by Karen Chance
“Yes?”
Ymsi didn’t say anything.
I sighed and leaned my head against the wall.
Conversations with the twins could stretch over hours if not days, to the point that I often forgot what we’d been talking about. I sometimes wondered if the old legends were true, the ones that said that ancient folk in Scandinavia had sometimes been taken by surprise when the small hill they were camped beside suddenly got up and lumbered off. It had been a troll, waiting for a friend to show up, and slowly being covered by moss and grass in the meantime.
But Ymsi hadn’t just clammed up. He’d also averted his eyes, which I found fairly odd. Until I looked down.
And saw what I was wearing.
With my brain trying to hammer its way through my skull and all, I hadn’t noticed before, despite the fact that it was a lot nicer than my usual nightwear. Hell, it was nicer than my usual daywear, except I couldn’t recall ever owning anything in that particular shade of…that kind of washed-out…that sort of not quite…Oh, hell. Who was I kidding?
It was pink.
For some god-awful reason, I was wearing a shell pink nightie.
I blinked blearily at it, but it didn’t go away. It was still pink, still silky, and still frothy with what looked like handmade lace around the deep vee of the neckline. It had transparent sleeves, chiffon or something, big and voluminous and liberally tipped with lace. It also had a big floppy satin pussy bow under the vee, because 99.999 on the girlie meter had obviously not been good enough.
Did I mention it was pink?
I would have suspected that it belonged to my old roommate, Claire, who had been visiting for the past few weeks. Except that she was a redhead and hated pink in all its varied hues almost as much as I did. But it sure as hell wasn’t mine.
It was, however, rather thin and rather short, which explained Ymsi’s reaction. I snatched my old gray bathrobe off the back of the door, covered my wantonness, and tried again. “You wanted something?”
“Olga wants,” Ymsi corrected, daring a glance at me.
I waited, but nothing else was forthcoming.
“Olga wants what?” I finally asked, but got nowhere. Ymsi’s tiny eyes had fixated on the small amount of ankle I’d left exposed, with the scandalized expression of a nineteenth-century nanny. I quickly flipped over a bit of velour. “Ymsi, what about Olga?”
The eyes returned to mine, but no more information was forthcoming. Which was fair, since he’d already used up a week’s worth of words for a troll. “You come,” he added, in a grand display of loquaciousness, before rumbling back down the corridor, shaking a few pictures off the walls in the process.
I closed the door and slumped against it.
Olga clearly wanted something, but I had no idea what. And right then, I didn’t care. The room was swimming in and out, I felt like I’d fallen down a set of stairs backward and my stomach was threatening an uprising. Worst of all, I couldn’t seem to remember how I got this way.
Fey wine, at a guess. The lethal concoction from Faerie was the only thing I’d ever found that could knock even a dhampir squarely on her ass. I’d discovered this after my first-ever hangover a little over a week ago, which you’d think would have prevented the second.
But apparently not.
And this one was worse, because my memory hadn’t been affected last time. Which was ironic, since dhampirs black out on a regular basis. Every time the train goes to crazy town, we lose all recall of what happened, waking up hours or days later, often in a bad way and usually surrounded by people in a worse one. Only I didn’t think that was what had happened here. Because I didn’t recall anything leading up to the blackout, either. In fact, I was drawing a blank on most of yesterday, which was pretty damned sad.
Five hundred years old is a hell of a time to discover that you can’t hold your liquor.
I just lay there for a minute, staring at the one black sock I was wearing for some reason, and contemplated getting up. The floor was hard, but I didn’t really feel like moving. Or breathing or living, not that I could do much about the last two. So I settled for fishing out the tag on my finery.
It wasn’t doing anything so crass as to scratch my neck, of course, because it was silky, too. Which was what you’d expect from something bearing the name of a Parisian designer. A very famous Parisian designer who I hadn’t even known made nighties, but I guess so.
