Fury's Kiss (23 page)

Claire blinked at him, as if she must have heard wrong, and I laughed. “
You
will do it?”

“Why not?”

I licked my lips, so very, very many comments warring to be the first one out. But Claire looked him over critically. Of course, he wasn’t dressed for housework.

He was wearing the same khaki trousers and blue sweater as this afternoon. He wore sweaters a lot; I didn’t know why. Vampires could regulate their temperature a lot better than humans, but a sweater in August looked strange. I guessed maybe he liked the way it felt against his skin.

It was understandable. The fabric—some kind of ungodly soft angora—just enhanced the hard muscle below,
and proved almost impossible not to touch. I didn’t even realize I’d been doing it until I felt a nipple harden abruptly under my hand.

And until a dishcloth hit me in the face.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Claire told me drily. “You’re on kitchen duty.”

“Why?”

“You need to cool off.”

“I’m fine,” I said, feeling my cheeks heat, and tossed the towel back.

“Of course you are,” she said, rolling her eyes. But then she left us to it.

The back of the house is one of the reasons the old place is preferable to any slick new apartment. Yes, the water had to run for ten minutes to get remotely close to hot. Yes, half the outlets would shock the hell out of you if you did anything so radical as try to plug anything in. Yes, the garden gate screamed like a murder victim at the slightest touch.

But then there was this.

It was a relic from a time when people actually used backyards for things like hanging up laundry and planting a garden and, hell, playing major-league baseball, given the size. But then the fey had moved in. The front of the house had had to remain the same, since it faced the street and people might have wondered had it suddenly turned into a literal fairyland. But the back was fenced and fairly private, and the fey had been bored and…well.

The old fence had been close to falling down, with rotten and/or missing boards and choked with weeds. But now the weeds had been replaced by vines that had braided themselves together, filling holes and then flowing along the old boards like waves. The illusion was heightened by sprays of some kind of white flower that foamed up here and there, like breaking water.

There were more flowers dotting the yard, despite the fact that most of them weren’t in season. One of those that was, the neighbor’s purple hydrangeas, had really gotten into the spirit of things. The usually sickly-looking
bush had all but burst out of the ground, cascading over the fence like a waterfall and forming a waving purple puddle along one side of the yard.

In the middle of it all a miniature city had sprung up, a half circle of vaguely medieval-looking tents splashed with gold by the chains of lanterns strung between them. A bunch of huge roots had pushed up from the ground in the center, making a sitting area around a fire pit, where the artists and the fey were talking and singing and laughing and apparently getting along like gangbusters. Of course, that might have had something to do with the aforementioned cloud of weed.

That wouldn’t affect the fey, who were pretty much immune to weak old human plants. But it ensured that their guests didn’t notice certain things. Like the nearby patch of not-bluebells, which chimed with a faint tune whenever the breeze rustled through them. Or the strings of fireflies that festooned the bushes and sparkled in the trees, like tiny Christmas lights. Or the old lawn table and chairs that were living up to the name, having been completely covered, down to the individual slats in the seats, by a fuzzy blanket of bright green moss.

It was beautiful and weird and kind of disturbing and—

“Enchanting,” Louis-Cesare said, looking around as we approached three new picnic tables set up halfway between the house and the camp.

“Yeah, literally,” I said, plopping the tray on the end of the nearest table and shaking out the trash bag folded inside.

The tables sat six each, which was normally plenty, even when family and fey all ate together. But tonight there had been more people than usual, and mismatched chairs, extra place settings and visitors’ casserole dishes littered the area, making cleanup more of a job than usual. I closed up a couple folding chairs and stacked them against a tree, and then turned to table number one, only to have Louis-Cesare take the first plate out of my hand.

“I said I would do that.”

“Except we need our dishes in one piece,” I said, taking it back. “Thanks.”

“You think I do not know how?” he asked, and the dreaded eyebrow of doom went north.

“I think you do not know how,” I agreed.

