by Karen Chance
“I look this way because the Consul threw me out of my room and somebody stole my luggage,” I told her between bites.
“Your luggage is here, where it’s supposed to be. What we couldn’t figure out is where you were, as you didn’t bother to inform anybody.”
“You had me tagged—you knew exactly where I was!”
“We knew you were somewhere in the hotel,” she agreed, as if monitoring my every move was no big deal. “But the wards around here interfere with the spell, so we couldn’t narrow it down any more than that. Marco only managed to locate you when you went outside.”
“For pizza. On her own,” he grumbled under his breath.
Mircea didn’t say anything, but his expression was deliberately blank. It made me very nervous.
“Coulda been worse,” Alphonse said. “We spent half the day thinking it was worse. The tag said you was alive, but then they brought the car in—”
Damn. I’d forgotten about that. “Is the Consul really pissed?” I asked nervously.
“About what?”
“Her car. I know it was probably really rare—”
“It was a car.” Alphonse shrugged. “It’s no big deal. But everyone would like to know how you survived.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I bet. I saw that thing and I’d have given odds that nobody made it out. Burnt to a crisp.”
I frowned. A lot of things had happened to that car, but that hadn’t been one of them. “It wasn’t burnt. And if it had been, the water would have put it out.”
Mircea lifted his head to look at me strangely. “What water?”
“The water in the lake. You know, that we nose-dived into?”
He was silent for a moment. “No, dulceaƫă, I do not. The car exploded in the middle of the desert.”
For a moment, I just chewed sandwich. I swallowed and drank some of my wine. “It exploded,” I repeated.
“We believe it was a car bomb meant for the Consul. The Bentley was one of her favorites.”
The gray whale we’d left at the bottom of Lake Mead had been a Packard. I’d seen the name written across its bulbous backside in big silver letters as it sank. None of this was making sense.
“She informed us that she asked Raphael to drive it out for her,” he added.
And then I remembered. Rafe had been saving a seat for me in a black Bentley. I’d seen it in the lineup, a sleek, antique gem gleaming under the emergency lights. I’d almost forgotten until now because we hadn’t taken that car. Somebody else had. Somebody who was now dead.
“I assume you shifted out before the explosion?” Mircea asked, watching me keenly. He knew something was wrong.
“We took another car,” I said numbly. And if we hadn’t, Rafe wouldn’t have been in the infirmary today. He would have been dead. If I’d gone back in time to try to save him, I’d have killed him.
Chapter Fourteen
“Here.” Sal shoved a glass into my hand. From the fumes, I was guessing it was straight whiskey.
I stared at the coffee table while I sipped it, but all I saw were hundreds of ruined cars baking under a cloudless sky. And all around them, an empty, dead landscape filled with bones. Had all that been the power’s way of telling me that I was about to screw up big-time? Had it been trying to warn me about Rafe’s death?
I really liked that idea, because in that case the images weren’t something to worry about. The crisis was over, Rafe had survived, and for once, we’d dodged a bullet. But as much as I wanted to believe it, something about that idea bugged me.
The burnt-out cars I could understand, considering what had happened to the Bentley. But why not just show me that? The actual explosion would have been a lot easier to decipher than some eerie landscape filled with rotting vehicles. And for that matter, why show me a destroyed Dante’s when I asked about preventing the attack on MAGIC?
I was sick of trying to figure out messages conveyed, not through language, but through nightmares! It was just one more reason I hated my gift. Once in a while, you got an image that was clear-cut and unmistakable. Like on my fourteenth birthday, when I’d been gifted with a vision of my parents’ deaths in a car bomb, complete with sound and vivid Technicolor. Those types were bad enough, but at least they beat the more mystical variety, which could mean anything or nothing. Half the time you never understood them until the events had come to pass and it was too late.
“So this is what? The third attempt on the Consul’s life in the last month?” Sal was asking.
“It is an ongoing problem,” Mircea agreed. “Made more so now without MAGIC’s extensive ward system.”
“And by her refusal to go into hiding,” Sal said, looking approving.
Mircea rubbed his eyes. I was beginning to know that gesture. “Yes, and while that has allowed us to identify several traitors, it is . . . nerve-wracking.”
“She can’t cower in the dark,” Sal pointed out. “She’s a symbol. People take their courage from her.”
“That is also her opinion. Kit swears she is giving him ulcers.”
Sal frowned and leaned forward, suddenly intense. “She understands that you can’t just sit by and hope things work out! That you have to make things happen—”
“I thought he liked stubborn, powerful, complicated types,” Alphonse interrupted.
“He likes them alive,” Mircea said pointedly.
I pretended not to notice.
“How could one of the Consul’s cars have a bomb?” I asked. “Aren’t they cared for by her servants?”
“Yes.” Mircea looked grim. “It would appear that we have another traitor.”
“How many did that damn girl corrupt?” Alphonse asked angrily.
“That damn girl” was Myra, Agnes’ former ward, who had joined Apollo’s side. She’d figured out how to weaken the bonds between master vampires and their servants by using her abilities to go back in time and poison soon-to-be vampires. Vamps who were ill or dying when changed were never as strongly bound to their master’s will. Horatiu, for example, had been on his deathbed when Mircea changed him, but the most he did with his greater freedom was to speak his mind.
