Death's Mistress (31 page)

He had the utter gall to look offended. “I did nothing of the sort—”

I stared at him. “And just how do you figure that? You stripped me butt naked, diddled me over a desk and stole my duffel bag.
And
my clothes!”

Somebody made a choking sound. I glanced up to find the door to the study open, and the old vamp looking scandalized. “Diddled?” Anthony asked, apparently delighted. Mircea closed his eyes.

Louis-Cesare made some indeterminate French sound and dragged me farther down the hall. A bedroom was empty, so he shoved me inside, which was a complete waste of effort. If it wasn’t soundproofed—and I doubted Elyas had wasted an expensive spell on a guest room—the others could hear us perfectly well.

But Louis-Cesare didn’t look much like he cared.

“I was speaking of
subrand. You knew you were in danger, yet you said nothing.”

“Why should I have? It was none of your business.”

“If someone is attempting to murder you, it is most certainly my business.”

“Why?” He didn’t say anything, which pissed me off. I was tired and starving, and I must have bumped my hurt wrist somewhere, because it throbbed in time to every heartbeat. I was in no mood for games.

“Why is it your business, Louis-Cesare?”

“You know damn well why!”

“No, I don’t know. I don’t know a goddamned thing. Maybe you should try spelling it out for once.”

“And perhaps both of you should try learning some discretion,” Marlowe hissed. He came in and slammed the door behind him. It wouldn’t help with privacy; I think he was just pissed off.

“We would like some time alone,” Louis-Cesare snapped.

“It seems to me you’ve had too much of that already.” Marlowe stared back and forth between the two of us. “I don’t know what’s going on here—and I
really
do not wish to know. But now is not the time to hand Anthony more ammunition.”

Louis-Cesare didn’t even look at him. “What did he do to you?” he demanded.

“Maybe I should get it on a T-shirt,” I said, crossing my arms. “None of your—”

“You have been favoring your left hand all night. Is that why?” Trust a swordsman to notice.

When I didn’t say anything, he pulled me to him and began running his hands over me—as if he hadn’t done enough of that already.

I was about to knock his hand away when Marlowe did it for me. Louis-Cesare’s usually sunny blue eyes suddenly went chrome—cold, flat and dangerous. “Have a care, Kit.”

“I am not the one who needs to take care. Have you gone mad? She is
dhampir
!” Marlowe said it in the same tone someone in medieval Europe might have used for leper, which was fair, since that was pretty much the way he’d meant it.

I don’t know what would have happened next, because both men were crackling with energy, and neither was the type to back down. But then Mircea walked through the door. “Your consul wishes a word,” he told Louis-Cesare mildly.

Louis-Cesare cursed under his breath and started to say something, but Mircea held up a hand. “This is bad enough as it is. Provoking the man for no reason would be foolish, do you not think?”

Apparently he did think, because he went, after shooting me a look that said this wasn’t over. He’d barely gotten out the door when Marlowe rounded on me. “What in the
hell
game are you—”

“Kit. I think we have given Anthony enough amusement tonight, don’t you?” Mircea asked.

“More than! Do you know what this will—”

“Yes. We’ll discuss it in a moment.”

Marlowe sent me a final glare and left. I’d have been right behind him, but Mircea was between me and the exit, and he showed no sign of moving.

“Don’t you think it’s time we talked?” he asked with a smile.

“What about?” I asked warily.

Mircea leaned against the door, casual, elegant, like he had all night. Fortunately, I knew that wasn’t true. Unfortunately, diving out the window wasn’t a real possibility at this level. Maybe the roof . . .

“I do not want to play word games with you, Dorina. Tell me what happened last night.”

“I’ve told you—”

“Nothing. Other than the bald fact that a very dangerous creature attempted for the second time to kill you. What you have not told me is why.”

“He tried to kill me before—”

“Because you were in his way. Are you again?”

Nobody ever won a verbal sparring match with Mircea by taking the defensive, so I ignored that. “Are you going to tell me why you wanted the rune so badly that you practically threatened Louis-Cesare’s life tonight?”

“I did nothing of the kind. And you didn’t answer my question.”

“Not in so many words, maybe. But the intention was conveyed. And you didn’t answer mine.”

“When you start being honest with me, perhaps I will.”

I just stared at him, too shocked to speak for a moment. Because of all the people to chastise me for a lack of honesty or trust, Mircea’s name should have been last on the list. In fact, it shouldn’t have been on the damn list at all.

His brother Vlad had killed a lot of people in his short reign of terror, one of whom had happened to be my mother. Mircea had wiped that little fact from my adolescent head, afraid I’d go after my crazy uncle and get killed. Or so he said. I had no independent way of verifying that since wiped memories are gone for good.

“I don’t think you’re really one to talk. Do you?” I finally asked softly.

“I have never kept anything from you that was not necessary.”

“In your opinion! Did it never occur to you that I might not agree? That I might have wanted those memories, however unpleasant?”

Mircea hesitated, taking a half second to adjust to the conversational leap. Not that it was much of one. Our history of deception had started almost as soon as our relationship had. “They would have done you little good had you died because of them.”

“That was my decision!”

“You were too young to make that decision. It was my duty to make it for you.”

