Mircea took the handkerchief and set to work on a green smear on my neck. His knuckles barely brushed me, and even then it was through the satiny weave of the linen. It was an odd sensation, close enough to not quite touch, warm enough to not quite feel, the sleeve of his jacket whispering along my bare arm. “Why did you come back for me?” he murmured, stroking lightly, pressing just hard enough for me to feel the embroidered initials on the cloth. “Do I not exist in your time?”
Define “exist,” I thought, as the small square worked its way downward, the banded ends just tickling the top of my breasts. “The Consul wouldn’t let me come alone,” I breathed.
When I’d talked to Billy about taking Mircea along, he’d still been relatively lucid—as much as the geis allowed anyone to be. But if the Consul had been desperate enough to order him confined, then he was too far gone to help me. And I really needed competent help.
If Mircea died, I had no doubt that the Consul would blame it on me. And, unlike the Circle, who seemed to have too many problems to concentrate all their energy on hunting me down, she struck me as the single-minded type. If she wanted me dead, I had the definite impression that I would get dead. Really fast.
“You could have chosen another senator,” Mircea pointed out.
I couldn’t come up with a convincing lie with goose bumps trailing over my skin, following his caress with slavish devotion. “The other you was busy,” I said, snatching the damn handkerchief away before I went out of my mind. This wasn’t going anywhere and I wasn’t a masochist.
“For something that important, I would have thought I could have made the time,” Mircea said lightly.
And yes, I was busted, because no way would he have sent anyone else to take care of something that concerned him so personally. But I still wasn’t telling him anything. “You’re just going to have to trust me,” I said.
“Even though you will not do me the same honor?”
I took a deep breath and concentrated on not banging my head into the wall. “There’s not a lot more I can tell you. I’ve probably said too much already. All you need to know is that we have to get that book or we’re both in a lot of trouble.”
Mircea took a moment to process this. I was certain he wasn’t going to let it go, wasn’t going to just take my word for it. But then he held out his arm. “May I assume that this counts as a first date?”
“Oh, we’re way past that,” I said, before I thought.
He smiled slowly. “Good to know.”
Chapter 20
The guy who answered the door was in his early forties, with thinning hair under the wig that sat askew on his head, and many teeth already rotted away. He didn’t look like somebody who should have been able to defeat a legendary wizard, but maybe he was just the butler. We followed him through a narrow hall and up a staircase to a library. It contained an ornately carved marble fireplace, bookcases lining two walls, mother-of-pearl detailing on dark wood moldings and about three dozen guests.
All of whom paused to look at us as the butler or whoever he was made introductions. I hadn’t heard Mircea give his name, but the man knew it anyway, although I was just “and guest.” I needn’t have worried about our appearance: Mircea managed to make losing the coat seem like a fashion statement. I saw several other male guests surreptitiously shuck theirs after a moment, not wanting to miss out on a new trend. But one remained unmoved, muffled head to toe in a thick black cape that swept the ground and didn’t leave so much as a nose visible. That was okay with me, because the people I could see were disturbing enough.
A woman appeared in front of us carrying a basket of knitted blue, white and red rosettes. I chose not to poke a hole in Augustine’s creation, and carried mine, but I didn’t like it. It felt funny; I couldn’t figure out what material had been used.
“Human hair, probably from the guillotined,” Mircea murmured. I quickly slid it onto a nearby table.
A moment later, a pretty, dark-eyed French girl sashayed up with a tray of wineglasses. She gave Mircea one and then just stood there, apparently waiting for him to finish it so she could give him another. It looked like the rest of the room was out of luck. But he didn’t drink, I noticed; he just held the delicate stem casually in one hand, the bloodred contents glimmering in the low light.
I took one off her tray and downed most of it in a gulp. It was good, and the head-clearing fumes were better. Mircea watched me with a smile and switched our glasses, giving me his full one.
“You don’t like wine?” I asked, sipping at my new drink with a little more decorum.
“Under certain circumstances.”
“Such as?”
“Remind me to show you sometime,” he murmured as our group was joined by a stunningly beautiful woman.
She was Japanese, or at least she looked Asian and had origami hummingbirds buzzing about, holding up her hand-painted train. And she was only the first of many. Despite the fact that we found a dark corner beside the fireplace to wait for the main event, a steady stream of people made their way over to speak to us. Or, more accurately, to speak to Mircea, since most of them barely gave me a glance. I couldn’t help but notice that a disproportionate number of them seemed to be attractive and female.
I don’t know why this surprised me. It had been the same way at court, when Mircea came for an extended visit to Tony. I’d overheard the staff complaining that they’d never had so many guests; even vamps who loathed Tony had shown up to pay their respects. Because Mircea wasn’t just a Senate member, he was a Basarab, which pretty much put him in the movie star category as far as vampires were concerned.
Or maybe rock star, I thought, restraining myself from forcibly removing the hand that the current groupie, a statuesque auburn-haired witch, had placed on his arm. He moved back on the pretense of setting his empty glass on the mantel, and his admirer moved with him. His mouth curved into a rueful smile that, for a moment, I wanted to taste so badly that I couldn’t even think.
