mag
ic as being of the devil, and had afterward been raised in a convent, of all things. So she’d had zero help in learning to control her gifts.
He’d done all the right things, but somehow it had all gone to hell anyway. The mage had been desperate for money, and had sold her off to some nefarious types who had promptly drained her of all her magic and most of her life before Louis-Cesare tracked her down. And realized that there was only one way to save her.
But she had been too far gone, and the Change hadn’t worked. She’d become a revenant, a mad killing machine who had processed her early religious training into a seething hatred of all vampire-kind. She was completely mad and should have been killed on the spot. In any other family, she would have been.
Just like me.
A lot of vamps viewed dhampirs as basically half-human revenants, and believed the remedy for us both should be the same: a quick stake and a hasty bake in the nearest bonfire, just to be certain we never came back. But Mircea had let me live, just as Louis-Cesare had continued trying to save the unsavable. Just like he was doing now.
Well, at least now I understood his interest in me better. It had never really made sense before. Cinderella finding her prince made a good story, but it rarely happened like that in real life. In real life, we were attracted to people who were like us.
And no two people could be more different than me and Louis-Cesare.
“He’s stupid about you,” Ray said, glaring at me. “And you’re stupid about him. You’re both stupid about each other, which would be great if you weren’t also really fucking stupid—”
“Ray.”
“—and can’t see it. That’s all. That’s all I’m saying.”
And for once he actually did shut up. Maybe because we were turning into the long, curved driveway and were about to arrive. And there’s one good thing to come out of this whole lousy day, I thought as I gazed out the window at the consul’s marble wedding cake of a house. After last night, the sight of it should have been tying my stomach into knots.
And I didn’t feel a thing.
Just like I didn’t feel anything about Louis-Cesare. Nothing that I hadn’t already dealt with twice over, anyway. Nothing that I hadn’t known from the moment I met him, looking like a freaking Armani model who lived in mansions and had a personal tailor and didn’t need a low-rent problem showing up and causing him shit on a regular basis. Shit that he dealt with because of some misplaced sense of noblesse oblige that I didn’t need and sure as hell didn’t want. He was going to get himself killed still trying to make it up to Christine, when it would never be okay because she was dead and gone and it was over.
Like any crazy ideas I’d ever had.
Ray said something under his breath that sounded like “stupid,” which I ignored since the car had just glided to a halt. Leaving me with nothing left to do but get out, so I did. And walked inside without waiting for him because there was someone I needed to see.
A couple extra atmospheres hit me as soon as I passed through the front doors, but nobody else did, so I guessed I really was invited. It surprised me that there was no welcoming committee, probably armed to the teeth, but maybe they’d expected me to act like a lady and sit in the car until they arrived to open the door. Since they knew me, I couldn’t imagine why they had made this assumption, but since I was out, I decided not to waste the free time.
A servant pointed me toward a ballroom that put Slava’s to shame, a huge marble and mirror monstrosity that took up at least a third of the bottom floor of the main house. It looked like it could hold a few thousand people without anybody having to rub elbows. Only most of them were missing since it was midday and they wanted to be fresh for the fights tonight.
But not all.
There were a couple dozen vamps doing a Cirque du Soleil impression in and around the four great chandeliers that glittered a couple stories overhead. I was surprised they hadn’t removed those, despite the lack of windows, since they looked like they’d probably cost a fortune. And since they seemed to be getting in the way.
Or maybe not. Vamps bounced off walls, somersaulted, hit the floor and sprang back into the air. And shed sparks off each other’s swords as they clashed eight, ten, sometimes twelve feet off the floor. And yet somehow they managed not to so much as shiver the crystals on the consul’s precious antiques.
It was very impressive.
It was also bullshit. Which was possibly why the guy standing by the far wall had a sardonic expression on his face as he watched his boys go at it. Zheng knew as well as anyone that real fights don’t look like they were choreographed by Hollywood. Real fights are ugly, brutal and short.
But he didn’t seem too interested in demonstrating that at the moment.
He was leaning against one of the mirrors that was pretending to be a window and didn’t bother to straighten up as I approached. But since he also didn’t reach for a weapon, I decided not to mind. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have plenty at hand. A table at his elbow held one of just about every type of blade weapon imaginable, all lined up and shining mirror-bright under the lights.
