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The mantle thought that Lara was a fantastic idea. That she needed someone to tear those clothes off her and spend several hours with her in heavy physical exertion, and it thought that someone ought to be me. My body was backing up that concept. It backed it up so strongly that I felt the slow, sensual tension slide into my muscles, pressing my body against her a little more firmly wherever we were in contact.
“Oh,” Lara breathed quietly. Her eyes shone like mirrors.
I looked down and away from them, lest things get even more complicated. It was little improvement. It meant I could see one of her legs, positioned out to one side, and it had come clear of the folds of the kimono. Her skin was flawless and pale over absolutely glorious musculature. Even her feet were pretty.
She leaned closer and inhaled through her nose. The proximity made me feel dizzy—among other things.
I focused through the … well, not pain, but the need was rapidly building in that direction. I pushed my body’s stupid ideas away and spoke in a calm, level voice. “Lara,” I said quietly.
“Yes?” she breathed.
“Is it involuntary,” I asked her, “or are you using the come-hither on me on purpose?”
I tried for a calm, bright, conversational tone. It came out a hell of a lot lower and quieter and huskier than I meant. Because at the moment, the only thing I could really think very much about was how much I wanted to toss her onto a bed and start ripping off clothing. There wasn’t any thought or emotion behind that drive—just the primal, physical need of a body screaming for satisfaction.
I wondered if she was feeling something similar.
Her pale eyes stared steadily at my face, and she looked like she was thinking about something else. It took her a moment to lick her lips and answer. “It’s … some of both. I can use it whenever I wish to. But I can’t always choose when not to use it.”
I swallowed. “Then get off me.” At least I’d gotten the words in the right order. “This is a business trip. I came here to try to find a way to help Thomas. Not to get frisky with an apex sexual predator.”
Lara blinked at me, and her eyes darkened by several shades. Her mouth turned up into a slow, genuine smile. “What did you call me?” she asked.
“You heard me,” I said.
Some of the tension eased out of her. A moment later, she flowed to her feet and withdrew a few steps from me. I had to force myself to leave my hands down, rather than grabbing at her clothes as she drew back. “Well,” she said. “You aren’t wrong.”
I exhaled slowly and clubbed the Winter mantle and its stupid primal drives back into the backseat. I wasn’t sure I was exactly relieved that Lara had withdrawn, but it was probably simpler that she had.
She turned away and said, “The more power one has, the less flexible it is, wizard.” She shook her head. “The White Court is mine. But I cannot lead it to its destruction over actions this reckless. Not even for my idiot brother.” She shook her head. “Unless things change, I will have no choice but to disavow him.”
“Without your support,” I said very quietly, “he has no chance at all.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled. Then she turned to me, her gaze intense, her eyes now a grey so deep that they were nearly blue, and said, “No, Harry. He still has one.”
I swallowed and said, “Oh.”
Me.
15
The Munstermobile wasn’t exactly designed for speed. It didn’t have power steering or power brakes—just power—and it got about two gallons to the mile.
I settled in for the drive back. Riley and the Machinegun Hummer Revue escorted me back to the front gates. I turned out of the estate and onto an unlit country road that would take me back to the highway. We’d reached the witching hour, and the summer night was overcast, pregnant with heat and rain that hadn’t fallen. The windows started steaming over as vampire Graceland receded behind me, and I cranked them down laboriously.
My brother was in trouble and Lara wasn’t going to be any help.
I thought furiously about how to get him out. The White Council wasn’t going to be of any use unless Lara went to them with a formal request—an action that would have to happen openly, and which Etri’s people would be sure to regard as a tacit admission of guilt regarding Thomas. Mab wouldn’t help Thomas. His only use to her was as a replacement Knight should anything happen to me, and she could have been deceiving me about that. She didn’t do things for the sake of kindness. If I was unable to show her the profit to Winter in saving my brother, she would care no more about him than about the floor she walked on.
My only two sources of diplomatic muscle weren’t going to be any help, and I was pretty sure that I couldn’t get into a fully on-alert svartalf stronghold and drag him out all by myself. That would be a suicide mission, just as Thomas’s had been. If I went in and took along friends for support, would it count as a murder-suicide?
God, I felt sick. And tired. Stupid cornerhounds. Stupid allergy meds.
What was I going to do?
My stomach rumbled. I debated hitting an all-night hamburger franchise when I got to the highway. On the one hand, my body definitely needed the fuel. On the other hand, my stomach felt like it would probably object to adding much of anything to it. I was fumbling in my pockets for a coin to flip when grey shapes loomed up in the road in front of me. I stood on the brakes and left broad swaths of rubber on the road behind me as I fought the big old car to a halt.
I wound up with the nose of the car pointing into the weeds and the headlights casting a harsh cone of white light, partly over the road and partly over the thick trees that hemmed it in.
I killed the engine and stared out the driver’s-side window at the four Wardens who barred my way.
Ramirez stood in the middle of the crew and slightly forward, leaning on his cane, his dark eyes steady. He’d have been the first one to meet bumper if I hadn’t been able to stop the car. Gone were the casual civilian clothes—he was dressed in the White Council’s version of tactical gear, complete with his grey Warden’s cloak.
To his right stood “Wild Bill” Meyers. Wild Bill had filled out a lot as he got into his late twenties, adding on the muscle and solidity of a maturing body. He’d grown his beard out, and it wasn’t all skinny and patchy like it used to be. He kind of reminded me of Grizzly Adams now. His cloak was shorter on him than it had been when we’d started the war with the Red Court—Wild Bill hadn’t been done growing yet. Rather than one of the enchanted swords most of the established Wardens carried, Wild Bill had a bowie knife he’d been working on steadily for years. It rode his belt across from a .45-70 Big Frame Revolver that weighed as much as my leg.
In the shadows cast to the left side of the road by my headlights stood Yoshimo, who refused to let anyone call her by her first name. It had taken Ramirez a couple of years to find out that it was Yukie, and I’m pretty sure she hadn’t forgiven him. She was a girl of Okinawan heritage, about five four, and she carried a katana on her hip and an assault rifle on a strap around one shoulder. She could use either of them like a Hong Kong action-movie star.
The fourth member of Ramirez’s crew stood to his left, looking steadily into my headlights. He was a slim, very dapper young man dressed in a camel-colored bespoke suit and wearing a neatly complementary bowler hat. Chandler had indulged in experimental facial hair as well, and currently sported a thick, fierce Freddie Mercury mustache. It could have looked dopey with his outfit, but Chandler being Chandler, he carried it off with panache. Maybe the strictly ornamental walking cane helped. He was the only one of the four not geared up for a fight—but then Chandler had always made it a point to uphold the forms of civilization harder than were strictly necessary.