“A duty you’ve kept up ever since.” I rubbed my eyes, suddenly weary in more ways than one. I was tired of it—of the constant games and the verbal matches, of wanting to trust him but never knowing whether I could, or how far. I’d spent years avoiding a relationship with him for exactly those reasons, and I should have known better than to think that anything was ever going to change.

I’d told them all I could about
subrand’s attack. There was nothing more I could do here. “This is a waste of time,” I said, and headed for the hall door.

Mircea didn’t budge, but his fingers bit into my arms. “Running away again, Dorina?”

I stared up at him, angry and tired and hurt. “I don’t run from my problems!”

“Unless they include me. In which case you never do anything else.”

“What else is there to do?” I demanded angrily. “Nothing changes, Mircea. We go on this same merry-go-round, over and over, until I’m dizzy. You manipulate me, lie to me—”

“I have never lied to you.”

“Just twist things around to say what you want them to say, instead of the truth.”

His jaw tightened. “Sometimes, the truth can be dangerous. If I had allowed you to retain your memories about Vlad, you would be dead. Merely another of his victims.”

“And what’s the excuse now? Because I’m sure you have one, and I’m sure it will sound perfectly plausible. And I’m equally sure it will be bullshit!”

“And do you not do the same to me?” he asked, a spark of amber lighting the deep brown of his eyes. That wasn’t a good sign, but I was too pissed to care. “You almost died last night, practically under my nose, and you said
nothing
?”

“There were extenuating circumstances.”

“There always are with us, it seems.”

I started to shoot back a reply, but stopped. He looked tired suddenly, hollowed out and drained, in a way that was terribly familiar. It could be another game; it probably
was
another game. But it stopped me anyway.

“If you don’t start to trust me, this is never going to work,” I told him simply.

“And what is ‘this’?” he asked carefully.

“Whatever the hell it is we’re doing here. You wanted me to work with you, or so you said. And now Marlowe seems to think you meant
for
you, and I think he may be right. Because all I do is the same menial crap you could send any of your boys to do just as easily, and you never tell me a damn thing. It’s been a month, and we’ve yet to work
with
each other even once!”

I expected another excuse, a platitude, an elegant brush-off. Mircea was the master at that sort of thing, and so smooth that half the time, the people who had been put off didn’t even realize it. With vampires it was always smarter to pay attention to what they did rather than what they said, especially this one.

But he surprised me. Without a word, he turned and opened the door, indicating with a gesture for me to precede him. I walked out, and then he led the way back to the soundproofed sitting room, where Marlowe was pacing. His head jerked up as we came in the door, and his expression darkened when he saw me.

“This is a very bad idea,” he said, low and intense.

“And not telling her would be a worse one.” Mircea went to the tall windows and drew the full-length drapes. Just in case someone had scaled the side of the building in order to lip-read, I presumed.

“I don’t see how.”

“You do not have a daughter, Kit.”

“I do not—” Marlowe broke off, a look of disbelief spreading over his face. “That’s your reason? You would risk—”

“Nothing. I think Dorina has proven that she knows how to keep a secret.” Mircea pulled one of the chairs out from beside a small round table and then just stood there, waiting for me.

I cautiously moved forward, wondering if this was some kind of a test. Until recently, Mircea and I had spoken maybe once a decade, and those conversations always ended the same: I got louder and louder, and he got colder and colder, and eventually, I stormed out. That was how the world worked; that was the natural order of things. This . . . was not. And it worried me.

My hesitation seemed to anger him. “I wish to talk to you, Dorina! Please stop looking as if you suspect me of arranging an ambush.”

An ambush might be easier, I thought, as I slid onto the smooth leather. I knew how to handle those. I wasn’t so sure about whatever this was.

“Talk about what?” I asked cautiously. I had a lot of questions, but I knew better than to think I would get any answers. Mircea never came entirely clean with anyone. All vampires were cagey, secretive, guarded. But in his case, it was more than a personal preference; it was his job.

He was the Senate’s chief diplomat, which meant a lot more than just pressing the flesh at parties. He did his fair share of that, but it was also his responsibility to find the weaknesses in people, to figure out what made them tick, to know what pressure points would yield results. That was why he and Marlowe had practically been Siamese twins since the war. Marlowe gathered info; Mircea exploited it. They were both very good at what they did.

But in Mircea’s case, it had had a side effect. He’d done the job so long now, lived with the lies and half-truths and hidden agendas, that it had bled over into the rest of his life. Sometimes, I really didn’t know if he knew the truth anymore.

“What did you ask for?” He sat down opposite me and crossed his legs, effortlessly elegant, as if we did this every day. Just a casual little father-daughter chat. Uhhuh.

“I’m listening.”

“This cannot leave this room,” he told me. “Not a word, not to anyone, not anywhere, no matter how secure you may think the location to be.”

I’d have made a smart remark about melodrama, but one look at his face was enough. He was serious. “Okay.”

“I assume you are familiar with the World Championships?”

I nodded.

“The Senate is sponsoring them this year, partly to improve our new alliance with the mages, but mainly as a cover.”

“Cover for what?”

“A meeting of delegates from many Senates to discuss the war. If our enemies knew where we were strategizing, they would target it. But everyone goes to the races, which in turn sparks an endless stream of balls and parties—and numerous possibilities for meetings that do not look like meetings.”