“Looking good,” he told me, checking out the finery. “Although I gotta say, I liked last night’s outfit better.”
“You saw that?”
“Hard to miss.” He nodded toward the far end of the room, where a huge mirrored wall reflected the antics of the acrobats.
“That’s where the portal comes out?” I asked, my stomach sinking.
“What were you expecting?”
“I…hadn’t really thought about it.” But if I had, I’d have been hoping for a nice, dark basement or a secluded alcove—anything that wasn’t front row center. Literally, since graduated rows of seating lined the room on that end. I supposed so the important types could watch the disembowelments in comfort.
Or watch me make a fool of myself up close and personal.
“Not surprised you don’t remember,” Zheng said, grinning. “You were kinda busy.”
“Hope I didn’t interrupt anyone’s performance.”
“Naw, we were on a break,” he said, as one of his guys, the albino with the spiky hair, dropped out of nowhere to grab another weapon from the pile. And to give me a hissing scowl before rejoining the fray.
Zheng laughed. “Ignore him. He’s still butt hurt about the other night.”
“Your boys are looking good,” I said, since we were being so polite.
“They better be. They’re doing an exhibition tonight, before the big finale.”
“That’s tonight?”
He tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Guess they thought it would be fitting, having my boys entertain. Seeing as how I’m about to join their precious Senate.”
“I’m sure they’re thrilled.”
White teeth flashed in a tanned face. “I’m sure.”
I glimpsed Ray standing by the ballroom doors, peering in, and figured time was up. “I came to say one thing,” I told Zheng. “I am not under Louis-Cesare’s protection. I fight my own battles.”
“That you do.”
“You have a problem with me, you come and see me.”
“Our problem wasn’t with you,” he said, glancing at Ray. Who had sidled in the door and was now slinking closer, back to the walls, wide eyes on the lethal performers.
“Or with Ray,” I said, sighing. Because somebody had to look out for him.
Zheng noticed the lack of enthusiasm, and grinned wider. “Lord Cheung said to tell you that he finds Raymond to no longer be of interest.”
“Why the sudden change?”
“Ask him. See what you get.”
“I already know what I’ll get.”
Ray put on a sudden burst of speed and grabbed my hand. “They’re waiting. I was sent to get you.”
“In a minute.”
“No, now.” He shot a look at Zheng. “And they know where she is, don’t think they don’t. They know who she’s talking to. So if you’re thinking about payback—”
But Zheng just rolled his eyes. “I think everybody’s agreed. Putting up with you is punishment enough.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking sometimes,” Ray hissed, as we followed a couple of helmeted warriors down a highly polished hallway. “After what happened last night, you just run off? Like they’re not gonna care?”
“I needed to talk to Zheng-zi.”
“I needed to talk to Zheng-zi,” he mimicked. “No, you did not! You need to stay away from that guy. He’s bad news, okay? The whole family is.”
“It’s your family.”
“Not anymore. And I’m not crying over the loss, all right?”
I didn’t answer because it hadn’t been a question. And because I was busy trying not to fall on my ass. The smart gray pumps I’d been given to wear had a one-button strap, fashionable pointed toes, and the red soles of a famous design house. Unfortunately, they also had four-inch heels and no traction, although that might not have been a problem if the consul hadn’t been aiming to impress.
Not me, obviously, but the senior masters in town for the challenges obviously rated better. Including floors so glossy they would have been blinding had any sun been allowed to penetrate this far. As it was, they were slippery as hell, and falling wasn’t an option.
After my unauthorized detour, four guards had been delegated to see to it that I reached my destination. And they weren’t wasting time. I had the impression that if I slowed down, the two behind us would just flat out run me down.
And they could probably do it, too. Every one of them was a high-level master, second and third, at a guess. Which was why it was kind of impressive that the consul had persuaded them to wear the Halloween costumes they currently had on.
Of course, I’d heard that persuasion was her specialty.
Or maybe they just enjoyed dressing up like Roman centurions, complete with shiny gold breastplates, matching greaves, and helmets topped by huge red ostrich plumes. And they weren’t the only spit-and-polish types in evidence. Pretty much everybody I saw had on some type of special attire, to the point that I decided I owed Louis-Cesare’s people an apology.