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Part of the reason I’d freaked out on Louis-Cesare hadn’t had anything to do with him. He’d accidentally stumbled across one of my admittedly not insignificant number of hot spots, and this one was hotter than most. Or maybe sharper, because that’s what it felt like, the broken edges sharp as glass where memories used to be.
Mircea had used his little gift on me when I was a child, sorting through my head, taking out my recollections of his brother, of what had happened to my mother, of who-knew-what-else, because I sure as hell didn’t. But I could feel it, even now, the place where all those memories should have been, as conspicuous in its absence as a newly lost tooth.
Or a hole in the head. Because that’s what it was: a hole, a wound, a fissure. I could feel the raw edges where my memories had been cut to pieces, the sudden blanks where the film broke and left me floundering on the brink of a thought. A diver walking to the edge of a cliff and looking over to see…nothing.
Supposedly, the idea had been to keep me safe, since my baby dhampir mind had been set on revenge, and nobody in our family was an easy kill. Particularly not when surrounded by an army of guards bristling with weapons. True, they were human and I was not, but they’d also outnumbered me by a few hundred to one and Mircea hadn’t liked the odds. He also hadn’t liked the idea of a quick and easy death for his brother in case I got lucky.
Or so he said. But there was a problem with that. Because Mircea’s idea of fitting punishment had been perpetual confinement, locking his crazed sibling away for centuries after making him a vampire so he couldn’t die and get out of it. So he could never forget. It was a symphony of revenge instead of the few notes I’d planned to mete out, and it made perfect sense—except for one small detail.
No one under master status can make a vampire.
So Mircea had already made the leap to at least seventh-level master when he Changed Vlad, and I was a baby dhampir at the time, almost literally. And yet he couldn’t have controlled me without the mental surgery? He couldn’t have found another way without taking almost every damn memory I had of my early life, including all recollections of my mother? He couldn’t have done something, anything, else?
I didn’t buy it.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the less I bought it, which was why I was having problems with this whole reconciliation thing. And now he wanted back inside my head for round two? I stared at him silently and said nothing.
Neither did he.
Maybe
because there wasn’t anything to say. I didn’t ask if they’d already checked other leads because I didn’t have to. Mircea wouldn’t have come here—not to me, not with this—unless he’d already tried everything else. Unless he was out of options.
So he was sitting there, bouncing Aiden on his knee, being patient with Claire, somehow keeping Marlowe in check, and waiting. For the deal. For the terms. For the bargains that were the only real heartbeat of vampire life.
And suddenly I was just sick of it, completely and utterly. There were things I could have asked for, things I could have used, but I didn’t want anything from him. I never had.
Nothing that I was likely to get, anyway.
“All right,” I heard myself say hoarsely.
And the dam burst.
Color, light, and the sound of raised voices surged around me. It felt like a veil had been lifted from over my head, leaving me blinking. And wincing, because Stinky had apparently been trying to get my attention by sinking wicked sharp nails into my thigh.
By the time I pried his toes out of my flesh, the party had moved to the living room, because it was darker. And Mircea needed his concentration for whatever he planned to do to my brain rather than putting out fires. I didn’t follow because I needed a few minutes.
And because of Claire.
Claire was Not Happy.
“I don’t like this,” she hissed, not bothering to keep her voice down.
Not that it mattered. The living room was only across the hall and down a little ways. Which meant we may as well have been standing beside them as far as vampire hearing was concerned. But Claire didn’t look like she cared.
“You don’t understand,” I told her, passing Stinky over so I could hold a paper towel to my leg. So much for another pair of jeans.
“Then explain it to me!” she said furiously, somehow managing to be intimidating despite balancing a baby on each hip. “Explain why you would even consider—”
“Because Varus wasn’t among the corpses,” I snapped. Damn, Stinky was developing freaking talons. “Which means he set us up—”
“He set them up. Not you! Why do you have to—”
“Claire, if the criminal element gets the idea that they can butcher the Senate’s agents at will, we’re all going to be in trouble. The Senate’s got enough on its hands with the war; it doesn’t need another front opening up here.” Especially one that knew its weaknesses as well as Varus probably did.
The reason Geminus had gotten away with his little hobby for so long was that he hadn’t been just any old vampire. He’d been a senator, and what was more, the Senate’s weapons master, which had included locating and developing new ways to kill things. That had given him carte blanche to go into Faerie whenever he liked, and set up his network of portals. But it also meant that Varus, as his right-hand guy, had way too much knowledge about the Senate’s inner workings—and its arsenal.
“We have to find him,” I told Claire. “Finding Varus means finding his contacts, who may be some of the same people causing you problems back home.”