I thought about that for a moment, and then panicked at the thought that I might easily have hurled all over something that probably cost more than my car.
I snatched it off and threw it on the bed, where it pulsed in and out with the rest of the room, looking a little surreal next to my well-washed duvet. But at least it covered up the oil stain from the last time I cleaned my guns. I supposed that was something.
There was no need to wonder where it had come from. It might as well have had Louis-Cesare’s name embroidered on it, only they probably wouldn’t have because that would be tacky. In the way that giant satin pussy bows weren’t, apparently.
I stared at it blankly for another few moments, head pounding, gut churning. And decided that I was completely unable to handle the implications of the world’s most awesome nightie right now. I crawled off to the bathroom instead, where I hugged porcelain and waited on my stomach to join the fun.
It was being a lazy little bastard today, content to just twist around under my ribs. But the light was dimmer in here, thanks to my forgetting to flip the switch when I came in. And while the tile was cold, the bathroom rug was thick and comfy and the robe I’d dragged in with me made a nice warm heap at my feet. My forehead found a cool spot along the rim that it liked and, overall, I decided, things were looking slightly—
“Dory!”
“Augghh!” I reacted before I thought, proving that split-second timing wasn’t always a good thing. Like when it resulted in my leaping up and slamming another roommate against the bathroom wall.
Claire’s wide green eyes regarded me over the arm I had shoved against her windpipe, but she didn’t look afraid. Possibly because the slight redhead was perfectly capable of reversing our positions anytime she felt like it. “Are you all right?”
Considering that she was the one pinned to the wall, I thought that an odd question. But I wasn’t having a great day, so I decided maybe it was me. “You startled me,” I told her, letting go.
Claire did not seem to like this answer. “Ymsi said you’re hurt!”
“What? No, just—” I stopped myself, barely in time, because Claire was not a fan of fey wine. Claire was, in fact, leaning heavily toward prohibition these days, so explaining that I’d somehow fallen off the wagon wasn’t likely to result in my day getting any better.
“Just what?” she demanded.
“Just a little stiff,” I substituted.
“A little stiff? You’re black and blue!”
I looked down. And then I snatched up a towel, cursing my metabolism, which should have already smoothed out the evidence of whatever had happened last night. Fast healing was one of the few perks in a condition with a hell of a lot of negatives, only it was kind of hard to tell that at the moment.
“Well?” Claire demanded.
“Um,” I said because my brain was still half baked.
Claire’s hands went to her hips, never a good sign. “You told me you were going on a routine assignment. You told me it was nothing to worry about. You told me not to wait up. And now I find you half dead—”
“I’m not half dead. It’s just cosmetic—”
Claire grasped my shoulders and turned me toward the mirror. “Cosmetic?”
And okay. I had to admit, I’d looked better. My short hair was a matted wreck, there were dark circles under my eyes, and my usually pale skin was corpse white—the parts that weren’t green or yellow or richly purple. More worryingly, my baby fangs were out, which usually happened only when I was perilously close to tipping over into Mr. Hyde territory.
I quickly drew them back in. It didn’t help much. I still looked like Dracula’s daughter.
Which was completely unfair, since he’d only been an uncle.
“Claire—”
“You promised me,” she said, as I turned back to face her. Her tone was deadly quiet, but that was actually worse than one of her famous fits. The fits you could reason with; quiet Claire was laying down the law. “You promised you’d take better care of yourself—”
“I have been—”
“Yes, you really look like it!” Her gesture took in the whole sorry picture, which the towel wasn’t doing a great job of hiding since it was only a hand variety. And since the mirror over the sink was busy reflecting my bruised ribs and backside.
But I was moving okay, and nothing inside was swelling or pinching or stabbing, or giving any of the other telltale signs of serious injury. I had healed; my body just tended to prioritize damage, and it hadn’t gotten around to worrying about the pretty yet. But Claire didn’t seem to get that.
