She flushed, but she didn’t drop her eyes. “It’s true. You know it is!”
“No arguments here. What I don’t get is whysubrand waited so long to attack. His odds would have been better had he struck sooner, before I got home with reinforcements . . . so to speak.”
Claire looked up from putting a piece of cotton between her final two toes. “Yes, about them . . .”
“I know you didn’t want vampires in the house,” I said, marshaling my arguments.
“I’m warming up to the idea,” she said, surprising me. “It looks like we need all the help we can get. I’m just not sure about these specific vampires. That Cheung guy was parked outside the house for hours, waiting for you to get home. And he didn’t look friendly. I tried calling you half a dozen times to warn you—”
“I didn’t have my phone on me most of the night.”
Claire raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask. “I assumed you must have seen him and that’s why you hadn’t come back. I left you a message and we went to bed once it became obvious he couldn’t get through the wards. But now all of a sudden you trust him to guard us?”
“I don’t trust him,” I told her, stretching out on the bed. “I trust the system. It’s pretty harsh on masters who get out of line. And Cheung gave his word.”
“And that means something?”
“If given to you or me? No. But he gave it to a Senate member, and that’s a very different thing.”
“You mean he’d face some kind of punishment if he broke it?”
“And then some. Before the Senates, there was almost constant war between vamp houses, with constantly shifting alliances and backstabbing and betrayal. Think Italy in the Middle Ages, with every little city-state grasping at its neighbors, wanting to expand its lands at their expense. It was pretty much unrelieved bloodshed, and decimated whole houses. Once the Senates got organized, the rules they laid down were made harsh on purpose, to make even the richest prize not worth the price.”
“So Cheung can be relied on to help?”
“For the next several days, yes. And by that time, Heidar should be here.” I sat up, a giant yawn splitting my face. I needed to go to bed before I fell asleep right here. But I needed something else first. “Speaking of help, do you still want to do something to assist the investigation?”
She brightened. “Yes, although I have to say, things haven’t been as boring around here as I’d expected.”
“We’re a lively bunch.”
She snorted. “What do you need?”
“I need you to write me a note.”
Rain. It had started on the way, but he’d bowed his head and pressed on, his horse’s hooves churning up the mud. It had slowed him down; there wouldn’t be much time until morning. Until others arrived to wonder and stare, to lament and question, and to obliterate what little evidence might remain.
The rider dismounted, the sound of his spurs the only noise in the unnaturally still night. The moon was up, bulging half-full with watery light, turning the world into stark silvers and blacks. To the left, an old apple grove fractured the dark sky with darker traceries of branches. They were bare, the season now over, the few remaining leaves plucked by the cold wind and rattling against the bark. The ones that had drifted over crackled under his feet, dead like everything else here.
He tied his horse to one of the trees, keeping it well out of harm’s way, and moved forward. The coming dawn tugged at his consciousness, but it was impossible to move quickly. It would feel irreverent, like laughing in a graveyard.
To the right was the chapel, still partially protected by a slate roof. He paused at the door, or where it would have been. It had burned down to the hinges; his foot uncovered the old iron pieces in the sifting of leaves and sodden ash on the cold stone floor. The roof had gone, too, having been built of wood, as had the altar. But the crucifix remained, in a way. Its silver had dripped down the walls, painting the old stones with a smear of beauty.
He moved into a dark corridor. It had once been brightly lit by sconces that were now only glinting suggestions in the gloom of the passage, leaping into reality when the beams of his lantern swept over them. He found the first one there, a huddled, unrecognizable shape in the dark.
He knelt beside it. Dim, filtered light poured through a narrow window, bringing with it a wisp of cool air and the faint sound of rain. The body was charred, unrecognizable. But the cross around the neck had been trapped underneath, and suffered only scorching. It was small and plain, and made out of some metal sturdier than gold. Not the one, then.
The passage ended at what must have been the refectory. The missing roof ensured that a thin mist coated everything, but he could still just make out the rectangular shapes of the long tables where sparse meals had been served. There were bodies here, too. But the one he sought was not among them.
Down another dark passage and through two more rooms, he finally found the small room called Misericord. It was where punishments were doled out to those who had violated the strict rule. But no punishment devised by man had done this.
The body was stretched out on the floor, the dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. Unlike the others, it had not been burnt. There were no signs of scorching in the room at all, and even the roof here had survived. Perhaps that was why it was so well preserved—the rain had not touched it; the wind had not disturbed it.
It didn’t help. The face was unrecognizable, desiccated and withered. The eyes were white, the once-dark hair brittle and drained of color, the mouth opened in a silent scream. The hand was a half-closed claw, as if it had been clutched around something.
He tugged gently at the bones, barely held together by skin. The small movement caused the body to settle with a dry whisper, the broken wrist making a soft popping as it tore through the tissue-thin skin of the arm. The small sound seemed to echo in his head, and a bone-dead chill settled through him.
