I moved closer.

What the hell, feet? I thought, but the feet didn’t comment. Except to send up happy signals about the squashiness of the rugs and the smoothness of the wooden patches in between them. Which were brief because it looked like somebody had mugged a caravan in here, with a dozen priceless rugs scattered carelessly around.

But at least they muffled my steps, not that I was worrying about it by the time I got halfway across the room. Because along with fine leather and old books and the faint smokiness of the candle was an even fainter scent. Dark and musky and piney and—

“Mircea.”

He was lying on his side, pale and cold and white, and for a second, my heart stopped. Until I told myself not to be stupid. He was a vampire. And when they rest, they don’t always bother to keep up appearances. Especially if they need their strength for other things.

But I didn’t breathe again until I bent over him, and brushed fine strands of loose, dark hair off his face. And saw beautiful pale features, which unlike mine had been cleaned up. And vampires don’t waste time on corpses that aren’t going to rise again. So if he was here—

I felt something in my own chest unclench.

I should have known. Mircea was a master mentalist. He could repair anything to do with the mind.

Couldn’t he?

I glanced around. It would help if he had eaten, but if so, dinner had already departed. I frowned at that. What if he woke up hungry? What if his mental abilities were impaired after everything that had happened? Why the hell was nobody here? The guy was a goddamned senator. Didn’t he rate a nurse?

I glanced at the door, and thought about raising some hell, even if it got me kicked back to my room. Or into a cell, more likely, because no way was Marlowe just letting me walk out of here. The number of guards had said that much.

But, of course, Mircea did rate a nurse, he rated a whole roomful of them. So if he was alone, it was by choice. But I still didn’t like it. What if that thing was still around here somewhere? What if it attacked him again?

Only it wouldn’t, would it? If Radu was right and it hadn’t been Dorina, then it was almost certainly someone with a vested interest in my not recalling what happened on that pier. And that meant if it came back for anyone, it would be me.

I felt my lips draw back from my teeth slightly. Good. It would save me the trouble of having to track it the hell down.

Because I would.

The son of a bitch had hurt Mircea.

And nobody got to do that but me.

I stared at him a moment longer, but he wasn’t looking real conversational. I shoved my hand through my hair, then cupped it on the back of my neck. The muscles were so tense there, it felt like I could flick a thumb against my nape and hear it twang. Like I hadn’t been able to relax, even in sleep.

What a shock.

But it was calm here, peaceful. Maybe that was why I didn’t feel like leaving, even though there was no reason to stay. Mircea was already in a healing trance, judging by the fact that he hadn’t woken up as soon as I came in the room. He didn’t need medical help, beyond what he could give himself, and as for mental…

Well, whatever abilities I had were locked up with my other half, and she wasn’t talking.

But I still didn’t feel like going anywhere.

Mircea’s hand slipped off the sheet, to the mattress at his side. I started to pick it up, to put it back in place. And then I stopped, my fingers hovering a few inches above his.

Even in a healing trance, something like a touch might wake a master. In fact, on some level, he was probably already awake, at least enough to have identified me as not posing a threat. But a touch might set off alarms, might make him wonder if he’d identified correctly.

And I didn’t want that. Mircea often managed to run circles around me in conversation even when I wasn’t about to fall over. We needed to talk, about a lot of things, about a lifetime of things. But this wasn’t the time.

And then there was the fact that this was…nice. Odd, because I could never remember being with him without having my hackles up, without being tense and guarded and watchful. I had, of course; that scene in Venice proved that. But it had seemed almost…surreal. That girl with her bare toes and her candy-thieving ways and her obvious adoration of her equally adoring father…it just…I couldn’t…

I pulled my hand back.

I didn’t want to disturb him when he looked relaxed. It wasn’t an expression I’d seen very often. Or ever, actually.

But then, maybe he’d never had much to be relaxed about.

I wondered what it had been like for him, in those early years. For someone trained his whole life to be the leader, the provider, the protector, to suddenly be unable to do any of those things. To be a prince without a country, or a treasury, or an army—or even a body he could understand. Because his exile had come at the same time that he’d been dealing with this whole new existence that had been foisted onto him.

He’d gone from having everything to having nothing, almost overnight. And yet, somehow he’d managed. And in Venice, of all places, which had been a snake pit of vampire intrigue, back in the day. And not only managed, but taken care of others at the same time.

