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And now we were both looking at him accusingly.
“It . . . wasn’t like that,” Louis-Cesare said.
“And then when you stole Ray’s head—”
“He stole a head?” the healer looked appalled.
“It was my head,” I clarified. “I mean, I’d chopped it off—”
“You cannot take another’s trophy,” the big, bearded vamp said reprovingly. “Even a filthy dhampir’s.”
“Call her that again—” Louis-Cesare threatened.
“Why do you care? You abandon her and steal from her.”
“Mostly abandon,” I agreed, looking at my old man. “Like when you ran off with that fey queen—”
“I was possessed!”
“Still. It’s a pattern.” I didn’t know what the healer was doing, but it had wrapped me in a warm, fuzzy blanket of a feeling, which was not enough to mask a stab of pain. I suddenly remembered why I was mad at him. “My sister was taken, leaving me alone for the first time in my life, and what do I find when I wake up? You’re gone, too!”
“I was trying to protect you!”
“I didn’t need protecting. I needed you.”
The healer put a soft hand on my shoulder.
Louis-Cesare looked conflicted. He clearly didn’t want to talk about this now, which was too bad, because I did. “What is it?” I demanded. “You think that, with Dorina gone, I can’t handle myself? You leave the little dhampir to drink tea and look at pyramids because she’ll be a drag on you?”
“That’s not—”
“Then what was it? I mean, you didn’t even talk to me—”
“He didn’t talk to you?” the healer repeated, sounding appalled.
“Stay out of this!” Louis-Cesare snapped.
“No,” I said. “No note, no anything—”
“I gave Hassani a note,” Louis-Cesare said defensively.
“Yes. Hassani. Not me.”
“I wanted to make sure that it reached you—”
Okay, now I was pissed off, because that was a lie. “You wanted to make sure you didn’t have to face me. You left Hassani to do your dirty work and ran off—”
“I did not run! I was following a lead—”
“Yes, without me! And without telling me what it was so I couldn’t follow you.” I sat up and, this time, the room stayed mostly steady. “Do you know what I was doing down here in the first place? Hassani was taking me to the morgue so I could try to figure out—”
“Dory—”
“—what you’d seen and where you’d gone. Because somebody hadn’t bothered to tell me anything in that damned note that wasn’t left with me in the first place. Despite the fact that this is about my sister!”
“Okay, this is getting good,” the big, bearded vamp said.
“Bahram,” Zakarriyyah reproached.
