by Karen Chance
Where were the others? Where was her life?
But then, Pythias didn’t get a life, did they? Pythias got responsibilities and protocol and politics and the job. And I suddenly didn’t know if I could live like that, not again, not forever.
Of course, I didn’t really have a choice, did I?
Only, suddenly, I did.
And I didn’t want him to stop.
And for some reason, that little revelation shocked me to my core. Or no—I guess that had been surprise. Shock was when a mouth suddenly closed over me.
Not a mouth, some small voice corrected. His mouth. Warm and wet and echoed by an identical one at my breast. And so very different from that other time, the one I’d tried really hard to forget. That desperate, life-or-death time when he’d been so careful, deliberately holding himself back.
He wasn’t being careful now.
He wasn’t being careful at all, I thought, arching up. And why would he be? None of the stuff that had messed him up had happened yet. Hell, maybe he didn’t even know what he was doing, didn’t know what he was. Probably just thought it felt good and gave his power a boost, and it wasn’t like I was screaming and running up the riverbank—
Okay, I wasn’t running up the riverbank, I corrected, and sank my teeth into my lower lip to stop the noises I’d been making.
But he didn’t seem to like that. Or maybe he took it as a challenge. He growled against my skin, against me, and a rush of sensation flooded over my body, another of those warm tidal waves. A tongue swept around me, hands clenched beneath me, and the prick of fangs scraped across—
Fangs?
I looked down the length of my body, blinking, and dark, dark eyes lifted to meet mine.
“You have an interesting fantasy life, dulceat¸a˘.”
I stared back for a heart-stopping second, and then a surge of panic hit me, like a bucket of ice water. The cocooning warmth receded into cold, stark terror, the languor became agitated thrashing, and a moment later I almost drowned in the tub I guess I’d fallen asleep in. Because I surfaced gasping and panting and making weird squeaky noises at Roy and the group of vamps that burst in through the door a second later.
And who didn’t get an explanation before I threw the loofah at them and yelled, “Shut the door!”
• • •
Okay, it took me a little longer to calm down that time. I’d managed to rinse off, to wash the bubbles out of my hair, and to drain the tub before I was calm enough to think. And to tell myself that I was being ridiculous, that it was just a dream. A mish-mash of that scene in Wales, fear of ending up like Agnes, and incubus-induced horniness that, yeah, was about the last thing I needed right now.
It all made sense, as much as dreams ever did.
Wide, worried blue eyes stared back at me out of the brand-new bathroom mirror. They didn’t look like they believed me. They kind of looked spooked, which was ironic considering that I was a clairvoyant and dealt with ghosts all the time.
“It was a dream,” I told my reflection out loud, and started rubbing cold cream onto my face. Those hadn’t been Mircea’s eyes at the end, hadn’t been his voice, hadn’t been anything except my overactive imagination. Just my brain playing tricks on me. Although why that particular trick, I didn’t know.
Mircea wasn’t worried about Pritkin. Why should he be? When Pritkin wasn’t getting dragged off to hell or back through time, he was my bodyguard. And self-appointed drill sergeant. And official nag. He yelled at me about what I ate, how much I exercised, and anytime I ended up in danger, even if it wasn’t my fault. He frequently gave Marco a run for his money in the let’s-pile-on-Cassie department; he sure as hell wasn’t whispering sweet nothings into my ear.
I wasn’t even sure the man I knew remembered how. In fact, most of the incubi I’d met had badly needed a dose of charm school—why they didn’t all starve was beyond me. And, of course, Pritkin did; he didn’t have a choice, thanks to his father’s prohibition.
But that was before he was dragged off to hell, a sly inner voice corrected. His father was able to snatch him back because he broke their deal. And had demon sex with you.
It wasn’t sex, I thought irritably. It wasn’t anything like sex. It was nothing more than he’d done in Amsterdam—giving me energy when I was all but out. It was his bastard of a father who had decided to count it as something more.
