Blood Spirits (47 page)

Phaedra made social noises, but I sensed she was waiting. When a couple of twenty-year-old girls pounced on Percy, drawing him into the crowd, she leaned toward me. “Tony is back.” Her smile was angry. “And he's here.”

“He flew in about four hours ago,” came a familiar voice.

We whirled around: there was Alec.

TWENTY-EIGHT

A
LEC SAID TO ME, “Dance with a dead man?”

“As long as he's not a zombie,” I said, holding out my hand.

“Bra-i-i-i-ns,” Alec murmured in my ear as his arms closed around me and every nerve shimmered like a carillon of bells. This was where I belonged, in his arms.

His grip tightened as I looked into his face.

“No,” he whispered. “I am not drunk.” His body shook. He was laughing silently. “If they put me against the wall, will you bring me a last shot of whiskey? Make it a fifth.”

“Don't.” I shivered as we twirled into the middle of the floor. “Don't say that. Even as a joke.” And though I'd meant to keep the secret—I knew how horrible it would be to raise his hopes only to smash them if I was wrong, and it was so very, very easy for me to be wrong, but: “You didn't do it, Alec.”

His smile was almost manic. His blue eyes were wide, the marks of tiredness revealing how little rest he'd had since I last saw him. “Didn't do what?”

“You were not driving that car.”

His grip tightened almost painfully as the blue gaze intensified. No, it was that his pupils had snapped to pinpoints. “What?”

An older man looked our way, his expression intent, as if he wanted to speak to Alec.

But Alec twirled me under his arm, and with an expert sidestep and another, he guided me between two couples to relative safety. As we whirled, I caught sight of Tony and Beka framed between two amaranth-crowned pilasters, she with arms crossed, he with that smiling, proprietary air I so distrusted. They were quite a contrast, he so tall, she petite, his long hair pale against his shoulders in the black coat, and her dark curls against the white bodice of her gown.

I finished the spin, facing Alec once again. He gazed down at me, not even breathing for a long moment.

Beka and Phaedra had been convinced that it would be cruel to give Alec hope without proof, and I'd agreed. But that was before I saw him, and got hit with that overwhelming sense that keeping secrets from him was like shutting off access to half my brain and senses. He needed hope, and it was maybe crueler to keep it from him.

So I said in English, “We weren't going to tell you until we proved it.”

We barely moved in a taut little circle, our bodies fit together hip to hip, as I gave a fast description of the accident site journey. It not only felt good to tell him, it felt
right
.

Alec's grip was as intense as his breathing. Then, “How do you know it was that day?” He whispered the words into my hair.

“I don't. There's no helpful LED date thingie running at the bottom of Prismview. So tell me this. Has Magda Stos ever driven your green Daimler with you in the back seat?”

“Not to my knowledge. And I haven't been in the back seat since I was a boy.” On the last word his hand tightened on mine, but when I wriggled my fingers he instantly loosened his. “Sorry. I'm sorry. I just remembered something.”

“From that day?” I looked up in hope—and a bit of trepidation.

“I don't know. I thought it was some kind of nightmare, because it didn't make sense, but I recollect a hand pushing my head down. Then cold leather under my cheek. Dizziness. Thirst, even.”

The cluebat whapped me. “Alec, is it possible that blackout was caused by your being roofied? Drugged?”

His mouth thinned into a pale line. “I never thought of that. But who? There was no one in the palace that day but staff. Far more likely I lost track of how much I was drinking, than some mysterious person was lurking around with potions.”

“What you described, those unconnected physical impressions? Well, that's what it was like when you put Kilber's sleepy-powder in my wine in Vienna.”

We were moving in a such tight, tiny circle that we were clinging to one another, barely dancing. His eyelids came down for a brief, painful second, then his expression changed, rueful and mildly ironic. “If it's true, would you call that payback?”

“Don't joke about that,” I whispered fiercely. “Yes, you did a stupid thing that day, but you didn't mean me, or Ruli, any harm. If it's true you got roofied, it sure as
hell
wasn't for any good reason.”

