by Karen Chance
“That’s my point, Ray. If they’re working with Aeslinn, they could be bringing in some very bad stuff for the war.”
“Then why not just tell the Senate? Have them deal with this?”
“Ray, I’m on the Senate. But if I’m going to talk them into diverting resources in the middle of a war, I need to have some evidence to offer. All I have right now is something Dorina overheard, which made it sound like first the albino and then a mage had taken over control of Geminus’ family. And you know that’s impossible.”
Ray shook his head. “It’s not impossible. In the trenches, you make alliances where you have to.”
“Yeah, only I don’t think it works like that for senators. But we know Geminus was working with Aeslinn before he died, and a bunch of dark mages. So, if the mage is Aeslinn’s contact—”
“Then the vamps wouldn’t be working for a human, but for a king of the fey.”
I nodded. “And their ally in the war.”
Ray frowned. “So you need Curly to find out if you’re right.”
“He was working with them. He has to know something.”
Ray sighed. “Maybe. Or maybe he just grabbed the first offer he got after Geminus bit the big one. People like Curly and me, we team up with mages or weres or whoever the hell is gonna help us survive.”
“Even a dhampir?”
“That’s different. You and me, we got a bond.”
I started to dispute him, but there was suddenly something in his face, something I’d probably worn on my own, more than once. Ray looked like a guy who was bracing to get hit, with words if not with fists, because he’d just risked something. And every time he did that, every time he trusted anybody, he paid for it.
I’d spent a lifetime like that, and yet, like Ray, I always seemed to come back for more. Always seemed to hold out hope for something . . . I wasn’t even sure what. Acceptance? A place I belonged? Some kind of certainty in an uncertain world, that somebody had my back, and would always have it?
So I didn’t say anything.
Except to ask if something was wrong, because I’m nosy like that.
Ray sat on the edge of the desk. His dark hair flopped in his face, and his blue eyes were serious. More so than I could remember seeing them.
“My boys . . . they’re not doing so good,” he told me. “When Cheung cut me loose, he didn’t bother to think, or didn’t care, that he was doing it to them, too. And then the club burnt down, and most of our stuff went with it. I keep telling them that we got a new place, that you’re our master now, but they don’t believe it. They tell me, ‘What’s a senator want with us?’ They think you’re gonna kick us out, and then they don’t know . . .”
He didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t have to. Somebody like Ray needed a protector. He was going to have to cut a deal with someone, and soon, and he would not be negotiating from a position of strength. He and his boys were likely in for a very tough time, if they found any place at all. And if they didn’t—
Well, in some ways, the vamp world was like the human.
It wasn’t kind to those of us on our own.
I didn’t know how this thing between Dorina and me was going to play out, and it seemed insane to take on any more responsibilities until I did. But if the worst happened, and if Ray and company had been acknowledged by me, then somebody in the family would take care of them. They’d have to.
We Basarabs stick together.
“Yeah,” I told him, after a moment.
Ray looked up. He’d been contemplating his naval, with a crease in his forehead, and his eyes shadowed with worry. He looked like he’d forgotten what we’d been talking about.
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah. I guess we have a bond.”
Chapter Thirty-one
There was a ceremony. There’s always a ceremony with vamps. Although, I don’t think it normally involves a bunch of guys in towels and dripping hair, some half-shaved, going down on one knee to kiss my nonexistent ring.
They seemed a lot happier, though, by the time I finally pushed the last squashy ass out of my bedroom window to go look for Curly. And then headed downstairs, wearing Ray’s worried frown, because I now had to find lodging for fifteen—sixteen, counting him—kind of pathetic vampires, and had to do it soon. Which was why I was halfway to the porch before I looked up.
And saw Louis-Cesare standing just outside the door.
I stopped dead.
Last night, there had been powder burns on one of his temples, a cut across his lower jaw, and a bruise, livid red and purple, distorting his left cheek. Tonight, there was nothing. It was as if the whole thing at the theatre had just been a bad dream.