Or maybe she did, because her forehead scrunched up, making her glasses skate down to the end of her nose. “Prioritize?”
Shit. Had I said that out loud?
“Then, if you look like this now…”
Shit shit.
“—what kind of shape were you in last night?”
Damn it. My head hurt, but I’d walked right into that one. And worse, I couldn’t seem to think clearly enough to come up with a good lie.
“I’m fine,” I said lamely.
“You could be lying in a puddle of blood, missing a head, and you’d say that!”
“Actually, if I was missing a head, I wouldn’t be able—” I stopped, because Claire didn’t look like she thought that was funny. I tried again. “You’ve seen me beat up before—”
“Not like this!”
“Yes, like this.” I turned back to the sink, wetting a washcloth, hoping some of the stains on my face were just dirt. “I’m a mercenary for hire, Claire. I stick my nose in where people don’t want it and they try to chop it off. It goes with the territory—”
“Bullshit!” she said furiously. “I lived with you for two years and saw you hurt less than in the last damn month. Two weeks ago, you were almost blown to pieces! A week after that, you were brought home in terrible shape by that vampire—”
“His name is Louis-Cesare and I was mostly just hungover—”
“—and now I find you like this?”
The washcloth felt pretty good, but when I took it away, the face looked about the same. Still purple, but…moister. “Okay, I’ve had some bad luck lately.”
“It isn’t luck, Dory! It’s those things.”
“What things?” I asked, because I am stupid.
“You know what things! Vampires.” It was just a word, but the tone made it an insult. I tended to forget that Claire was a teensy bit speciesist. She seemed willing to accept the fey in all their many types and permutations, but vamps were another matter.
Of course, a fey hadn’t kidnapped and almost killed her, either. “The guys who grabbed you were on the wrong side,” I reminded her.
“There is no side, Dory! Or if there is, it’s their own—their good, their interests. I don’t even know how you got home like this!”
“I brought her,” someone said quietly. And Claire and I both jumped, because neither of us had heard the approach of the handsome auburn-haired vamp in the doorway.
Claire also gave a little shriek, but it sounded more like outrage than shock. “How did you get in here?”
“I walked,” Louis-Cesare said, not helping matters.
But he didn’t look much like he cared. In fact, his expression was pretty scary, although fear wasn’t really the primary emotion I was feeling as he came up behind me. A hand went to my face, turning it up to the light.
“There are wards,” Claire said, glaring at him.
“Hm.”
“And a garden full of fey!”
“So there are.” The words themselves weren’t insulting, but the tone had the same casual arrogance that regularly got him into trouble with all kinds of people. Like a certain redheaded half-fey, who looked like she was about to knock his hand away.
But she didn’t, maybe because she saw the same thing I felt—the swelling in my bruised mouth going down as a calloused thumb swept across it, the lip returning more or less to its correct shape, the heat pooling low and intense in my—
Okay, maybe not that last part.
But it wasn’t the excitement that worried me as our eyes met in the mirror. Hands came up to frame my face, big and warm and soothing, like the thumbs stroking along my cheekbones. It should have really ticked me off—the conceit of it, the more than a hint of possession, the presumption that he could just walk into my bathroom anytime he liked and—
And I didn’t care. I wanted to turn in to the feel of those hands, wanted to sink into all that warmth, wanted to preen like a cat being stroked, wanted—
Wanted.
And it scared the hell out of me.
Chapter Four
I didn’t notice when Claire left. I wasn’t even sure if she left. I was finding it hard to concentrate with those big hands cupping my face, smoothing out my bruises as easily as someone wiping away makeup.
“Thought I took care of this last night,” he murmured, warm, rough fingers gentling away the pain. “But I am not so good at this.”
I wanted to ask what he meant, wanted to ask about last night, but I didn’t. Because he was wrong. He was really, really good at this.
