Non. Because it would ferment.” His lips pursed. “I suppose you could say he is now…drunk off his ass.” Jehan bellowed agreement and let out another fart. I squatted down on the path and put my arms over my head. And just stayed there for a minute. “What happened?” Louis-Cesare finally asked me. “You passed out.” “I did not.” It was said with such conviction that I almost believed it. I turned my head and looked at him through the gap by my elbow. I debated arguing it, but decided I wasn’t up to it right now. “Okay. Then what do you remember?
For a moment, I just stared. Not because of the hovering in midair thing. Levitation charms aren’t exactly rare, although using them in full view of norms is a no-no. But human laws aren’t so easy to apply to a prince of the fey, and anyway, that wasn’t the problem. No, the problem was that this particular prince hadn’t stuck his charm on a chair, a bookcase or a rug à la Aladdin. No, he’d stuck it on Slava. Which meant that both of them were about to be way. But Æsubrand obviously didn’t know enough about human charms to realize that. Or that he would need a propulsion system, or at least a good push, if he wanted to go anywhere. Which he hadn’t gotten because he’d been too busy kicking me in the head. Leaving them stranded—for the moment. I stopped staring up at them and started looking around the office, hoping for a grappling hook—preferably one attached to an M16. But I guess Slava kept the weapons elsewhere, because I didn’t see one. Of course, there was another option. “Pull us in when I grab him,” I told Marlowe, who had just staggered up behind me. “Grab who?” he rasped, and then stopped, staring in disbelief at the insanity outside the window.“Æsubrand,” I said shortly, jerking down the office blinds and stripping off the cord. And thankfully, Slava’s impressively tall windows extended in here, and they had cords to match. “What? There are fey now?” Marlowe demanded, outraged. And I had to admit, it did seem a little unfair. “Looks that way,” I said and threw myself out the window. I ignored the stream of cursing from behind me because I had about a second to time this right or I’d be a greasy spot on the sidewalk.
“Who are they?’” “You said it,” she grimaced. “Vampires.” “But whose?” “Whose do you think?” Damn. never told him they could—” “They aren’t Ray’s,” Claire said, looking at me funny. “Whose then?” She put her hands, both of which were back to normal, I was relieved to see, on her hips. “Did you or did you not tell Louis-Cesare that I needed domestic help?” “I…Not in so many words, no.” “Well, he interpreted it that way. They showed up a couple hours ago and took over. So far, they’ve done the laundry, mowed the yard, cleaned the house to within an inch of its life—despite my telling them that the spell would just return everything to the way it was, anyway—shampooed the cats and replanted my marigolds!”“Your marigolds?” “They said the lines weren’t straight enough!” She looked pissed. No one gets points for telling a Virgo that she doesn’t know how to keep house. “Why didn’t you just dismiss them?” I asked. “Oh, now why didn’t I think of that? Because they wouldn’t let me! That vampire sent them to you and you’re the only one who can tell them to go. And that’s exactly what you’re going to do! And then you’re going to march yourself back up here and get a bath—” “I’m doing nothing of the—” “—and then you’re going to get dressed and unpack that ridiculous bag and come downstairs again and we’re all going to have a nice meal, okay? ” “No, it’s not okay. It’s not safe—”
duel. It was days like this that made me wonder how, even with his fighting ability, the guy had survived as long as he had. He was honest and honorable and ethical and generous, in a culture that was exactly none of those things. That didn’t even value those things, because “good” was a relative term and being a good vampire was to be like Marlowe: cunning, deceitful, ruthless, overwhelming. Or like Mircea: calm, patient, resourceful, relentless. “Kind” wasn’t in the job description; “compassionate” even less so. Damn it, the man needed a keeper. Yeah, sure he did. A dark-haired, dimpled, dhampir keeper, which wasn’t going to happen, so just shut up . Sometimes I didn’t think it mattered what Mircea did in my head, because I was already crazy anyway. said resentfully. “Quoi?” I sighed. “I’m fine ,” I said, just wanting to get this over with. “I see what you mean,” he told Claire drily, and she blinked at him in what looked like surprise. There was no point in stalling, so I walked over and sat down, really glad that I’d had that drink earlier. Even with Claire’s presence leeching the manic energy off my skin, like some kind of supernatural magnet, I was still crawling with it. Any other time, I’d have been crawling the walls, too—or, more likely, punching through them. As it was, I wanted this done
