"Don't try to confuse the issue with all this Dark One talk. What do you know about me, and what do you intend to do about it?"
He was looking irate now, not something that pleased either of us. "I'm confusing the issue? How about you? Raphael, I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about when you accuse me of knowing something about you. Other than knowing you've obviously studied kissing with the best, and you have stupendous… um… physical endowments, I don't know anything about you other than I really like you and I want to be with you. There. I admitted it first. Are you happy now?"
His eyes searched my face; then he looked away and rubbed his jaw. "I must be mad—that's the only explanation for it. I've gone mad and no one bothered to tell me, and now I'm living a madman's life where beautiful women think I'm a vampire and speak in riddles and try to seduce me at every turn."
"Beautiful women?" I asked, pushing his arm. "What women? I realize we just met and all, and it's not like I'm asking you to marry me or anything, but I must insist on exclusive rights I never did learn to share my toys with others."
"I was talking about you," he said with an odd look to his eyes.
"Oh Well, then, that's OK, although I would like to point out that I haven't tried to seduce you at every turn."
"No," he agreed, still looking at me oddly. "You haven't. I stand corrected." He hesitated a minute before making an embarrassed little grimace. "You really thought I was a vampire?"
It was my turn to look embarrassed. "It seemed like the only explanation at the time," I mumbled. He lifted my chin and leaned forward to look into my eyes.
"And that's why you asked me to bite you last night?"
I nodded, my face flaming. I was an idiot, truly an idiot not to have figured out the truth earlier, but Raphael was enough to make any girl's senses swim.
His lips twitched, then smiled a slow, sexy smile. "I thought you were just into deviant sexual practices."
I had a hard time pretending to scowl under the influence of that smile. "Me? You thought I was into the kinky stuff? Lord, no, I'm strictly a white-bread sort of girl when it comes to sex. Most of the time, anyway."
His lips brushed mine as the last words were spoken into his mouth.
"What are you hiding from, Raphael?"
He froze above me.
"Please," I whispered, stroking the line of his tight jaw. "It's obvious you're worried that someone is going to find out something about you. I want to help, if I can. You don't have to tell me your secret, just tell me if you're in danger of some sort."
His eyes went from liquid amber to hard, glittering stone.
"No danger," he said, his breath steaming my lips. "I… there is a situation with my last employer, Joy. I can't tell you anything about it, but as long as I'm here, all is well."
I nodded, understanding him better than he realized. There was something in his past that he feared would be exposed, something bad enough that he believed he would be blackmailed. I stroked my hands down his arms. His muscles were taut with tension, a sign that he wasn't trying to be offensive in accusing me of knowing his secret and using it against him—he clearly suspected everyone. I wondered what had happened on his last job that would drive him into burying himself in a wandering troupe of entertainers. Pushing him to open up would do me no good, so I did what I could to reassure him I was no threat. I teased the edges of his lips and moaned when he opened up for me, his tongue quickly assuming control and setting a rhythm that had me wishing Roxy had stayed back at the hotel.
"Are you guys starting that again? Look, Joy and I have things to do and people to see, so if you could wrap it up, I'd really appreciate it!"
"She's right," I murmured against his lips, giving him one last sweet kiss. "You need to get your sleep, and Roxy and I have to go do some things."
"What things?" he asked as I slipped off the bed and pulled my sweater down from where his wandering hands had slipped under it.
I had a strange suspicion that he wouldn't approve of us going to peek on Milos, so I made a dismissive gesture with my hands. "Oh, just stuff. I think we're going to the caves today, aren't we, Rox?"
She appeared in the doorway. "Caves. Yes. Caves. Right. Gotcha. Caves."
Raphael didn't look like he believed it for a moment. He snaked a hand around my waist and tugged me to him to lay his lips on me one last time. "Unfinished business," he reminded me of my words of the previous day.
"Unfinished business," I agreed, and with an effort I didn't think myself capable of, tore myself from the warm haven of his body and pushed a madly grinning Roxy ahead of me as we walked toward the outer door.