And the next thing I knew, my hand was empty. And eight plates, bowls and glasses were in the bin, each in its own perfect little stack, with eight sets of silverware piled alongside. And a vampire was leaning against the side of the table, looking smug.

“I thought you had servants to do that,” I said, trying not to look impressed. Because his ego was already big enough.

“Now. But there were years when I did not.”

Yeah, I always forgot that about him. Because of a weird set of circumstances I didn’t completely understand, Louis-Cesare hadn’t spent his formative years in the bosom of a vampire family, being bullied and picked on and ordered around, but also being taught the ropes. Maybe it was why he was a pretty unconventional vampire even now.

Well, that and stubbornness. Somewhere in all those masterless years, he’d formed his own ideas about how the world worked. And by the time anybody got around to pointing out to him that, for example, senior masters did
not
bus tables, he’d been past caring.

“But I am surprised your friend does not,” Louis-Cesare said. “Do fey princesses not rate help?”

“If by ‘help’ you mean wilting noblewomen who wrinkle their noses at everything and don’t lift a hand.” They’d lasted less than a day. Claire didn’t play like that.

“The fey do not have kitchen help?”

I sighed. “Yes. But it’s the whole hierarchy thing. The soldiers were okay with the noblewomen being housed inside, since apparently they’re too delicate to face the rigors of the backyard.” He grinned. “But the regular servants couldn’t be put in better housing than the soldiers, because the soldiers outrank them. And we couldn’t fit the soldiers in the house, even if they doubled up, since there aren’t enough free rooms. So—”

“So no help.”

“No.”

Louis-Cesare looked thoughtful.

“Well, except for the twins.”

“The twins?”

“Sven and Ymsi. But while they’re good at picking up the couch so we can vacuum, they aren’t so good with the more delicate tasks. We lost eight windows when they tried to wash them and ended up obliterating them instead. And they’re not any better at cooking.”

“Given their size, I find that surprising,” he said drily.

“Yes, well. It’s not so much that they can’t cook, as
what
they cook. Trolls eat, well, I’ve never found anything they
don’t
eat, at least not so far.”

“Do I want to know what that means?”

I thought of a memorable dinner a few weeks ago. And shuddered. “No.”

Thankfully, he didn’t ask, just moved on to table number two. Which didn’t last any longer than table one. In a blink, the new plates were stacked neatly on top of the old ones, with the assorted accoutrements wedged perfectly alongside. If the whole master vampire thing didn’t work out, I knew some restaurants that would snap him up in a second. And then he got cocky and moved the overflowing bin to table number three.

As if.

“Where are your servants?” I asked with a grin, wondering if there was a whole family of crazy vamps out there.

“Some are working with Lord Marlowe. The Senate is shorthanded, and I was asked to have my masters lend a hand.”

“And the others?”

“Some are at Les Pléiades, my court in France. And some are here, in New York.”

“Here? Then why haven’t I seen any?”

“They have been busy looking for a house for me.”

“You’re buying a house here?”

“Hm. For some reason, I find New York to be more…attractive…than I remembered.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I didn’t say anything. I just followed behind him, stuffing paper goods in the garbage bag and closing up half-eaten trays of bakery rolls. Some of them hadn’t even been opened, but the others would probably be stale by tomorrow. Not that that was a bad thing. Claire’s bread pudding with whiskey sauce was almost as good as an orgasm.

Almost.

I grinned at that, and Louis-Cesare saw it. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

And it wasn’t. Nothing important, anyway. Or dangerous. Or death-defying or, well, anything. And that was the point.

Is this how normal people live all the time?
I wondered. I didn’t know. I’d never been normal. I would never be normal. But I got to visit it once in a while, and it was…nice.

“By the way,” he told me, “my majordomo would like to know your favorite color.”

I blinked. Both because that was kind of out of the blue and because he’d somehow just stacked every damned dish off the third table onto the teetering pile.

“Why?”

“I informed him that I would like the decor to be pleasing to you.”

I just stood there, getting further behind on the trash as I attempted to process that. “Why?” I finally repeated.