“No, but I'm beginning to see that no reason is good. How can anyone trust me if they cannot trust a drink from my hands, or food from my house?”

I looked up into his face. His gaze had shifted to that distant look he got when his mind was running, and he said quickly, “Is that not the essence of civilization, that we can trust something so fundamental from each other as food and drink?”

“Kilber used it during the war. He said so he wouldn't have to kill anyone.”

“Yes, but he used it against those he didn't trust, who didn't trust us. Don't you see? When we do such things to those we want trust from . . .” He looked away.

“You did it exactly once. You haven't again,” I said. “And you won't.” He had that slightly pained, inward expression that I knew meant that, once again, he'd been judge and jury, and he'd found himself guilty. “Speaking of evil and rotten, do you know what Tony's up to?”

“Dmitros has von Mecklundburg House under constant surveillance,” Alec murmured. “I sent someone to Paris to find out what Tony did there.”

“And? Did he come back with that Magda person?”

“No. Dmitros went himself to the airstrip to intercept Tony, who told him that Magda had already left Paris by the time he arrived.”

There we were, back in the rhythm of our former exchanges. Alec's hand drifted up my back and down again, causing me to shiver with pleasure, as he said, “She's returning to Dobrenica by train, which would be her usual habit unless she was accompanying a family member. She left her mobile in Paris—which is typical, since, as you know, they don't work up here.”

“What about Tony's excuse for going to Paris to hire a cook?”

“Apparently Tony has actually returned with a cordon bleu chef.” He chuckled. “Dmitros accompanied them to Mecklundburg House himself. He said Madame Tullée hit that household like a bomb. Redhead, designer glasses tinted green, wearing clothes straight off the Champs-Élysées. I've never believed that about redheads and temper, but apparently she arrived with her own food—bales of it. Threw a fit when the Vigilzhi insisted on inspecting her crates, but there were no racks of guns, just fresh vegetables and the like. When she got to Mecklundburg House she chucked the family out of the kitchen and proceeded to sort them all to her liking, while Tony stood by, laughing. When Dmitros left, the duchess was standing in the middle of the kitchen in silk and diamonds, surrendering to
force majeure
.”

I loved the idea of a cook menacing the Evil Family of Doom. “Why don't you arrest Tony? It would make my day to see him dragged off the ballroom floor in chains.”

“Because there is no evidence that he's done anything to warrant the chains.”

“All right, though personally I think there should be more
off with his head!
to your job. Okay. Instead of what-iffing each other to death, tell me this: Do you by any chance know what the word ‘Esplumoir' means?”

“No. Yes.” He frowned. “Dmitros and Honoré are both signaling,” he said quickly, as the orchestra began bringing that dance to an end. “Strange how memory sometimes gives you the context before you remember the actual words. When I was around twelve, and we first came to visit Dobrenica, and we were staying with the Dominicans, my father read me medieval French grail stories when we holed up during bad weather. You haven't read those?”

“My early Arthurian familiarity is pretty much limited to Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach.”

Alec's eyes narrowed pensively as he navigated us between two pairs of young dancers who were trying to speed-waltz. “Esplumoir. All I recall was that Esplumoir was Merlin's prison, or his secret retreat. At twelve, the idea of a secret retreat has instant appeal, though the rest of the romance is pretty much rot. Ah. Another stray fact: it was the magical place where falcons went to molt. Why?”

“Because Armandros's ghost said it to me.”

“What did Armandros say to you?” Tony asked.

The jolt was physical, like a shock of cold water. The music had stopped—and Tony was right behind me.

Alec gave me one of those looks—his hidden laughter revealed only in the slight lift to his lower eyelids. He left the question to me to answer. Some old legend about Merlin didn't sound important, but why would a ghost say it?

At any rate, I didn't trust Tony enough to say so out loud.

“Pistols at twenty paces?” Tony said to Alec in English.