Others had found more dangerous pastimes.
“There cannot be many more,” Mircea said, looking like he really wanted to believe that. “Myra was targeting the leading servants of Senate members, weakening their bonds so that they could be persuaded to betray or kill their masters. That narrows the number of suspects to a relatively small group. And at the rate we’re going, they will all have rebelled before long!”
“Wouldn’t it be wise to isolate them or something?” I suggested. “At least until things calm down?” I didn’t like the thought of one of those hard-eyed masters stabbing him in the back. Or anywhere else.
Mircea shook his head. “Unfortunately, the very ones under suspicion are also those of the most value to us. And at the moment, we need our strength.”
“Yes, but if they’re dangerous—”
“It would be more dangerous to deprive ourselves of their support,” he said firmly. “And we may already know who the traitor is. An old adherent of my house tried to assassinate someone dear to me recently. He failed and was killed. But for months before that, he was on my staff at MAGIC. He would have had ample opportunity to set a trap for the Consul.”
And so would a lot of other people, I thought but didn’t say. If I knew Marlowe, he wasn’t likely to leave any stone unturned in the investigation. Someone had almost assassinated his leader right under his nose. That had to sting.
“What would happen to the war if the Consul died?” I asked, pretty sure that I already knew the answer.
“Our participation would be severely curtailed while a replacement was determined. That could take months, as our laws allow anyone to contend for the position who has reached first-level status. That includes masters from other courts. And many of them are of the opinion that we need nothing from humans other than their blood.”
“So there goes the alliance with the Circle,” I said blankly. And possibly the war. I drained my glass, appreciating the warmth it sent coursing through me. My skin had suddenly gone cold.
At Mircea’s request, I spent the next fifteen minutes bringing everyone up to speed about my day. He didn’t interrupt, but he didn’t look happy. And he actually drank the amber liquid in his glass instead of just swirling it around as usual.
“I will have someone examine your ward,” he said when I’d finished. “I don’t like the idea of your being without it.”
“Yeah. Especially with the Circle still after me.”
“Yes, about that,” Mircea said, accepting a refill from Sal. “The Lord Protector called me this afternoon to ask about you.”
“How kind of him.” I stabbed a tomato with my fork.
Something that wasn’t a smile lifted the corner of Mircea’s mouth. “He assured me that Mage Richardson acted completely without his knowledge or consent, out of a spirit of revenge.”
“So what’s his excuse for the last month?”
“He asked me to convey his personal regrets to you . . . and to arrange another meeting as soon as possible.”
I smiled. I’d been waiting for a chance to use one of Pritkin’s more colorful swear words. And if ever there was a moment . . .
Mircea’s lips quirked. “That is what I thought you’d say. Which is why I agreed to the meeting on your behalf.”
“What?”
“Tradition states that the new Pythia’s reign does not officially begin until she is confirmed at a ceremony by the Lord Protector of the Circle,” he said mildly.
“I don’t care about tradition!”
“But the magical community does. To be accepted as Pythia, you need the legitimacy such a ceremony would provide.”
“That wasn’t your view this morning!”
“It was, in fact. But that meeting was deemed inadvisable because of safety concerns. Kit had heard rumors that there might be trouble.”
“Something you might have shared with me.”
Mircea raised one of those expressive brows. “Would you really have chosen to miss such an opportunity?”
“I don’t know. But it would have been nice to have the choice!”
“I will keep that in mind.”
Sure he would. When he ran out of handcuffs. “I’m still not meeting with the Circle,” I told him flatly. “And I don’t need or want their blessing. Feel free to quote me.”
“The Senate will guarantee your safety.”
“You can’t. You can’t trust anything they tell you!”
“We don’t. Which is why we have set the meeting to take place during the reception for the visiting consuls.” Mircea paused, and for the first time that night his eyes glinted with the usual fire. “All six of them.”
“Six?” Alphonse choked on his whiskey while the rest of us just stared.
“The first convocation of six consuls in history is meeting in two days’ time,” Mircea confirmed. His voice was steady, but there was definite color in his cheeks. It took a lot to make a first-level master lose control, even to that degree. But news like that would just about do it. The Consul might even have blinked.
“You work fast,” I said. “This morning you could only get two.”
“It seems that today’s tragedy convinced the senates that this war is unlike any we have seen.”
“And scared ’em shitless,” Alphonse guessed. “Not that they’ll admit it.”
Mircea smiled slightly. “They have had a shock—something unusual for them. Their courts are also built on or near ley lines.”
“They’re afraid that what happened once can happen again,” I reasoned.
He didn’t look too concerned. “There is always a chance, of course. But the lines have been in use for millennia and there has never been a similar catastrophe. Our best guess at the moment is that it was a tragic accident.”
“An accident that just happened to take place over MAGIC?”
“If the line was unstable, a rift could have occurred anywhere. But it appears that the battle was the trigger and it took place there. We will know more in a few days, when the turbulence within the line diminishes enough for an investigation.”