It shouldn’t have surprised me.
As soon as the curses wore off, healing would have been almost instantaneous. That’s why most people never saw a first-level master like that; they healed too fast. You were never supposed to be able to trace the indentation left by a bullet, or see the scattered pieces of it shining in the moonlight through half-healed skin. You were never supposed to smell his blood, or feel terror grip your heart at the extent of the damage, because it was gone in an instant, as if it had never been there at all.
But it had been there, and I had seen it.
And, suddenly, I couldn’t see anything else.
“Dory!” a lilting voice called. “We were just talking about you.”
Shit. I’d been so busy staring at Louis-Cesare, I’d failed to notice that someone else was back, too. And lounging on the swing, his long legs splayed out in casual elegance, his green eyes amused.
I didn’t know why Caedmon looked so pleased with himself until I noticed: Louis-Cesare was holding a single rose, a beautiful thing, elegant and bright red and tied with a little white bow. Which would have been more impressive if the porch hadn’t been draped with them. Like, to the point that I wasn’t sure it wasn’t about to collapse.
I didn’t know where the others had come from, because they weren’t the hothouse variety. But rather big, old-fashioned, pale pink things with fat ruffled heads that shed a subtle perfume. Or they would have, if there hadn’t been a million of them.
Then I noticed the bloom-filled creeper coming from next door, where it had crawled out of the neighbor’s rose patch and inched along the ground the way this variety didn’t, because it wasn’t a climbing rose. Or, at least, it hadn’t been. Until it scaled a tall wooden fence, dropped over the other side, scrawled across the yard, and set about making our sagging back porch sag some more with a crap ton of heavy pink blooms.
Just to be nearer to the blond in the swing.
And to piss off Louis-Cesare, judging by his expression.
Things were a little tense on the porch, because he and Caedmon had a history, and it wasn’t good. And I really didn’t want a repeat, considering how much repair work the house still had to do. And then I noticed that Louis-Cesare was in a suit.
It was a nice one, a dark blue that deepened his eyes to sapphire and brought out the red in his hair. He’d matched it with a pristine white shirt and a dark-colored tie, usually a boring combination unless it’s draped across broad shoulders and a sculpted chest. I blinked at him, because he looked . . . well, like you’d expect.
Edible.
“Going somewhere?” I asked, and he awkwardly handed me his lone flower.
“I was hoping to take you to dinner.”
I didn’t say anything. Not because Olga’s errand waited, or because I’d already eaten. But because I hadn’t expected him tonight and I wasn’t ready.
I knew what had to be done, had known ever since I realized that my days were likely numbered. Hell, I’d known it long before that, practically since I set eyes on Mr. Too-Good-for-the-Likes-of-You. But I still wasn’t.
“Dory?”
“Uh—”
&nbs
p; “We’re already planning a feast here. My men are cooking it now,” Caedmon said, coming to the rescue with a strange little smile. And with a wave of a languid hand toward the garden, which I hadn’t noticed because the roses were blocking half of it. But now . . .
“Did you ask Claire about this?” I breathed, my eyes widening.
“Ask me about what?” Claire said, backing out of the house. She had a tray in her hands, piled with sandwiches, napkins, and a pitcher of homemade lemonade. Which she almost dropped, along with her jaw, when she turned around. “Caedmon!”
She was staring at the fragrant smoke starting to waft this way from numerous campfires. Campfires that had been dug willy-nilly, all over her formerly nice lawn. Including a huge fire pit over which a spit had been erected to hold an entire . . .
Smallish cow? Overlarge sheep? Massive pig? The jury was still out, because I couldn’t see it properly through a bunch of guards, who were crowding around to rub the meat with some kind of spice paste.