He pulled harder, forcing the hand to give up its secret. And then he merely squatted against the shelter of a burned-out wall, palm open, a glittering cross of solid gold held loosely in his fingers. He traced the cabochon stones that decorated the piece, polished and cool under his touch, and felt a coiling tightness reeling out from his gut to his spine. Blood sang in his ears, pain stabbed through him like a million keen blades, and the bitterness of guilt settled back into its usual place under his ribs, where he always carried it.
And now, where he always would.
I rolled over, kicking the covers with a low grumble of irritation. The old sheets were damp and inclined to stick to my skin. My bedroom was hot and, thanks to the weather, uncomfortably muggy. I peeled off the T-shirt, exchanged it for a fresh one and pushed up the window.
I’d been hoping for a breeze, but ended up getting slapped in the face by a gust of rain instead. Of course. I perched on the ledge anyway, not caring if I got wet as long as I cooled down.
The storm ruffled my damp hair and fanned my flushed cheeks. It felt wonderful. I could hear someone’s wind chimes, a faint, distant glissando riding the breeze. I leaned my head back against the smooth wood of the frame and watched lightning lick the sky.
A magical accident on our recent assignment had resulted in my sharing Louis-Cesare’s memories—all of them. And since he was almost four hundred years old, that was a lot to absorb. Most of it had been a blur at the time, a lifetime of impressions pouring into my head all at once. It had been too much, too fast, too overwhelming for anyone to take in. But ever since, I kept getting flashbacks to pieces of his past.
They might have eventually settled, slipping off to lurk in my subconscious somewhere with the rest of the monsters, if it hadn’t been for the wine. As it was, I was treated to an almost nightly parade of images, some so fragmented as to make no sense, but others as real as if I’d lived them myself. This had been one of the latter.
I could still smell the acrid stench of the fire, taste papery ash on my tongue, feel his bright flare of pain as if it had been m
y own. He hadn’t believed . . . something . . . hadn’t expected . . . Damn it! It was already fading.
A patter of rain hit my dangling leg, but I sat there for a long time staring at the dark yard. Tasting bitterness, fruit gone to rot, lost hopes, ruined dreams. And didn’t know what any of it meant. It was like seeing a movie and not knowing the ending. Or the beginning. Or who most of the damn characters were.
And knowing that I probably never would.
I know what I want, he’d said. And that was obviously Christine. Because despite what he maintained, there was no earthly reason why he had to stay with her if he didn’t choose to. Yes, he’d screwed some things up, but he’d also gone through hell to find her again, even to the point of letting himself be drained by those same mages in payment for her freedom. He didn’t owe her a damn thing.
So he wanted her. And he was right. Because despite what the stories say, love or infatuation or whatever the hell we’d had doesn’t really triumph over all. Not when two people came from backgrounds as different as ours. And not when they are genetically designed to kill each other.
It had been a bad idea from the beginning, and it was just as well that one of us had realized it before it went any further than it had. Game over, book closed, the end. Except for these damn memories that wouldn’t leave me alone.
The rain was getting worse and I was close to soaked. Not to mention my floor, my bedside table and my bag of nasty tricks. I pulled the duffel out from under the bed, took everything out and set it in a row on the dresser to dry. That sort of stuff was expensive, and it came out of my budget.
The second damp T-shirt went into the clothes hamper, and I tugged on another one before falling back into my hot, rumpled bed. I viciously plumped my pillow, looking for a cool spot. I had a job to do tomorrow; I didn’t have time for this. I concentrated on the intermittent sound of the rain and willed myself back to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Nine hours later I was still hot. And with less than six hours’ sleep under my belt, I was even crankier. Of course, my current predicament wasn’t helping.
A gust of air almost knocked me to the ground, and a horn blasted my eardrums at point-blank range. I spun to see my own reflection staring back at me from a shiny chrome fender. My eyes were startled, which was understandable, considering that the fender was hovering almost six feet off the ground.
It was attached to a dusty white pickup, which was rocking slowly back and forth in the air, like a boat in the swells. The irate driver leaned out of the window to glare at me. “Get off the road!”
“I’m not in the road.” I pointed up. “It’s that way.”
A good ten feet above us, a line of levitating cars was gleefully ignoring the laws of gravity. Their shadows rippled across the landscape, intermittently blocking the sun and causing me to flicker in and out of the shade. My eyes were having a hard time adjusting to the constantly changing light, but even so it was clear that this joker was well below the designated traffic lane.
I pointed this out, but all I got for my trouble was another loud blast from the horn.
So of course I flipped him off.
He said something rude, threw the truck into reverse, then shot past close enough to force me to duck. He swerved around another vehicle, rolled sideways to fit between a couple of buses and vanished into the glare of a blistering August sun. The resulting boom was loud enough to vibrate the ground.
Asshole.
I hadn’t had time to draw a breath before the air around me coalesced and seemed to draw inward, contracting like a collapsing star. I leapt to the side as a white-hot flash sizzled across my eyes and an earsplitting bang ruptured the air. And another vehicle popped into existence in a burst of car-shaped sparks.
