Perilous Partnership (9 page)

“And we will,” Raymond promised, “but we can act like civilized men.

Would you care for an aperitif? Alain, something for you?”

“We‟ll open a bottle of champagne,” Jean interrupted before Alain could reply. “We are celebrating, after all.”

“Champagne is fine,” Alain said. “What are we celebrating?”

“The imminent opening of l‟Institut Marcel Chavinier, of course,”

Raymond said. “The sale of the property went through, and Adèle has already done the first layer of wards. We‟ve even solicited bids from companies for the work that can‟t be done magically. I can repair a hole in a wall. I can‟t install a new heating system.”

The other two wizards nodded, well aware that their knowledge of any given subject limited their magic‟s effectiveness. Jean returned a moment later with a bottle of champagne and six flutes. He popped the cork with sophisticated ease and poured a taste into one glass. Raymond tasted it and approved, so Jean poured the others, distributing them to their guests.

“To the success of l‟Institut Marcel Chavinier,” Raymond said, lifting his glass. The others followed suit and drank the toast.

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“Dinner won‟t be ready for another hour,” Raymond said when they had completed the toast. “I thought we could discuss business now and then enjoy a meal among friends.”

The comment brought a smile to all six faces. Prior to the formation of the alliance, Jean and Orlando had already been friends, as had Thierry and Alain, but the third wizard and the third vampire had been complete outcasts. “What a difference a year makes,” Thierry chuckled with a nod toward Raymond.

“What a difference a war makes,” Jean agreed. “Have a seat and we‟ll get our business out of the way.”

They moved toward the seating area in the salon, the group devolving into three couples as they chose their seats, Alain and Orlando on one divan, Thierry and Sebastien on the other, while Jean and Raymond chose the armchairs on either side of a huge marble fireplace that crackled appealingly.

“Until the bids come in, we can‟t do a lot on the physical side of opening l‟Institut,” Raymond explained when everyone was settled, “but we can begin to work on both the educational and research aspects. The building is essential, of course, but it does us no good without a purpose.”

“The number of partnerships forming has decreased significantly since the war ended because the desperation that drove us to bond no longer applies, but out of curiosity, stupidity, or some other motivation, some people still go searching for their partners, and sometimes that doesn‟t end well,” Jean continued. “If both partners enter the bond aware of what it entails and willing to make that commitment, then everything is fine.”

“But we still only barely understand what the commitment entails,”

Sebastien said with a shake of his head. “We had no idea what we were doing when we formed our partnerships at the beginning of the alliance.”

“And that‟s where the research comes in,” Raymond explained. “We‟re hoping established pairs will be willing to help with that, both in terms of sharing their experiences and possibly in letting us conduct some experiments.

Nothing that would damage the bond, but to help us determine how long certain effects last, that sort of thing. And this is where we need your help. We need to catalogue what we know for the educational side and what we don‟t know so we can outline the research component.”

“What we do know,” Orlando began. “We know that between partners, the wizard‟s blood protects the vampire from sunlight for a period of time, depending on when the vampire last fed and how much he took.”

“And we know that while the vampire feeds, the wizard‟s power increases significantly,” Alain added.

Raymond nodded as they spoke, jotting down notes in a pad on the table next to him.

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“We know a wizard‟s magic doesn‟t work on his partner,” Thierry said with a wink for Sebastien.

“And that the bond forms from the first taste of the partner‟s blood,”

Sebastien continued.

“Does it, though?” Raymond disagreed. “The first taste is enough to establish the partnership and to protect the vampire from sunlight, but does the deeper bond, the one that draws the partners together, really form that quickly?”

“Yes,” Alain and Orlando said immediately.

“When we first met,” Orlando went on, “there was nothing between us, no alliance, no realization of the protection from sunlight, nothing but the taste of Alain‟s blood in my mouth.”

“And the feel of Orlando‟s fangs in my wrist.”

“But you remember what it was like, Jean. I couldn‟t stop thinking about him, talking about him,” Orlando continued. “When we met the next night, the compulsion to reach for his hand again was nearly overwhelming. If he had rejected me, maybe I would have recovered from it, but from the moment he offered his wrist that second time, there was no going back. Not for me.”

“Nor for me,” Alain agreed. “I talked to Marcel that night, trying to figure out what was going on, if somehow Orlando had enchanted me. Marcel assured me that wasn‟t possible because if it were, vampires wouldn‟t be in the situation they were in.”

“What about you, Thierry?” Raymond asked.

“The day before we met at the gare de Lyon to search for partners, I buried my wife, killed in an ambush the night you followed Orlando and I followed Alain to their second meeting,” Thierry reminded everyone. “I‟d decided to do whatever it took to bring down Serrier, even if it meant a brand on my neck to match the one on Alain‟s. The burst of magic that hit Sebastien got away from me because I was so frustrated at not having found one. I was so focused on finding a partner that I would have agreed to anything once I had one. Whatever that meant.”

“I wasn‟t sure I wanted to be there either,” Sebastien added, “given my shaky position within the Cour, but that first bite was all it took. I knew Thierry was grieving from the moment I tasted his blood, so I didn‟t press for anything more than a functional partnership, but the fascination was there.”

“So perhaps my distrust of the situation skewed my reactions,” Raymond mused aloud, “because I certainly did not want to be partnered with any vampire. We won‟t have that problem this time around. No one will be obliged to form a partnership, and since we can use magic to identify partners instead of

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blood, if the partners meet and decide they don‟t want to continue, they should be able to walk away, at least before the first exchange of blood.”

“So what else do we know?” Jean asked.