Others were putting pots on fires, decorating weathered old picnic tables with what looked suspiciously like Claire’s best bedsheets, carting in armloads of firewood they’d gotten who knew where, and chasing off a couple of little dogs, which had been drawn by the aroma. Large lanterns were being lit in the trees and smaller ones were being strung on ropes crisscrossing the garden; wooden kegs were being brought out of tents, including one that splashed Soini in the face when he opened it wrong; and groups of fey were gathered around large pans, loudly debating sauce ingredients.
Somebody brushed past Claire with a question in a language I didn’t know, but which caused her to spin and yell after him: “No! And stay out of my pantry!”
Having scared off the fey, she turned her ire on Caedmon, who was still lounging in the swing, still smiling that little smile and still holding Louis-Cesare’s eyes.
“Do stay for dinner,” he offered, which for some reason made Louis-Cesare flush almost as dark as his rose.
“Caedmon!” Claire’s voice snapped. “What is this?”
“A celebration. It’s not often we have the chance to welcome a new cousin, especially one so skilled.”
“Cousin?” Claire looked confused.
I glanced around. That was all we needed. Another fey.
“My apologies about your treatment earlier,” Caedmon said, looking past her—at nothing, because there was nobody behind me. “Reiðarr has been informed of his error. He and the others have been instructed to treat you with the respect due your new station.”
“Station? What station?” Claire asked, looking confused as I met Caedmon’s eyes.
And realized that he was talking to me.
A weird sort of chill crept up my spine.
“I told you before I left,” Caedmon said, glancing at Claire. “She is vargr. We all saw it—”
“What?” Louis-Cesare said, looking back and forth between me and Caedmon.
“—and as part fey—”
“What?”
“—she is to be welcomed by her family, as is tradition. One codified by treaty.” That last bit had a bite to it, probably because Louis-Cesare’s eyes had settled on Caedmon with an expression I really didn’t like.
“What? Wait.” That was me.
But Caedmon didn’t wait, although his smile acquired an edge. “And as there seems to be no way to tell which clan she belongs to, after so long, I have decided to adopt her into our little family. To the newest Blarestri warrior!” he said, hoisting a mug of something.
Suddenly, I was surrounded by fey, dozens of them, laughing and talking and slapping me on the back. And shoving a beer stein into my hands, while Louis-Cesare stared at Caedmon. And if looks could kill . . .
* * *
—
“Dory, what the hell?” Claire and I had ducked back into the hall, while the festivities exploded outside. And while Louis-Cesare and Caedmon faced off, because it had just dawned on my boyfriend that the king of the fey was trying to poach me.
“You tell me. Did you know about this?”
She looked shocked. “No! Or, rather, after last night I knew what you were—are—I mean, what you have to be—”
“Claire! I’m not fey!”
“But . . . you’re vargr. That’s a fey talent. It doesn’t exist anywhere else—”
“No, it doesn’t. But vampire mental powers do!”
“You think that’s what this is?”
“I know that’s what it is! My mother was a Romanian peasant girl, and my father—” I stopped, because holy shit. Mircea was going to be . . . well, ‘pissed’ didn’t really cover it. Not only did he have a family obsession that this was going to fly straight in the face of, but he also needed me on the Senate right now. And needed badly, or he’d have never persuaded the consul to look at a damned dhampir every meeting.
“Vampires can do that?” Claire said, her forehead wrinkling. “Just mentally ride along with someone? Because I’ve never heard—”
“Neither have I.”
Caedmon had slipped through the door while we weren’t looking, a massive pink bouquet in his hands. He laid it in my arms like I was some beauty pageant contestant about to be crowned, which would have been funny except that Louis-Cesare was on his heels. At least, he was until he grabbed the king of the fey and slammed him against the wall.
“You’re not taking her!”
I dropped everything—literally: the full stein splattered its contents everywhere and went rolling across the boards, and the flowers littered the hall. But I got in between the guys before a blow landed. “Not here!”
“Damned right!” That was Claire. “What are you playing at, Caedmon?”