Raphael flipped on a light that illuminated the whole trailer, then leaned against the door frame to watch us as we left. I paused on my way out the door. "This thing that you're worried over… is it why you sleep with a gun under your pillow?"
For a moment he didn't answer, his eyes smoldering with a strange light as he nodded. "You never know who is going to come calling at all hours of the day… and night."
I nodded as well, then waved goodbye, closing the door quietly behind me.
"You OK?" Roxy asked me as I leaned against the door and caught the breath that had eluded me since I entered the trailer. "That was some kiss he was giving you, eh? Damn near curled my toes, and I wasn't even on the receiving end."
"Mmm," I said, thinking not about Raphael's kisses—wondrous and toe-curling as they were—but about the look in his eyes when he accused me of knowing a secret about him. What was I doing, practically promising myself to a man who could have any sort of secrets in his past? A man who kept a gun under his pillow when he slept? A man who was apparently well educated, and yet who worked for what were probably piddling wages with a small traveling fair?
I knew nothing about him, nothing, and yet here I was contemplating starting something serious with him, something important and meaningful. I couldn't conceive of what it would mean to uproot my life to stay with him, and yet that was exactly what I was thinking seriously about doing. Changing my life didn't bother me so much; it was the fact that although I was mad about Raphael, I didn't really know him.
Or did I? Maybe I knew him better than I thought I did. Then again… what was it Dominic had threatened him with the first night we arrived? "I can break you with a word." That sounded to me like Dominic had a hold on Raphael, and wasn't above using it to keep him in line.
Which made me more confused than ever.
"Joy? You're not having one of those visions again, are you?"
I shook away my questions and gave her a weak grin. "Nope. Just wondering how late Arielle sleeps in."
She looked a question at me.
"I want to ask her a few things," I said as I grabbed her arm and started off in the direction of the hotel at a fast walk.
"What sort of things?" Roxy asked worriedly.
"Things about Raphael. I think Dominic is blackmailing him, and in order to help him, we have to find out what his secret is. I'm hoping Arielle can shed some light on the subject." I started to trot. "Come on—if we hurry, we can catch a ride with that Canadian couple to Punkevní Cave."
"You want to go to a cave now? Now? When there's a vampire to find and a blackmailer to catch? Geez, I sound just like someone out of a really bad adventure book. Hey, wait up, I don't have giraffe legs like you do."
"No one at the fair will be up until this afternoon, and the cave is only a half hour away. We'll worry about the Dark One later. Right now I want to see that cave."
"OK, but when we get back, remind me to tell you something."
I stopped. "What?"
She sprinted past me. "Something to do with the fair."
I loped after her, cutting across the meadow, avoiding the tent city that was just starting to come to life.
"What?" I called out, getting a bit winded as I pounded up the hill to the hotel.
She picked up her speed and yelled something back at me that sounded like rune stones.<
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"What? What about rune stones? Roxy, will you stop running away from me and just tell me whatever it is!" I started to get a stitch in my side, and slowed down.
She had a good thirty-yard lead on me now, damn her "jog five miles every day, rain or shine" hide. She stopped and turned back to me, cupping her hands around her mouth and bellowing, "Rune stones! Tanya said you have no skill at reading runes, and I said you did, and somehow it ended up as a wager. I bet everything I have on you, so unless you want me to lose my entire life's savings, you're going to have to answer Tanya's challenge. I've set it all up with Dominic—you're going to do a reading tonight to prove we're right and she's wrong."
I staggered up the hill, my teeth bared. I was going to kill her.
"Don't look at me like that. I couldn't let her malign you—she was saying all sorts of nasty things about you. It'll just be a few readings, you can do that on your head. After that—well, Dominic said he'd be happy to offer you the position of rune-stone reader if you wanted to join the fair."
I clutched my side and tried to ignore the pain. I was really going to kill her.
"Of course, he said that meant you'd have to be his consort and all that, but I'm willing to bet that part is optional. You can probably negotiate that out of the contract."
"You're a dead woman," I yelled at her as she waved and spun around to dash up the rest of the hill like it was no more than a curb. "I know, because I'm going to be the one to murder you!"