I didn’t blame the groupies. Much. Mircea was perfectly capable of using his looks and reputation to his advantage—it was practically a job requirement. But the hell of it was that most of the time he wasn’t doing it on purpose. He simply enjoyed his surroundings, wherever he was and whatever he was doing, with an unconscious sensuality that was just as much a part of him as his hair color.
Even with the extra power my office lent me, the geis was strengthening. Just standing beside him was enough to get my heart racing, my pulse pounding. And my body was getting noticeably slower at obeying my brain’s commands to look away, to not touch, to not notice every little thing about him. Like the way his hair still held the faint memory of the cold wind outside. Like the warmth of his skin when he touched the notch in my upper lip with a fingertip.
“A spec of potion,” he murmured, his finger trailing over my lips.
Of course, sometimes he was doing it on purpose.
I looked up to meet eyes that were quiet and intense and focused. Under that gaze, it was easy to believe that I was the only person in the room who held any value for him, the only one on earth who mattered. But I’d seen that look before, and not just directed at me. Shy people became talkative, aggressive people became amenable and plain people blossomed, trying to live up to the regard they saw in his eyes. Or thought they saw.
I held his gaze for a drawn-taut moment before I blinked and looked away, angry that he was trying this on me, confused that he was doing it now, and I met the eyes of a dark-haired female vampire. Her garnet dress clung to some dangerous curves, and her silver mantilla framed a face so beautiful that for a moment I could only stare. She presented a hand, but I ignored it; it was too high to shake, so I assumed it wasn’t aimed at me.
Mircea dutifully kissed it and said something to her in Spanish, but her eyes remained on me. This went on for an uncomfortably long time, but she didn’t say anything, so I didn’t either. After a while, she decided to look at him instead.
They had a brie
f conversation that I couldn’t follow, but then, I didn’t really need to. She was pretty good at conveying information silently. She stared into his face, batting her eyelashes, trailing her finger around the low neckline of her dress, running her hands up and down the sides of her body, and speaking in husky tones. Every look, every movement, said she wanted him, with perfect frankness and no shame at all. I looked away before I was tempted to do something really stupid.
Eventually she moved away, but not before shooting another strange look in my direction. “Old friend?” I asked, trying to make it light.
“Acquaintance,” he murmured. His eyes were on a couple of new arrivals—both male vampires. They bowed in his direction and he nodded back, but his pose stiffened slightly. For the usually tightly controlled Mircea, it was the equivalent of someone else throwing a fit. Things suddenly began to make sense.
More than two hundred years of living adds a lot of strength, even to a first-level master. And vamps can sense changes in another’s power level as easily as a human might notice a new hairstyle. Any vampire who got too close was likely to realize that something about Mircea was seriously off. He had used me to distract the woman, but I doubted the same trick would work on the men.
“You seemed really friendly for acquaintances,” I commented, not bothering to keep the bite out of my tone. I resented being part of his ploy, even if I agreed with the reason for it.
“The contessa and I served on the European Senate together for some time. She was surprised to see me,” Mircea said, as we watched the two vampires take their tricolor decoration with identical bland expressions. They started to circulate, but not in our direction. “I am supposed to be in New York at the moment, scouting out the possibility of beginning a new senate there.”
“Great.” That was all I needed, for the Mircea of this time to get back only to have Contessa Whoever quiz him about his Paris vacation.
“Do not concern yourself. She died in a duel before I returned. We spoke mostly about you, in any case.”
“Me? Why?”
“She wanted to know why you wear my mark. I refused it to her some time ago and she expressed herself…surprised…that I had favored you.”
“You refused her?” I imagine she was pretty surprised. I was looking fairly decent, having wiped most of the potion off and finger-combed my flyaway hair, but I wasn’t in the contessa’s league. I hadn’t needed her expression to tell me that I never would be.
“She wanted into my bed less for pleasure than for the political advantage it would gain her,” Mircea said mildly.
“You’re not serious.” What, was the woman stoned?
“There have been many through the years who have shared her view. When you have wealth or power, there are always those who will find such things more attractive than you.”
“Then they’re idiots.” It was out before I could stop it.
Mircea suddenly laughed, his eyes alight. “You didn’t ask me what answer I gave her, dulceata?.”
I was probably going to regret this, but I had to know. “What?”
He leaned over and captured my hand, holding it dramatically to his chest. “That you have bewitched me.”
“You didn’t really tell her that.”
He pressed a swift kiss on the pulse point of my wrist. “In those very words.” I snatched my hand back, glaring. All I needed was another enemy to have to watch for tonight.
“She called you prince, didn’t she?” I asked, deciding on a change of topic. I don’t speak Spanish, but the term is the same in Italian. “I thought you were a count.”
“There were no counts in Wallachia when I was young,” Mircea said, letting me get away with it. “The term was voivode. The English sometimes translated it as ‘count palatine’; others preferred ‘governor’ or, occasionally, ‘prince.’ We ruled a small country.” He shrugged.
“Why don’t you use it anymore?”
“The idea of a Romanian count was popularized a bit too much once Stoker’s book came out. It would have been imprudent thereafter.”
