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"How can you get past the wards when your charming family can't?" I stared at him for a long moment. "And when the fuck were you going to tell me what they'd done to Heather?"
Grieve hung his head. "It only happened yesterday. I had no idea they'd send her to you before I could get here to warn you."
"Fuck you, too." I turned to him. "And you--what's your part in this? To convince me to leave well enough alone? To turn me and make me one of Myst's slaves like Heather? Apparently your adoptive kin seems to think a war's brewing. According to them, I'm not supposed to interfere."
Grieve started to move closer; he suddenly froze. "Who have you been with? You've been . . . Were you fucking somebody? Somebody . . . dead?" He was suddenly beside me, holding me by the shoulders. "Have you been with a vampire?"
I tore away from him, too angry to be afraid. "No--I didn't let a vampire fuck me, but I let one drink from me. It's in my contract. Your spies seem to know everything about me, so you might as well, too."
"What do you mean?" He looked stricken and let go of me. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have shaken you like that."
"You damned well better apologize. Here's the deal: I've been forced into working for the Crimson Court. Because I know you. As a side bonus, they were going to help us get Heather back, which is more than I can say you offered. To gain their assistance, I had to agree to a monthly blood donation. But now, my sacrifice is useless--at least as far as Heather's concerned."
"Cicely . . ." He lifted his head, wincing. "I'm so sorry . . ."
I waved away his words, no longer caring if I hurt his feelings. He could have stopped them, somehow saved Heather if he'd really wanted to. I truly believed it, despite what Lainule had said.
"Sorry doesn't mend fences or bring people back from the living dead. No, your people have turned her, and there's no chance to save her. She's gone to us--her life and everything she stood for wiped out in the blink of an eye. We've lost her and the best we can hope for is a bloody staking and putting her soul to rest. But maybe I'll luck out. Maybe my contract isn't all in vain. Peyton is still out there and we're going to rescue her, come hell or high water."
"So, you really are working for the Crimson Court?"
As he stared at me incredulously, I snorted. "Did you not hear what I said? And so what? You are aligned with the Indigo Court. Thrust and parry, my love. Thrust and parry. We're both pledged into the arms of hell, now."
He gave me a sideways glance. "Who was it? Who drank from you?"
I realized that--Fae or not--he was playing the testosterone card. I'd had enough of tiptoeing around.
"Fine. You want to know? I'll tell you. Lannan Altos, a professor at the conservatory. And yeah, he drank my blood, he made me beg him, and he made me come so hard I about lost consciousness when his fangs hit my neck. He thoroughly enjoyed himself and even though I tried to block him out, I came over and over again."
"I don't want to know this--"
"You asked! Once a month, I owe him a cup of my lifeblood, or however much he seems to want. Maybe I should just forfeit my life over to them for good now and get it over with. You should know what it's like to work for unyielding despots."
I expected him to walk out the door, to jump out the window and be gone. But Grieve just dropped to the bed.
"I never thought you'd go to that length to get them back," he whispered.
"Just what did you think? That we'd let your newfound family tear them to shreds without putting up a fight? Bleed them out, rip them to pieces? Rhiannon and I are cousins. Heather's my aunt--or was. Now she's Dead Woman Walking and guess what? It's tearing us apart. Do you know what happened when Heather came here? Rhiannon tried to fry her own mother."
At his startled look, I moved in closer.
"Yeah, that's right. I said she tried to fry her--tried to burn Heather to ashes. Her mother's a vampire, a slave to a sadistic queen. Heather's magic is a weapon of the Court now. So Rhiannon tried to kill her."
Grieve dropped his head to his hands and his shoulders started to shake. I stared at him, shocked into silence. He was crying, and they weren't crocodile tears. I knelt beside him, tipped his chin up, looked him square in the face.
"I was coming to tell you tonight about Heather. I was so afraid you'd tell me to leave, that you would never want to see me again."
The tears streaked his face, winding in rivulets down his cheeks. He was so alien, and yet so familiar to me. I knew him, knew him from the inside out. I was wondering when to tell him about discovering the truth about myself when I flashed . . .
We were sitting together on the top of a hill, and he was holding my hand. Only he wasn't Grieve, and I wasn't Cicely, but we were there, together, staring at a bloody pile of bodies that surrounded us.
"My love, we're doomed. You know that, don't you?"
And I--and yet it was not me--nodded. "They'll be here any minute. This time, they'll never let us go. What are we going to do?"
He held up a bottle. "We can escape to the future with this. We drink this together and we'll be bound to return, to find one another again in a different time. And with the grace of the gods, we won't be torn apart by our families, by our cultures."
He stroked my long hair back, shaking his head. "I love you more than life itself," he whispered. "They're going to kill us, you know that. They're going to torture us, tear us to shreds."