“For when you visit,” he said, like of course I would. And like I would care about the decor if I did. I’d never even owned
furniture
, and he was worried that I wouldn’t like the color scheme?

It was bizarre.

But he was standing there, looking at me like he expected an answer. Which I didn’t have because I’d never thought about it. “I…don’t have one.”

He frowned. “But everyone has one. Mine is blue; Radu’s is yellow. Your friend Claire’s is green, judging by the amount she wears it.”

And yes, it sounded reasonable when he put it like that, but it still didn’t change the fact I didn’t know. And
clothing choices weren’t likely to help me, because mine had always been more about expediency than anything else. I wasn’t worried about looking good. I was worried about what I could afford, because my lifestyle tended to be hard on clothes. I was worried about the best possible camouflage to do the job, because the harder you are to see, the harder you are to hit. Or shoot. Or stab. And that usually boiled down to dark blue, which is actually more difficult to see at night than any other color, or black, because it’s the urban uniform pretty much everywhere.

“Dory?”

“I…Black?” I guessed, because I had to say something. Or God help me, he might decide it was pink.

“Black?”

“What’s wrong with black?”

His lips twitched. “Nothing. And it should provide Georges with an…interesting challenge.”

He’d finished piling up the rest of the dishes as he spoke, into a towering, trembling mountain, like the preparation for some weird kind of circus act. Somehow, they were all in there—or on there, since most weren’t actually touching anything but other dishes and air. But it wasn’t going to do us any good, since they clearly weren’t going anywhere else.

Louis-Cesare saw my expression. “You think I can’t get them safely into the house?”

“I know you can’t.” For one thing, I doubted they’d fit through the door.

The eyebrow made a reappearance. “Are you willing to bet on that?”

“Bet what?”

He gave me a slow smile, the kind that said that money wasn’t likely to be involved here.

Which was just as well, since Mircea had just fired me. But that wasn’t the point, since I could afford other things even less.

“I don’t think so,” I opened my mouth to say, only my tongue had other ideas. My tongue chirped a cheerful “okay” before I could stop it.

And Louis-Cesare didn’t give me a chance to recant.
He took off for the house, weaving through the yard’s obstacles like a dancer—or what he was, an expert swordsman—with that ridiculous pile of dishes on one shoulder. And somehow he didn’t drop a single one.

I hadn’t really expected him to.

He was gone a long time. Well, okay, it was probably more like five minutes, but it felt like a long time when you’re busy arguing with yourself about how stupid you’re being and not getting anywhere. My brain was pissed, but my body clearly wasn’t on board. My toes kept trying to tap and my face kept trying to grin and on the whole, I thought the body might be winning.

I decided to go stand near the fey, so I’d at least have a reason for looking like an idiot.

Things had gotten to the jam stage, and they were really going at it. The neighbors had brought the usual—drums, a tambourine and Jacob’s guitar. The fey instruments were a little different, but still sort of familiar—flute-type things, lute-type things, and one collection of oddness that looked like an octopus had mated with some bagpipes.

What took me a few minutes to notice was that the fey without instruments were playing, too.

The breeze rustled through the treetops like a brush on cymbals. Water dripped out of a bamboo fountain with the regularity of a metronome. Wind chimes tinkled on the edge of the house with a suspiciously convenient rhythm. The flapping of a neighbor’s flag, the rumble of distant thunder, and the crickets sounding off in the hedge all got in on the act. Even the annoying bird from this morning, which should have been long asleep, was busy warbling out a tune.

It wasn’t obvious, not at first. But after standing there
a few minutes, it was hard not to notice. The whole yard had become an instrument.

“How are they doing that?” I asked Claire, who had come up beside me, the tired lines in her face smoothing out as she watched the dancers.

She shook her head helplessly. “Magic?”

And yeah, it was. Not the kind I was used to, the kind bought from shady dealers in back alleys, the kind used to hurt. But magic nonetheless. Happy and joyful and humming over my skin. It cut through the fatigue, making me want to dance like some of the girls were already doing, their bodies blocking out the firelight in intervals, flickering like images on a silent-film reel.