Because it was something more, wasn’t it? In the demon world—
We weren’t in the demon world! And I counted it as what it was—an energy donation. Like I’d done for him a couple of—
You’re not helping your case.
Damn it! I set the cold cream jar down harder than necessary. There were only so many ways to save an incubus’ life, and I hadn’t been about to let Pritkin die on me! Not when most of the time he ended up half dead because of me. So I’d donated energy a few times to help him heal. It was no different from feeding a vampire, and I did that all the time!
You used to do that all the time, my inner critic corrected. You don’t do it now. Because feeding had a sexual undertone in the vampire world, too, and Mircea prohibited anyone else from biting you. How would he react if he knew—
He didn’t know! There was nothing to know. Pritkin never so much as touched me if he could help it. It was like being trained by a freaking ninja monk—
Was until recently, my little voice said. But wasn’t he different when you found him in hell?
I picked up the comb and started attacking the bird’s nest on my head. No, I thought angrily. He hadn’t been. He hadn’t even been glad to see me. He’d been . . . Pritkin. Just like on that damned hillside that night.
I’d been dying, injured in a fight I’d expected to lose but had somehow won, if winning meant that I was going to die later than the other guy. But Pritkin had reached me just in time and basically did the same thing he’d done in Amsterdam. And gave me some of his energy, thereby saving my life—and losing his own in the process.
At least the meaningful parts of it. Because Rosier had a damned loose definition of what constituted sex, and by the impossible standards he’d imposed on Pritkin, a mutual feeding was close enough. Pritkin had broken the taboo, and been abruptly snatched away to hell, and I’d been left screaming on a hillside with only one thought in mind: go get him.
And I had. I’d had no idea how to get into hell, or what to do once I got there. And my power didn’t work well outside of earth, if at all. But I’d gone anyway. And then, when I finally found him, when I tracked him down across entire worlds, what had he done?
Yelled at me and threw me off a balcony!
And that was after reading me the riot act for daring to come after him in the first place. I’d ruined his selfless gesture, and he’d been pissed, although not half as much as I had been. Damned infernal mage. Didn’t know why I bothered sometimes—
But after that, my little voice reminded me. After you two escaped Rosier’s court and ended up in front of the demon council. After all the drama was over and you were awaiting the verdict that would either free him or condemn him, hadn’t he acted differently? Hadn’t he acted like he wanted to say something?
I scowled. He’d been under a massive amount of stress. He knew the council better than I did, knew the odds. He’d tried to tell me, but I hadn’t listened. I’d been so sure they’d see reason. Didn’t they know we were fighting the same enemies? Didn’t they see that I needed him?
But no. They’d spent centuries with their heads so far up their own asses that they couldn’t see anything. They’d killed him. They’d killed him right there in front of me, and then acted like it was no big deal, like I should have expected it. But I hadn’t expected it, and if Adra hadn’t decided he might need me, and given me that counterspell—
Yes, yes, that’s very nice. Very scary, my inner voice mocked. I’m sure you’d have taken
on the big, bad demon council all by your little self. But that isn’t the point, is it? Pritkin wanted to tell you something, and it had almost sounded like—
He hadn’t wanted to tell me shit! He’d known there was a better-than-average chance they were going to kill him. He hadn’t known what he was saying!
Or maybe he hadn’t cared, my little voice insisted slyly. Maybe he’d decided it didn’t matter anymore. That if he was going to be killed anyway, he might as well—
Goddamnit! There was nothing going on between us!
And yet you dreamed about him tonight.
I glared at my reflection, and it glared back. Defiantly. Even a little smug. Like it thought it had made some kind of irrefutable point, and honestly, sometimes I thought this job was driving me crazy.
I put down the comb before I ended up bald.
So what if I dreamed about him? I couldn’t be held responsible for what I dreamed. And anyway, Mircea didn’t know. And even if he did—
If he did? My inner voice prompted. Because my inner voice doesn’t know when to call it a freaking night.