“We know that the bond forms based on some sort of magical compatibility and not on any existing preferences on the part of the people involved,” Thierry said. “I never had any interest in men before Sebastien. Honestly, I still don‟t have any interest in men, just in Sebastien. It‟s something to consider, since all the pairings I know well have gone beyond the alliance and become personal.

Intimate.”

“There were a few that seemed to drift apart after Serrier‟s defeat,”

Raymond said, “but they are people who went back to other jobs after the war.

Many of the wizards aren‟t even still in Paris, so I don‟t know what their status is now.”

“What about Adèle?” Alain asked.

“Adèle has not seen her partner in a year, but the bond is still there,”

Raymond said. “She confirmed it when we saw her in Dommartin. She‟s resisting, but the bond is still there. Another reason to provide a time and space for partners to get acquainted before they bond. I don‟t imagine it took long for Adèle to realize she was mismatched.”

“That‟s what I don‟t understand,” Orlando said. “I know I‟m not very smart, but I don‟t understand how something like that could happen. Why, when most of the partnerships are seamless, did two such incompatible people match?”

“Don‟t put yourself down,” Alain and Jean said simultaneously, making them both laugh. “There‟s a difference between intelligence and education,”

Jean continued. “And while you might not have studied arcane lore the way Raymond or I have, that doesn‟t mean you aren‟t intelligent. Besides, we don‟t understand it anymore than you do.”

“It‟s one of the things we need to add to the research agenda,” Raymond said. “We need to understand why pairings form so we can help advise people on their options. Monsieur Lombard posited that the elemental magic wouldn‟t make a mistake, but that doesn‟t mean it takes everything into consideration. I mean, what would have happened if Thierry‟s wife had still been alive? Or Alain‟s ex-wife, for that matter?”

“Did any partnerships form where one of the partners already had a lover or spouse?” Sebastien asked. “I didn‟t know anyone well enough when we started to know.”

“Not that I was ever aware of,” Raymond said.

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“Me either,” Jean agreed, “which is interesting in and of itself. An individual‟s personal preferences don‟t matter, but their personal commitments do?”

Raymond sighed. “More questions and still no answers.”

“So let‟s focus on the questions,” Thierry proposed. “After all, they‟re far more numerous than the answers.”

“Why does it all work?” Orlando said immediately.

The wizards laughed. “That may be the one thing we‟ll never be able to answer,” Raymond admitted. “We can usually learn to predict magical outcomes, but we can‟t always explain why they work the way they do. For example, a lot of spells can be cast in modern French, but they work best in old French, except that nobody speaks old French anymore, and minor mispronunciations keep the spell from working as well as it used to because of it. Nobody knows why, but we know it does.”

“Does the age of the vampire affect the bond?” Sebastien threw out. “It affects so much else in our existence. It would seem logical that it could affect this as well.”

“Certainly to hear Magali talk about the final battle between Marcel and Serrier, when monsieur Lombard bit Marcel, he stripped through Serrier‟s wards like a hot knife through butter,” Raymond agreed. “Of course, that‟s pairing the most powerful wizard of our time with the oldest known vampire in France. I suspect the differences will usually be more subtle than that.”

“Probably,” Jean agreed, “but there‟s also the inherent strength of the wizard. Monsieur Lombard‟s age combined with Marcel‟s power. Either one alone would have made an impact, but not as much as the combination.”

“Could that be part of what influences the creation of the bonds?” Alain wondered aloud. “Some relationship between the age of the vampire and the strength of the wizard? You and Jean are another perfect example of that.”

“It‟s certainly something we can investigate,” Raymond agreed, making a note on his pad. “What else?”

“How often can a vampire feed from his partner without weakening the wizard?” Jean asked immediately. “Alain and Orlando don‟t count because the Aveu de Sang protects Alain, but I shouldn‟t have been able to feed as often as I did during the war, and yet I did without any harm to you.”

“I noticed the same thing,” Sebastien said. “I don‟t feed as often now as I did then, but I don‟t ever get the sense that I‟m weakening Thierry by taking what I need.”

“Nor do I feel weakened by his feeding,” Thierry confirmed.

“Got it,” Raymond said.

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“On a purely practical level, we know that a vampire feeding from his partner helps maintain the magical equilibrium, but how widespread is that effect?” Thierry asked. “Does Sebastien feeding from me here help address an imbalance in Tahiti, or do we need partnerships scattered throughout the world for it to be an effective way to address the issue?”

“We don‟t
need
them at all now that the war is over and we can do our jobs again, but certainly the job of maintaining balance has grown easier over the past year,” Raymond replied. “I‟ve noted that as well.”

“Obviously this isn‟t an issue for us at this point, but can the partnerships function on a blood level without having to spill over to a sexual level?” Alain asked. “We didn‟t know what we were getting into, and I wouldn‟t change things between Orlando and myself, but that‟s asking a lot of a wizard or a vampire to take on a lover as well as a partner. It was a lot during the war, but we had the necessity of winning the war as a reason to accept a lot of things we might have otherwise questioned.”

“Which begs the question of whether the personal side of the relationship affects the magical side,” Raymond added. “Would a partnership predicated purely on an exchange of blood have the same power as one that has a more personal component? My guess is that while it might be possible, the more complete the relationship, the more powerful the bond, and the more powerful the effects. We saw that when we first realized that the exchange of blood could affect the magical balance. It worked when it was just feeding, but it worked even better when the couple started having sex too.”

No one asked who the couple was. It did not matter, and some things were best left private.

“So what else?”

“You mentioned geography in terms of the magical equilibrium, but what about in terms of finding partners in the first place?” Thierry asked. “Most of us found our partners here in Paris, and even those who didn‟t found their partners nearby, like Magali and Luc in Amiens. At the time, I was too thrilled to have the help against Serrier to question it, but does it seem a little simplistic to you?”