“So, if there’s no danger, why are the consuls meeting?”
“They may be under the impression that the threat is more serious than perhaps is the case,” he said blandly.
“And you don’t think they’re going to be a little upset when they find out otherwise?”
“Early reports are often misleading. And by the time a conclusive answer can be obtained, the meeting will have already taken place.”
It sounded like Mircea was gambling that, given the opportunity to talk to them face-to-face, he could bring them around. And maybe he could. But I wouldn’t have liked to look at that group and say, Sorry, just joking!
“Pritkin thinks someone sabotaged the line,” I told him.
Mircea frowned. Since that was his usual response to any mention of John Pritkin, I ignored it. “To engineer such a breach would require a fantastic amount of energy. More than any known magical alliance possesses. Our experts are convinced that a naturally occurring phenomenon was to blame.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said fervently.
“Where are the consuls meeting now that MAGIC is gone?” Sal asked.
“Here. Casanova is arranging lodging as we speak, and the wards are being reinforced.” He looked at me. “That should not go beyond this room, by the way.”
“I don’t gossip!”
Mircea smiled. “That goes for everyone.”
Yeah, but he’d looked at me.
Horatiu entered, leading a vampire in hospital scrubs. The nurse, I assumed. He looked at us nervously and gave a quick bow before ducking his head and scurrying past. And for the first time that night, I felt myself relax. A vamp medic should know how to care for Rafe.
Mircea was on his feet when I turned around again. That seemed to signal the breakup of the party because, within a moment, everyone had disappeared. For once, even Marco found somewhere else to be.
Leaving me alone with Mircea.
I started for the door, but a hand snagged the back of my shirt. “A moment,” Mircea said quietly. I sighed but didn’t fight it; we needed to talk.
I was ushered into the master suite, where I stopped dead at the sight of the designer’s pièce de résistance. A full-sized cream leather Indian teepee, complete with brown, hand-painted buffalos and beaded fringe, was serving as a canopy for the bed. “Oh, my God.”
“I’m beginning to sense a theme,” Mircea said, tossing his suit coat over a buckskin-covered chair. A moose head with huge, outspread antlers loomed over it, its bright glass eyes looking oddly lifelike in the low light. Mircea took in the room, his expression slightly repulsed yet fascinated. “I believe there is only one thing to say at this point.”
“What’s that?”
“Yee haw,” he said gravely, and took me down like a rodeo calf. Before I entirely figured out what was happening, I was on my back in the teepee with a vampire crawling on top of me.
It was completely unfair, I thought, that when I was tired and disheveled I looked a mess, and when it happened to Mircea he looked like a particularly elegant porn star. His hair was artfully mussed, his shirt was unbuttoned enough to show a glimpse of lean-muscled chest, and his dress slacks clung lovingly to muscular thighs. In contrast, I was wearing the rumpled sweats I’d slept in, which had also acquired a pizza sauce stain. And that was despite the fact that I had never actually had any pizza.
Not that it mattered much what my clothes looked like considering how fast I was losing them. My sweatpants went flying, ending up atop the leering moose head, while warm hands slid along my sides, pushing up my T-shirt. I sucked in a breath at the unexpected speed of it all and at the electric tingle that spread up my body.
“You’re supposed to be tired!”
; “I am. Which is why I am not berating you for almost giving me a heart attack.” My T-shirt followed the sweatpants, and at least the eerie fake eyeballs on the moose were now covered up. Which was more than I could say for me.
“Vampires don’t get heart attacks.”
Mircea gave me a playful flick of his eyebrow and tugged my panties off. “Good thing.”
I opened my mouth to reply when his palms bracketed my face, swiftly followed by his mouth hard and demanding on mine. And somehow my witty riposte turned into a pathetic whimpering noise in the back of my throat. Unlike his usual habit, there was no slow seduction this time; Mircea kissed me hot and wet and dirty.
“We knew you were at MAGIC,” he told me a few moments later as I tried to remember how to breathe. “But with the interference from the breach, there was no way to know where you were or if you would get out in time.”
“I wasn’t in there very long,” I said, trying to focus.
“Dulceaƫă, you were in there for two hours.” And for a moment, the mask slipped. For an instant he looked . . . hungry, in some way I couldn’t quite define. Not the predatory desire I’d seen on a few occasions, but more like need. Like some huge, gaping hole had opened up inside him since this morning.
His hair was mussed from having my hands all over it. I reached out and smoothed the worst of the snarls. I wondered if he’d lost friends today, if some of the people who didn’t make it out of MAGIC were family. And then I remembered that Radu had been in trouble. And it had been bad enough to drag Mircea away in the middle of delicate negotiations.
“Mircea . . . is Radu—”
“He is well. He sends his regards.” I felt a wash of relief. “He suffered some damage to the house, but it has given him the excuse to redecorate. I believe the term ‘rococo’ was used.” He glanced at the moose head and his lips quirked. “Of course, he hasn’t seen this place yet.”
“You actually think he’d like it?”
“He has a fine-tuned appreciation for irony and the absurd,” he told me, stripping off his shirt. “He would love it.”