My fingers dropped to the two small bumps on my neck, vestiges of the evening that had started with a spell gone wrong and ended with a half-crazed master vampire. Who did what half-crazed vamps tend to do and bit me. Only it hadn’t been a normal bite.
I swallowed, and felt the tiny bumps move under my fingertips. They weren’t the blood-dripping gashes of the movies. They might easily have been mistaken for pimples by a human, if anybody noticed them at all. Which was unlikely since they weren’t even red anymore. Just two bits of raised skin, hardly anything . . .
Unless you were a vampire.
To a vampire, they were a flashing neon sign that said hold up, back off, take a moment and rethink your life. Because this one is taken, and by a senator, no less. Who will destroy you and everything you love if you so much as look at her too long.
Or, at least, that’s what I’d been told they meant. I had a hard time visualizing it, because I didn’t see that side of him. Yes, I knew Senate members didn’t get the job of supervising a society of “blood-sucking fiends,” as Rosier had called them, by being nice. But that wasn’t my Mircea. My Mircea was laughing eyes and silky hair and knowing hands and quick wits. . . .
Which probably explained why I’d had a crush on him since I was a kid, when he’d paid a visit to the court of the vampire who raised me.
Tony had taken in my parents, who were on the run from the Spartoi, some nasty types Ares had left to hunt my mother, in exchange for Dad doing a few spells for him. Vampires weren’t able to do magic like humans, so most employed mages to create wards and such. And for a while, things seemed to have gone along fine.
Until Tony had figured out that his mage’s young daughter was a true seer, a rare and potentially profit-making commodity in the supernatural world. And tried to take me. My parents objected, Tony insisted, and in the end, the issue was settled by a deadly car bomb. Which had killed a weakened goddess masquerading as a human. And left her four-year-old daughter an orphan and Tony’s new house seer.
At least it had until his master found out about me.
Because unlike his servant, Mircea did his homework. And he’d discovered that the mage Tony had taken in wasn’t some down-on-his-luck hack, like most of the freelance types, but Roger Palmer, a former member of the infamous Black Circle. Who was best known for eloping with Elizabeth O’Donnell, the Pythia’s designated heir, and for somehow keeping her hidden for years from all attempts to retrieve her.
Mircea had found that very interesting, since the missing heir also just happened to be my mother.
Agnes had been getting old and everyone knew that the power would soon pass to a successor. Which was supposed to be a carefully groomed acolyte as usual. But it was the Pythian power itself that chose a host, not the former Pythia, so technically it could go anywhere.
And Mircea had bet that it would go to me.
The long shot had paid off, but another gamble hadn’t. He knew the Circle had never stopped looking for my mother, and would take me as soon as they found out who I was. They had jurisdiction over magic users, not the Senate, who only governed the vamps. And I couldn’t be changed into a vamp, because that sort of thing ruined magical skill, including the ability to channel the Pythian power.
So he’d left me at Tony’s, which, unlike his own glittering court, was about as far out of the limelight as it was possible to get. Before he went crazy and joined the other side in the war, Tony had dealt mainly in human vices, so wasn’t of great interest to the Circle. And anyway, I was already there. No one had any reason to question the origins of the little orphan girl Tony had taken in out of the goodness of his cold, clammy heart.
And so we had waited. For me to grow up. For Mircea to see what would happen. And in the meantime, he’d had a mage put a spell on me to ensure my safety at the court of a guy who made the human mafia look like sweethearts.
He’d thought of everything—except the possibility that the damned thing would backfire.
Like most strong magic, the spell he’d used had a reputation for being unpredictable, and a few time-travel shenanigans after Mircea and I met again as adults had resulted in a real mess. And in an obsessive, lust-fueled relationship that had been sorted out only when the spell was finally broken. But by then, his bite had ensured that, according to vampire law at least, I was now his wife.