And my thoughts fractured, the room spun, and I came with a sound of pure desperation. Which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the best idea when you live with a bunch of sensorially gifted creatures. Who, it seemed, couldn’t tell the difference between a cry of passion and a cry of pain. As was demonstrated when the bedroom door suddenly blew off its hinges and Louis-Cesare flew backward and disappeared. Leaving me blinking in confusion at the new, vampire-shaped hole in my dresser. And my closet. And my wall. Which were less noticeable than you might think with an eight- dozen or so blond-haired fey swarming into the room through the door looked at both of us. And then a slight tinge of amethyst slowly suffused the delicate scales covering the beast’s cheekbones as it took in my lack of clothes—and blood and gore and missing limbs. “Oops?” it said gruffly, before melting back into my very embarrassed redheaded roommate. I snatched my robe closed and plunged through my destroyed furniture and fluttering bits of wallpaper, into a closet that was now a wreck of plaster and hanging two-by-fours. And found that, yes, the hole did go completely through the house. Parts of my wardrobe were scattered all over the side lawn, with most of my bras for some reason decorating the neighbor’s fence. But that was better than what had happened to my boyfriend, who had ended up— Oh, shit.“Dory, what—oh,” Claire said in a small voice, coming to stand beside me. Being two stories up, we had a perfect view of the car that had just pulled into the grassy drive along the side of the house, probably because it couldn’t fit anywhere else since it was a stretch limo. A stretch limo that now had a naked vampire sticking out of the ruined windshield, firmly wedged between the wipers and the mirror. Right in front of a driver whose usual icy sangfroid had been shattered by an up-close-and-personal view of the world’s greatest ass. At least it can’t get any worse , I thought, and then three more vamps piled out of the backseat. And came around the car. And looked at Louis-Cesare, who was ignoring them in favor of staring up at me, an unreadable expression on his face. “Should I apologize?” Claire asked, sounding worried. “That…probably wouldn’t be the best idea right now,” I said calmly, looking down at two Senate members and a senator’s to explain an underwear-strewn yard and a naked master vampire, when the brother looked up. “Oh, they do this sort of thing all the time,” he said, responding to some question I hadn’t heard. He shaded his eyes, and then a smile broke out over his handsome features. “Oh, there you are. Hello, Dory!” He waved. The other vampires turned to look at me, and I gave up. I went back into the bedroom, which had miraculously cleared of fey. Except for the one behind me, biting her lip. “Dory—” “It’s okay.” “But the room—” “It’s fine.” “And your clothes—” “I’ll get them later.”
“Perhaps I am in love.” I stopped knotting the tie of the robe and looked up. And met clear blue eyes, which were suddenly far more serious than I knew how to handle. “That’s…You…” I stopped and licked my lips. “That’s not how this is supposed to go.” “How is it supposed to go?” He looked genuinely curious. “We trade witty banter for another minute and then I storm out.” “Do you wish to storm out?” “Yes!” And it wasn’t a lie. In that moment, I really, really wanted to get out of there. I wasn’t in the headspace for this battle right now. I wasn’t stupid; I’d known it was coming. But this wasn’t the time. I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to say yet. And I was tired and hurting and confused, and the arms he wrapped to the robe, I let him manipulate that, too, unknotting the tie, pulling it out of the loops, parting the soft old velour, but leaving it hanging on my shoulders like a frame for my body. Somehow that made me look even more nude, and as a barrier, the robe was less than worthless. The velvety folds caught and enhanced the warmth radiating from the body behind me, and the thin material did nothing to camouflage the hard lines of the chest and hips and legs pressed against mine. If anything, it magnified the differences between us, soft and hard, small and big, cold and oh, so warm.
Radu nodded, but he didn’t leave. “You know, even if she hadn’t been an evil mutant, she was always quite bad for him. Not that I meddle.” “Of course not.” “But she was. He needs a nice, levelheaded girl. You’re levelheaded, Dory.” “I’m insane, ’Du.” “Well, not all the time. And when you’re not, you’re quite lovely… in your own odd little way.” “Uh, thank you?” Radu patted my arm. “You’re welcome.”
expected. He pulled me away from the fridge, bent me over the marble-topped island and dug his fingers into the tense muscles of my back. I groaned. He started at the base of my spine, teasing out the knots as skillfully as if he’d done it a dozen times before. My body recognized the coarseness of familiar calluses, and a heavy warmth spread through me. He paused to tug the T-shirt off over my head, and I didn’t resist. When he reached my shoulders, which had been tight long before I leaned into the strokes involuntarily, head rolling back as he kneaded away at the tension knotted around the base of my skull. By the time he finished, the pain was gone, although it was possible that I’d fallen madly, irreversibly in love with Louis-Cesare’s hands. I might have said something to the effect, because he chuckled and brushed his lips over the back of my neck, meltingly warm.