I won’t always be weak.…

And he never had been. He never—

I swallowed and blinked back tears. God, I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. That attack must have messed me up more than I’d thought. Then I decided to hell with it and leaned over, placing a soft kiss on his forehead.

And heard a softer sound behind me.

I turned abruptly, because I hadn’t heard the door open. But it must have, because dinner was waiting on the threshold. Tonight’s tasty morsel was young and pale, with messy blond curls and unsettling bright blue eyes. They looked a little unfocused, like she was looking both through me and at me at the same time. She was a little creepy.

She was also useless right now.

“He doesn’t need you,” I told her, clutching at my sheet, which was slipping.

“W-what?” For some reason, she looked fairly gobsmacked.

“He’s sleeping,” I repeated patiently. “And I can give him what he needs.”

She just stood there, her mouth hanging open. I thought there was a chance that she might be a little slow. “You can go,” I repeated. “Vamoose, amscray, make like a tree. Do you get it?”

“Yeah.” The voice had gone flat, cold. “I get it.”

And then the next thing I knew, I was sitting all alone in the middle of a field filled with mud and some very startled cows. Who weren’t half as startled as I was. I got up, slid on a cow pie and went back down, landing in a puddle and splattering mud everywhere.

And somewhere far off, like an echo of an echo, I could swear I heard someone laughing.

The fuck?

Chapter Forty

A couple hours later, I was driving a stolen SUV past the parking lot of Singh’s gutted grocery. I still smelled like cow, due to schlepping across a field full of them courtesy of some witch with a sense of humor. Or maybe I was just crazy; at this point, I wasn’t ready to rule anything out.

But I thought I’d stolen an SUV and I thought I was driving it past Singh’s, so I was gonna go with that for now. I also thought that a light rain was falling, sending the crime scene tape flapping against the front door and staining the soot-streaked walls a darker hue. But not so much that I couldn’t see the two shadows lurking near a Dumpster.

I kept right on driving, only sliding to a stop at a red light down the street.

Two vamps, even two of Marlowe’s, would normally have been no problem. Hell, two vamps would normally have been an insult. But tonight…tonight, I thought they might be overkill.

Not that killing me was Marlowe’s plan—probably. But that wasn’t much comfort considering what he likely did have in store. I had the key to this mess locked up in my head and he knew it. And the assault on Mircea had given him all the excuse he needed to hold me until…

What? He brought out the thumbscrews and rack, or whatever the Senate was using these days? Or until some other mentalist was brought in to poke around inside my head?

And yeah. Didn’t that just sound like fun?

So I needed to hole up until Mircea woke up. And there was only one place I knew of to do that where Marlowe couldn’t get at me. Unfortunately, he knew it, too, and he had no intention of letting me back in.

I let my fingers drum on the steering wheel.

Two vamps were bad, but there were almost certainly even more around the house. Making Olga’s portal my best bet, assuming it was still there. But just because there were guards on the place didn’t mean that Marlowe hadn’t shut it down. Or that the fire hadn’t destroyed it. Or that the shield we’d just installed at the house wasn’t up on the other side, leaving me a very flat dhampir if I—

Damn.

The light had turned green and I hadn’t noticed. And now one of the shadows had peeled away from the building and was coming this way, resolving into a dark-suited guy with slicked-back blond hair. He wasn’t running—not yet—but he would be in a minute as soon as he ID’d fugitive number one. And with vampire sight, that would only take—

Until about right now.

He turned into a blur, with his buddy right behind him, and I threw the car into reverse, burning rubber flying backward and forcing them to scatter. I’d have liked to turn around, but there wasn’t time since I’d only hit one and that had been a glancing blow that had merely provided incentive. I also couldn’t take time to get out of the car and make for the door, because if they caught me in my current shape, that would be it.

So I just floored it and kept on going—right into Singh’s grocery. And luckily, the fire Scarface and the boys had set had been a good one. The wall disintegrated into a fall of dirty glass and scarred bricks, and a bunch of half-burnt beams fell out of the ceiling, sending a black cloud into the air and obscuring what little view there had been.

I had to aim for the right spot by memory, with zero seconds to get it wrong and—damn. I’d forgotten about the hall. Which was in no better shape than the front of the store, and wasn’t quite wide enough for the SUV. Resulting in my plowing through the walls on both sides like a speedboat on the high seas, sending a wave of fake wood paneling bursting against the back windshield and slowing me down.