A kid in the backseat had his face glued to the window. He regarded me somberly for a moment before deliberately sticking out his tongue. His father hit the gas, revving the engine and grinding the gears, and the car shot up from the ground like the bird it wasn’t.
I understood the principle: it was easier to enchant an inert object than something with a constantly changing energy field like that of the human body. That was why levitation spells always called for some kind of platform. Brooms had been used in the bad old days because they were convenient and didn’t raise any eyebrows if spotted lying around the house. The modern equivalent was the car, which was undoubtedly easier on the backside.
But the reality still made my brain hurt.
Thundering cracks from new arrivals shook the air on every side, mixing with the roar of engines, the thrum of music and a lot of alcohol-fueled laughter. I looked from my objective—the mansion on the next hill, where a certain mage was about to give an interview—to the crazy vehicle-strewn air separating us.
Well, shit.
I’d assumed that getting to Lutkin might be difficult. He was the current World Champion, and right now that made him the center of attention. But I’d thought the main problem would be getting past security, not getting to the guy at all.
Between me and the house was more than the floating traffic jam. The cars had been elevated to keep them out of the way of the sea of gleaming white vendors’ tents that spilled down the hill. They were jam- packed with scalpers hawking tickets, vendors peddling grease-laden food and people, tons of people. They were clogging every available inch of space, buying souvenirs, standing in line for freebies or placing bets. I’d never make it in time.
“Want a ride?” somebody yelled. I looked up to see a sky blue convertible hovering maybe six feet above my head.
One look at the car, and I decided that walking didn’t sound so bad, after all. “Thanks, but I’m just going to the house.”
The blonde who had issued the invitation hung precariously over the passenger-side door to grin at me. “It’s too dangerous!” She gestured with a longneck, flinging a wide arc of beer into the air. “Half the people around here shouldn’t even be driving.”
She said this with no irony whatsoever, despite the fact that her car’s black cloth top kept rising and lowering like some kind of strange bird trying to achieve flight. The driver, a young ginger- haired guy, took a stab at making it stop, and turned the wipers on instead.
“I’m good,” I assured her.
She shook her head tipsily. “You’re gonna get run over,” she insisted, opening the door and almost falling out. She stopped when the seat belt caught her, looking perplexed. “Is it still ‘run over’ if you’re, like, hit from above?”
“I’d rather not find out,” I said, moving so that I wasn’t directly beneath the car. Magic was magic, but my brain was having a hard time accepting the sight of huge hunks of metal just hanging in the air like that. I kept expecting one to drop on my head, snuffing me out like a mosquito under a thumb.
“Then get up here!” She turned to her companion. “Ronnie—take us down.” Ronnie nervously studied the gears, then did something that made the car shoot up another dozen feet. “No, no, down!” she yelled, as they came within a hairbreadth of hitting a legitimate race car with an official number on the side.
Ronnie panicked and veered sharply to the right, missing the race car but clipping a VW Bug that had stalled out in the middle of the air. Its hood was jacked up, and its owner’s butt was hanging over the side. Or, at least, it was until the impact caused the Bug to go spinning in one direction and flung the owner in the other. He was headed for the ground headfirst, but the race car driver snatched him out of midair to the wild appreciation of the onlookers.
For his part, the rescued man seemed less than thrilled. I could hear him shouting as the blonde’s convertible slowly drifted back down to my level. “Uh-oh,” she said as the race car driver started shaking his head and pointing at us.
Ronnie glanced at me. “Get in if you’re getting!”
I’d have refused, considering his grasp on the fundamentals of the road—or in this case, the air. But traffic was piling up around the accident, pushing more
and more people outside the safe zone. And I was beginning to doubt that most of them even knew how to drive on land.
I grasped hold of the side of the car, waited for the top to lower again and hauled myself into the backseat. Ronnie floored it before I was even seated, sending me into the arms of a dishwater blond guy in a blue tank top. “Hey.” He grinned, as I tried to sort myself out without elbowing him anywhere sensitive.
“Toni and Dave,” the blond girl told me, hanging over the front seat. I assumed Toni was the young brunette who was currently giving me the evil eye. I crawled off her boyfriend, and she rewarded me with a sweating Bud from the cooler beside her feet. Enough empties rattled around the floorboards to explain Ronnie’s lack of coordination.
Since I didn’t have to drive, I drank up. The air was pungent with exhaust and heavy with humidity, and I felt like I was breathing through a damp towel. Ten minutes under the blazing sun had left my black T-shirt sticking to me unpleasantly and had me wishing I’d worn shorts and sandals instead of jeans and boots.
“I’m Lilly,” the blonde informed me, completing the introductions. “It’s short for Lilith, but nobody calls me that.”
I nodded. I’d rarely seen anyone who looked less like a Lilith. She was wearing a pink-and-white-checked blouse over a white tube top and shorts. Her bouncy blond curls—the ones that hadn’t escaped to stick to her sweaty face and neck—were trapped by a couple of Hello Kitty ponytail holders. They matched her glittery lip gloss and Pepto-Bismol nails. If the real Lilith still existed on some other plane, she was undoubtedly plotting a hideous revenge.