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“I don’t want to mess with them. I just want to know who they’re working for. If they’re in it for themselves, smuggling some refugees or fey wine or whatever, then fine—”
“That’s not what they’re smuggling. That response last night? You don’t get that over wine!”
“That’s my point, Ray. If they’re working with Aeslinn, they could be bringing in some very bad stuff for the war.”
“Then why not just tell the Senate? Have them deal with this?”
“Ray, I’m on the Senate. But if I’m going to talk them into diverting resources in the middle of a war, I need to have some evidence to offer. All I have right now is something Dorina overheard, which made it sound like first the albino and then a mage had taken over control of Geminus’ family. And you know that’s impossible.”
Ray shook his head. “It’s not impossible. In the trenches, you make alliances where you have to.”
“Yeah, only I don’t think it works like that for senators. But we know Geminus was working with Aeslinn before he died, and a bunch of dark mages. So, if the mage is Aeslinn’s contact—”
“Then the vamps wouldn’t be working for a human, but for a king of the fey.”
I nodded. “And their ally in the war.”
Ray frowned. “So you need Curly to find out if you’re right.”
“He was working with them. He has to know something.”
Ray sighed. “Maybe. Or maybe he just grabbed the first offer he got after Geminus bit the big one. People like Curly and me, we team up with mages or weres or whoever the hell is gonna help us survive.”
“Even a dhampir?”
“That’s different. You and me, we got a bond.”
I started to dispute him, but there was suddenly something in his face, something I’d probably worn on my own, more than once. Ray looked like a guy who was bracing to get hit, with words if not with fists, because he’d just risked something. And every time he did that, every time he trusted anybody, he paid for it.
I’d spent a lifetime like that, and yet, like Ray, I always seemed to come back for more. Always seemed to hold out hope for something . . . I wasn’t even sure what. Acceptance? A place I belonged? Some kind of certainty in an uncertain world, that somebody had my back, and would always have it?
So I didn’t say anything.
Except to ask if something was wrong, because I’m nosy like that.
Ray sat on the edge of the desk. His dark hair flopped in his face, and his blue eyes were serious. More so than I could remember seeing them.
“My boys . . . they’re not doing so good,” he told me. “When Cheung cut me loose, he didn’t bother to think, or didn’t care, that he was doing it to them, too. And then the club burnt down, and most of our stuff went with it. I keep telling them that we got a new place, that you’re our master now, but they don’t believe it. They tell me, ‘What’s a senator want with us?’ They think you’re gonna kick us out, and then they don’t know . . .”
He didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t have to. Somebody like Ray needed a protector. He was going to have to cut a deal with someone, and soon, and he would not be negotiating from a position of strength. He and his boys were likely in for a very tough time, if they found any place at all. And if they didn’t—
Well, in some ways, the vamp world was like the human.
It wasn’t kind to those of us on our own.
I didn’t know how this thing between Dorina and me was going to play out, and it seemed insane to take on any more responsibilities until I did. But if the worst happened, and if Ray and company had been acknowledged by me, then somebody in the family would take care of them. They’d have to.
We Basarabs stick together.
“Yeah,” I told him, after a moment.
Ray looked up. He’d been contemplating his naval, with a crease in his forehead, and his eyes shadowed with worry. He looked like he’d forgotten what we’d been talking about.
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah. I guess we have a bond.”
Chapter Thirty-one