We were interrupted by the arrival of yet another gorgeous groupie. Apparently, all the homely girls had decided to take the night off. I stared into the distance and tried to think about more important things while she giggled and flirted. It didn’t help much. I wasn’t stupid, despite public opinion. I’d known all along that I couldn’t have this. But making goo-goo eyes at him with me standing right there was not only tacky, it was insulting, and I’d had about enough. I slid my arm through his, sending the hussy my best glare. The galaxy rotating around my feet suddenly expanded, broadening its width by maybe a foot, enough that the hem of her dress caught fire. She was a witch, not a vampire, so she put out the small flames with a murmured word. But she didn’t stick around afterwards.
I glanced at Mircea, belatedly realizing that I might have set him alight, too. But no pinprick-sized holes appeared in his black trousers and I didn’t see any small wisps of smoke. Which didn’t make sense, come to think of it. “Why aren’t you on fire?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Did you wish me to be?”
“No, but…the dress had, uh, a slight effect on Marlowe.” And it hadn’t even been that bright then.
The eyebrow climbed a little higher. “You set Senator Marlowe on fire?”
“Well, not intentionally.” Mircea just looked at me. “We were in the Senate chamber and he got a little too—”
“In the Senate chamber?”
I frowned at him. His face seemed to be twitching for some reason. “Yes, he’d dragged me to see the Consul—”
“You set him on fire in the Senate chamber in front of the Consul.”
“It was only a little fire,” I said, then stopped because he’d broken into laughter, his whole face crinkling up with it, all bright teeth and curving, irresistible mouth. “He put it out,” I said defensively. He just kept laughing.
“Dulceata?,” he finally gasped, “as much as I would give to have seen that, it would be as well if you did not repeat the performance this evening.”
“I’m not—”
“I only mention it because I believe Ming-de wishes an audience.”
“What?”
He inclined his head slightly at the opposite side of the room, where the Chinese version of a consul was flanked by her four bodyguards. “It would be prudent to refrain from setting the Chinese Empress ablaze.”
“She looks busy,” I said weakly. It was true—she had already gathered a large court of admirers—but I’d also had enough formidable females for one evening. Mircea didn’t bother replying, just used our linked arms to pull me through the room.
We stopped in front of the dais on which Ming-de had parked her thronelike chair. It had dragons, too, writhing around the back of the seat, but at least they weren’t moving. Unlike the fans that had taken up residence on either side of her head, fluttering and waving in the air like two overactive butterflies. No one was holding them, the guards’ hands being preoccupied with the spears that, since they were vampires, I assumed were mostly ceremonial. Especially as the fans were razor-edged, and could probably go from circulating air to cleaving flesh at a moment’s notice.
I’d been so preoccupied with the spectacle that was Mingde that I hadn’t immediately noticed that she was talking until Mircea nudged me with his foot. I looked away from the dancing fans to liquid black eyes set in a tiny oval face. Mingde looked all of about twenty and yes, she was startlingly pretty. I sighed. Of course she’d wanted to see Mircea.
Only she wasn’t looking at him. I wondered if maybe I should get a sign VICTIM OF ROGUE SPELL, NOT A THREAT before anyone started planning to remove the competition. Ming-de held out a hand with ridiculously long, bright red nails. I was so focused on them—the thumbnail alone had to be six inches long and was curled outward, like a spring—that it took me a few seconds to notice that she was poking something at me.
It was a staff with an ugly brown knot on the end. I shied back
before it could cut out my heart or something. But it followed me until I managed to focus, despite having it almost shoved up my nose. The knot resolved itself into a shrunken head wearing a tiny blue captain’s hat on its thin hair.
“Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Ming-de, Holy Highness of the Present and Future Time, Lady of Ten Thousand Years, would like to ask you a question,” it said in a bored monotone that managed to convey absolute disgust with me, its mistress, and the world in general.
I blinked. “You’re not Chinese.” The British accent sort of gave it away, that and the fact that the remaining strands of hair were red.
The head gave a long-suffering sigh. “I wouldn’t be much bloody use as an interpreter if I were, now would I? And how did you know?”
“Well, I just—”
“It’s the hat, isn’t it? She makes me wear it so people will ask.”
“Ask what?”
“D’you see? It always works. It’s part of my punishment, to have to tell the story of my tragic life and painful death to every Tom, Dick and Harry before they’ll answer a simple question.”
“Okay. Sorry. What’s the question?”
It eyed me suspiciously. “You don’t want to hear about my tragic life and painful death?”
“Not really.”
It suddenly looked offended. “And why not? My death isn’t interesting enough for you? What would it take, eh? Perhaps if Robespierre was hanging here, damn him, you’d care to have a listen, hmm?”
“I don’t—”
“But a simple East India Company captain who made the mistake of firing on the wrong ship, oh, no, not enough to trouble yourself about?”
“Look!” I said, glaring. “I’m not having a great night here. Tell me, don’t tell me—I don’t care!”
“Well, there’s no cause to yell,” it said huffily. “The mistress simply wants to know the name of your seamstress.”