And divorce isn’t a thing in the vamp world.
Not that I had asked for one. No, I’d asked for something almost as strange. I had asked to date.
The idea had been to find out if all that spell-induced attraction had something else behind it. Or if I was just wearing rose-colored glasses left over from a childhood in which Mircea had seemed like the only port in a constant storm. Tony had been scary. His master, on the other hand, had been kind and caring and handsome and thoughtful. . . .
And maybe I really was stupid. Or chronically naive. But I didn’t believe that all of that had been a lie.
Did Mircea want to profit from me? Of course he did. He was a vampire. But that didn’t mean he didn’t care about me, too.
It also didn’t mean that he did, my little voice commented, before I squashed it and leaned across the counter to grab my toothbrush.
And felt a hand slide down my naked ass.
Chapter Twenty-six
For a second, I froze, staring at nothing. Except for the toothbrush hanging out of my open mouth. And then I spun, my heart hammering—
And still saw nothing.
Except for swirls of steam that looked faintly ghostlike even under the bright, cheery bathroom light.
And maybe there was a reason for that, I thought hopefully. “Billy?”
My ghost companion didn’t answer.
I licked my lips.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t there. Billy Joe liked to play games, a relic of a life spent as a professional gambler on the Mississippi. Not a good gambler, mind you. It was why he’d ended his twenties with a tour of the river bottom, courtesy of a croaker sack, a lot of rope, and a couple pissed-off cowboys who he’d been trying to cheat.
I assumed his body was still there. His soul, on the other hand, was hanging out in Vegas these days, courtesy of an ugly old necklace he’d won a few weeks before his untimely demise and hadn’t had time to pawn. That had turned out to be his one bit of good luck, because the necklace was a talisman, a relic that collected the natural energy of the world and used it to support the owner’s magic.
Or in this case, the owner’s ghost. Billy now haunted it like other ghosts did graveyards and creepy old houses. And ever since I’d bought it, intending it as a birthday gift for my old governess, he had haunted me.
Only I didn’t think he was haunting me now.
There was no flash of red ruffled shirt or smug smirk to b
e seen. There was no ghostly Stetson falling over laughing hazel eyes. There was no anything, which probably meant that I was imagining things again.
I grabbed another towel and started scrubbing my dripping hair.
One of these days, I was going to have to consider the concept of just avoiding bathrooms altogether. Weird shit happened to me in bathrooms. Maybe I needed to come up with another way to get clean. Maybe I needed to find a room with a Jacuzzi. Maybe I needed some long-term therapy, although I wasn’t sure even a Pythia had that much ti—
There was a tinkling crash on the other side of the bathroom door.
I froze again, hands on my head, peering out from under a yard of Turkish cotton. And stared at the door. It stared back. But nothing else did, because it was closed.
“Roy?” I called softly, because a vampire’s ears didn’t need a shout. And because I felt more than a little absurd.
A feeling that melted into something else when nobody answered.
Damn it, get a grip, I told myself harshly, and grabbed the doorknob. There’s nothing scary on the other side. It’s just a freaking bedroom!
And it was.
It just wasn’t mine.
I stumbled into a room with high ceilings, beautiful molding, and tall windows looking out over the night. And then spun around in panic, and almost broke my nose on a stretch of old-world paneling. Because there was suddenly no door there anymore.
I staggered back, confused and pained, and landed on my butt beside an overturned teapot. It was on the floor underneath a small table, leaking onto the remains of a porcelain cup and saucer. And sending a rivulet of fragrant liquid running across some highly polished wooden floorboards.
It did not help with the confusion.
Neither did the large, unfamiliar bed containing rumpled bedclothes. Or the towel and robe that had been tossed over a pillow. Or the window I wasn’t close enough to see out of, but which was allowing moonlight to filter over expensive rugs and a Jackson Pollock–like painting on the far wall.