“Playing?” A blond eyebrow ascended. “I assure you, I am perfectly serious. The law clearly states that we are allowed to claim anyone with fey blood—”
“I don’t have fey blood,” I said.
“I can assure you that you do.”
“And I can assure you, I don’t! I’ll take a test, if you like—”
“You already did.”
“Funny, I don’t recall it.”
“Really? I thought it was memorable.”
“Start making sense!” Louis-Cesare snarled, and Claire nodded. I blinked. Because seeing the two of them agree on something was . . . kind of creepy.
“It’s quite simple,” Caedmon said, taking his time, and adjusting his wrinkled tunic. “We have a treaty with your Senate—with all of them, for that matter. As you know, our birthrate is very low. We cannot afford to lose anyone of our blood, particularly one with such a rare gift—”
“We know all that!” Claire broke in. “But Dory just told you—she isn’t fey!”
“And she would know?” Caedmon looked at me. “You know who your mother was, but what about your grandmother? Your great-grandmother? Your great-grandfather? How well do you know your bloodline?”
“My mother was a peasant girl,” I reminded him. “They didn’t keep records back then. Most of them couldn’t even read.”
“Exactly so.” He sounded like he’d just proved something.
It pissed me off. “It doesn’t matter! I’ve told you, it’s a vampire skill. I get it from my father—”
“What is?” Louis-Cesare asked.
“I doubt that,” Caedmon murmured.
“Dory?”
“Something happened the other night,” I told Louis-Cesare. “It’s . . . complicated.”
“Complicated? How complicated?”
“Merely a manlikan army attacking the house, and then an assault by an especially strong vargr,” Caedmon said, before I could stop him. “Don’t worry; we don’t expect you to know what that means,” he added.
Because I guess Louis-Cesare’s face wasn’t red enough already.
“Give me a damned blood test,
and end this!” I said, because I needed to talk to my boyfriend. Like, now.
“You are dhampir,” Caedmon said. “Irrevocably changed in the womb by your father’s . . . condition . . . from what you would have been. There are no blood tests that can see through that.”
“So much for talk of treaties!” Louis-Cesare snapped.
Claire nodded vigorously.
“—fortunately, we don’t need one,” Caedmon continued smoothly. “Such tests can be inconclusive for a variety of reasons, which is why the treaty clearly states that there are other acceptable proofs. Such as demonstrating clear evidence of fey magic.” His eyes caught mine, and there was steel in them. “Which you most definitely did.”
Okay, shit.
“She belongs here!” Louis-Cesare said, pushing against the hand I had on his chest, in an attempt to get in the king’s face.
“She belongs with her people,” Caedmon said serenely.
“She belongs wherever the hell she wants to be!” Claire said. “And if you two start a fight in my hall, I swear—”
“She’s right. The kids are here,” I reminded them. Because I’d just caught sight of Aiden, wobbling about on unsteady baby legs, among the tall creatures on the porch. Until one of them picked him up and gave him a sip of beer, which made his face wrinkle and his small fists flail around, and the fey burst into laughter. And miss his companion, who was still on the ground with his nonexistent nose pressed against the screen door.
Until he was suddenly inside, and launching himself at Caedmon.
I grabbed Stinky before actual blood was spilled, not that it helped. Because Louis-Cesare’s hand was on his sword, Caedmon’s was on his, and both men looked like a battle was brewing just below the surface. And not far below, because I could feel Louis-Cesare’s arm flex when I grabbed it.
He wanted a fight, and the king seemed more than willing to oblige—why, I didn’t know. He had to realize how this was going to play with Mircea and the rest of the Senate. It was seriously ironic that they were being put in a position to defend a dirty dhampir, but they had done worse in their long lives. And when the choice was between distasteful and dangerous, they’d go for the former every time. And right now, an unbalanced Senate was way more of a danger than a pissed-off fey king.