"Hurry up or you'll miss the Canadians," she called as she rounded the hotel, heading for the lobby. "You think it's too late to change the bet to double or nothing? We could really clean up!"
"Make your will now, you're going to need it," I yelled.
Her words drifted back through the night air. "I wonder if I should warn the hotel owner to take out some extra insurance, just in case Miranda was right about you being a cataclysient."
I smiled a grim smile as I staggered my way up the hill, wondering if the Czech Republic had the death penalty for the murder of an American tourist.
Chapter Ten
Despite claiming the last thing she wanted to do was spend her day deep in the bowels of the earth, Roxy enjoyed the visit to the Punkevní Cave just as much as I did. Since we didn't have time to do the half-hour walk, we took the five-minute gondola ride down the Macocha Abyss past Drahanská Castle to the cave entrance. We walked through the cave for a bit on a well-lit path, admiring all the weird formations, then climbed aboard the red and white boats that took us on a half-hour ride deep into the cave via the Punkva River. The caves were pretty much what I expected—dark, damp, and humid—but these particular caves also had fantastic formations that looked like tall stone cones made of Cream of Wheat.
"Stalactites," Roxy said.
"Stalagmites," the guide corrected, pointing to the ceiling as we entered a large open area with wickedly sharp spikes dripping from above. "This is the Masaryk Dome. Those are stalactites."
Roxy clammed up after that, which for those of us who know her, indicated she was up to something. What, I didn't know, since I was officially not speaking to her. It wasn't until three hours later, when we arrived back at the hotel, that I lifted the no-speak moratorium. Our Canadian friends went off to ride bikes through the countryside, and Roxy and I staggered up the stairs to change our clothes into something that smelled a little less like damp cave and wet limestone.
"I hope you have used your meditation time well," I said to her as I unlocked the door to my room. "I hope you have crafted, honed, and polished your apology to me until it fair blinds the eye."
"Oh, you're speaking to me again? Good. I have lots to tell you. About Milos—I think I know of a way we can tell if he's a Dark One or not."
She followed me into my room. I raised a hand and stopped her before she could sit on the chair that Raphael and I had frolicked upon the past evening. "Wait just one minute, missy. Before you try to talk me into another one of your cracked plans, you can apologize."
"Oh, give it up," she scoffed, and sat down in the chair, pulling off her boots and wiggling her toes with relief. "You know it's not that big a deal! It's just a couple of rune readings, for pity's sake! Christian said he wouldn't miss it for the world."
"Oh, great, now you've arranged for a crowd to watch? You swore to me that all I'd have to do is a couple of quickie readings, and my pride—which I'd like to point out again was not the least bit affected by Tanya's nastiness—and your puny bank account would be salvaged. That's all I agreed to—just a couple of readings. Right?"
"Sure," she said, "just a couple of readings for one or two people. So! That was some boat ride, huh? Too bad you got seasick. I hope you barfing into the river won't damage some sort of delicate ecosystem."
I plopped down on my bed and glared at her. "Oh, no! You changed that subject too quickly for my taste. Which one or two people am I doing readings for?"
She avoided meeting my eye. "Christian volunteered to be one of your guinea pigs."
I made a face.
"What? You like him."
"Yes." I waved a hand and lay back on the bed, thankful the seasickness was short-lived. "Go on, who's the other one."
"It's two others, actually."
I sat up again. I had a nasty suspicion who the two were. "Don't tell me—Dominic and Milos?"
"You see!" she said as she jumped up from the chair and grabbed her boots, heading for the door. "You're positively psychic! You'll have no problem at all reading the stones for them."
"No," I agreed, "no problem at all."
She paused at the door and waited for me to finish.
"I won't have any problem because I won't be reading for them. Christian, yes. Arielle, sure. Raphael—you betcha. But not the gruesome twosome, nosiree."
"Joyful—"
I propped myself up enough to deliver a real quality glare. "NO!"
"OK, whatever, I'm sure we can work something out. Did you want to hear my idea about how to find out who the real Dark One is?"