Alec cocked his head, brows raised interrogatively as he asked me, “How are you with a pistol?”

Our eyes met, and there was that flash that obliterates everything but the other. Of course he knew that I would hate someone fighting over me, that I would fight my own duels. He knew it, and I rejoiced in the knowing. But the intimacy of that moment demanded privacy, and we did not have that. So I turned away.

“I can learn.” I glanced at Tony then back to Alec. “If the target will stand still.”

Tony laughed. The next dance hadn't begun yet. I could hear some shuffling up on stage. Tony held out his hands, and said, coaxing, “If I promise to stay strictly in the room?”

Alec flicked his fingers up in a wave, squeezed my left hand, and then left me alone with The Enemy.

I longed to zap him with a snide,
So where is Ruli this time?
but what if I was wrong, and he really didn't know that his sister had not been burned up in the Daimler? His chin lifted and there was a musical
thrump!
followed by the reedy wail of a concertina in a fretful minor key note, which was punctuated with another drumming, guitar-strumming
thrump
, in the nervy syncopation of the tango.

Tango is a seduction without words
.

“No way,” I said.

He flashed a grin. “Chicken?”

“Buck-a buck!”

“Come on. They're all watching.”

I looked around. The floor had mostly emptied, except for a few brave souls. Cerisette stood near the high table, smoking through a long holder and eying me scornfully. The duchess stared, stone-faced. I didn't see Robert, but his wife looked utterly disgusted. So, the duchess and her allies hated the idea of seeing me dance with Tony?

Phaedra drifted like an elegant shadow behind Honoré, on the other side of the room. Catching my eye, she curled her lip and gave me a surreptitious thumbs up. Honoré smiled faintly, then sent a challenging glance at the head table.

“Righto,” I said, and took his hand. Time for another duel. But it wasn't going to be seduction.

One by one, traditional instruments joined, playing lonely airs in counterpoint to one another and to the beat, as the orchestra hummed beneath, like the ocean pounding the shore. Step, step, step. For the first time I was really aware of the excellent fit of those bespoke shoes, the heels high and tight. The beginning of the tango is always exploratory, the figures meant to be a stylized flirtation as one steps forward and the other retreats, then spin and counter, feet touching in the sweep of the
barrida
.

This wasn't traditional but a
tango fantasia
, in which anything can happen. The lissome, airy gestures punctuated in sexy counterpoint with the tight geometry of the steps, in and out, in and out. He pulled me in but I kept my distance with the quick complications of the
ochos, saccadas, adornos
, the cat-like stroke of the
caricias
, and when the tension slowly increased, the sharp
gancho
, where I hooked a leg around his, followed by a
cortes
—the suggestive pause—just long enough for him to register my heel's proximity to horrible pain. “This is not a seduction,” I whispered. “It's a duel.” I left him to decide if I meant his family—or him.

He smiled, and snapped me into a spin so tight that my hair shook free and tumbled down to my hips. He whirled me back again into a
carpa
, shifting expertly so I leaned down him, my hair cascading to touch the floor. “Duels
are
seduction,
draska mea
,” Tony whispered. “Haven't you figured that out? Tell me what Grandfather Armandros said. I have a right to know.”

“The only right I'll give you is to go jump off a bridge.”

On the word
bridge
I whirled a fan kick high in the air, my skirt whooshing in a perfect arc, and rolled my shoulder out of his reach.

Duel
was mere rhetorical flourish. There was no seduction, or maybe I might have felt it if all my muscles were not remembering the fire of that last slow dance locked in Alec's arms. But Tony wasn't completely wrong, either, for tango is always communication—conversation—whatever the intent.

Tony's emotional communication was never done in words, at least not with me. His words were all deflection, a smoke screen. His real communication was all physical, in somewhat the same way that Alec expressed emotion through the safety and deflection of poetry. Tony kept offering me the lift, over and over because he was saying
trust me
.

So with all my twirls and kicks and arabesques, I pushed him away:
no chance.