A swipe of his thumbs and I looked like I was wearing war paint in reverse, with swaths of paler skin showing through the eggplant. Another pass and only a faint mauve blush remained along my cheekbones. One more and even that was gone, my cheeks blooming pink with health—or maybe with something else.
The whole process should have been fascinating. I’d been healed a time or two in the past, but hadn’t been in a state to notice the fine details. And they weren’t getting my full attention now. I was too busy wanting to catch one of those talented fingers between my teeth, to bite down and feel the flesh give, to suck the sting away afterward, to—
To do a lot of stupid stuff that would only make a bad matter worse, I thought, catching sight of a spill of lustrous pink in the mirror.
The sun was streaming through the sheers over my windows, lighting up dust motes in the air and gleaming on the extravagant satin confection on my bed. Framed against the faded blue cotton of my comforter, it might as well have been lit in neon. Damn it.
Why lingerie? I thought resentfully. Of all the things he could have bought me, why did it have to be—
But of course, I knew why. It was the sort of gift a guy got a girl when he hoped he’d get a chance to see it on her. And then maybe to rip it off her. And that would have been fine; that would have been just dandy. A racy little red number, or a long slinky black thing, something cheap so I wouldn’t care if it ended up in a couple pieces the next day? No problem-o.
But this?
This had expectations written all over it.
Expectations that I was going to fuck up royally because I wasn’t the kind of gal who wore designer nightwear and knew what all the forks were for. I was the kind of gal who thought the nightgown drawer was where old T-shirts went to die and who had only started using forks in the last century. And who frankly still thought them kind of a waste when there were perfectly good knives handy.
Shit.
I swallowed and closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. Maybe because the calloused thumbs were keeping up the slow caress, smoothing over my cheeks and down to my jaw, then back up into the hairline, massaging my throbbing head until the pain gave up and melted away. And then migrating to areas where there was no pain, where there never had been any, as if mapping my features: the arch of my brows, the sweep of my lashes, the bridge of my nose, and back down to catch on my lips.
Which was how I ended up sucking on a vamp
ire’s fingers when it was the last thing I ought to be doing.
How had I gotten myself into this?
Of course, I knew how. He’d caught me in a weak moment. I’d been hurt and he’d been kind, not to mention scorching hot, and for a minute there I’d actually let myself believe that this could sort of maybe kind of work, at least for a little while…maybe.…
Only it couldn’t. Because dhampirs don’t have relationships. Dhampirs have the occasional one-night stand in between bouts of madness, in which they hope their partner doesn’t piss them off and they end up eating his face. I think my max “relationship” had lasted five days, and that had been an aberration. And this one had already lasted longer than that, if relationship was the term for two people who spent most of their time arguing and trying to kill each other.
Not that I was feeling particularly homicidal at the moment. I was feeling weirdly boneless, a strange, warm, drifting feeling, untethered, like I might just float away. Until he gripped my shoulders, grounding me.
When I opened my eyes again, my face was clear, my pupils dark, my skin flushed and my lips red and full. I looked drugged, but I’d been there enough times to know this wasn’t it. This was better.
And it didn’t help when the hands pulled me back against a warm, hard chest. I’d never thought of myself as delicate before I met Louis-Cesare, but I looked it next to six feet four inches of muscle barely contained by a navy sweater and jeans. The dark fabric made my paleness stand out starkly, like a reverse silhouette, and the hard lines of his body caused my curves to look softer, sweeter, strangely vulnerable—
And the record scratched again, because that wasn’t me, that big-eyed waif in the mirror. I wasn’t vulnerable. I never had been. I didn’t need some guy to come along and take care of me, because I was perfectly capable of doing that myself, as I’d been proving for, oh, five centuries now. I didn’t need outrageously expensive nightgowns that didn’t even look like me. That looked completely unlike me, in fact, like he hadn’t even thought about it, like it hadn’t crossed his mind how ridiculous I would look in a goddamn satin pussy bow and—