I lay back down and flapped a languid hand at her. "Go ahead."
She grinned. "We're going to call in an expert."
"An expert," I repeated, closing my eyes and wondering if I had time for a short nap. I didn't get much sleep the night before, and if I had to stay up late reading runes at the fair, I'd need some time to catch a few Z's. "What sort of expert? A priest?"
"No, a real expert. The one person who knows more about Dark Ones than anyone else in the world except the Dark Ones themselves."
I mused on her words for a few seconds before I understood who she was talking about. I sat up. "You mean—"
"Yup, the man himself. I'll just give Dante a ring and see what time this afternoon is good for us to swing by."
I was too tired to even goggle at her. I contented myself with a grouchy glare. "Roxy, he's a big famous author! I'm sure he doesn't appreciate deranged fans like you calling him up. Oh, I don't know what I'm worrying about; you won't get through to him."
"That's what you think!" She smiled a particularly triumphant smile and waved a scrap of paper at me. "Got his private number! Turns out that Theresa the barmaid used to be a maid at the castle. Cost me a bundle to get it from her, but I'm sure it'll be worth it. I'll arrange with the hotel to have the taxi downstairs in, oh, say an hour. Get dressed in something nice. It's not every day you meet famed reclusive author C. J. Dante!"
I collapsed back onto the bed. Maybe Raphael had it right after all. Maybe we were all mad, and living in a madman's world.
As it turned out, it was a good thing I made Roxy call Dante's residence before we rode out to Drahanská castle.
"The housekeeper says he's out, but she'll leave a message for him," Roxy said as I emerged from a steamy, jasmine-scented bathroom a short while later. "She says he doesn't see many people, though, so our chances don't look too good to get a private audience with him."
"I don't blame him. If I had all sorts of women fans slavering over my
studly heroes, I wouldn't want them knocking on my castle door, either," I said. "If we don't have to race off, I'm going to take a nap. I'm going to need one, since you volunteered me to be the evening's entertainment. Wake me up in time to go to the bar."
"Aha!" she leered, wiggling her eyebrows. "Going to hang out at the bar in hopes a certain hunky non-vampire puts in an appearance?"
"Well, of course I am. If you were me, wouldn't you?"
"Naw." She shook her head.
"You wouldn't?"
"Wouldn't need to wait for him, because if I had been you, I would have kicked me out of his trailer and spent the rest of the day riding him like a bucking bronco. Have a nice nap. Think I'll take one myself. I've got my eye on Henri, the guy who operates the dungeon room, and I'll have to get some sleep if I want to dance the night away with him."
Three hours later I woke up Roxy to tell her we'd received a phone message from the mysterious Mr. Dante.
"Go 'way," she mumbled, refusing to come out from under her sleep mask.
"Come on, Rox, you have to wake up! Dante's secretary called, and we've been invited to a late tea. If you don't get a move on, we'll be late!"
"Wha'? Dante? He called?"
I rustled around in her wardrobe, pulling out the one dress I'd insisted she bring with her for any fancy events we might attend. "Here, go wash your face and put this on. You want to look nice when you meet Dante, don't you?"
She lifted a corner of the mask and peered at me. "This wouldn't be a cruel joke, would it?"
I put my hands on my hips and glared at her. "Do I look like I'm joking?"
"No. You're wearing your good dress."
"Right. Now get dressed. The taxi will be here in fifteen minutes."
Thirty-five minutes later we drove past the gatehouse to Drahanská Castle and up a graveled road. Torches had been lit along the way—real torches, not electric lights. Roxy and I were impressed.
"Must be nice to have the servants necessary to keep torches lit," I mused.
Roxy grunted her agreement, her face pressed to the window of the taxi as she peered out into the falling darkness. I knew from my guidebook that along the front side of the castle were immaculately groomed lawns and what looked like a formal flower garden, where the GothFaire would hold their All Hallow's Eve festival. As the gravel drive curved around toward the back of the castle, we passed all sorts of black, bulky shapes that indicated outbuildings.
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