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I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to start a debate. But the truth was that, even if Mircea had bitten me, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Vampires could control most norms through their bite: one was usually enough, two always were, and after three, the victim became a vamp bound to his or her master, so it was a moot point. But Tony had bitten me twice to ensure loyalty, once when I was a child and then again after my return to him as a teenager. Yet, if he’d been trying to summon me—a safe bet—it had failed.
My theory was that my constant association with ghosts had interrupted the signal. Billy Joe was almost always with me and I constantly wore his necklace, which bound us together even when we were apart. And vamps can’t read ghosts. One of the points Billy had used to make our deal was that, with luck, he’d run a kind of spiritual interference. Maybe it had worked, or maybe I was one of the few who had natural resistance to the call. I doubted that, since it was usually only the case with particularly powerful magic users, but weirder things had happened. Hell, weirder things happened to me all the time.
Mircea was looking at me with exaggerated longing, and I smiled. “You could always join me.” The minute I said it, I wanted to take it back. A clear head was impossible around him, and I wanted whatever abilities I had to be sharp. But I needn’t have worried. Mircea looked for a moment like he was considering it, then smiled and shook his head.
“You are kind to offer, dulceat??, but I am also quite comfortable here.” He glanced at Tomas. “Perhaps later.”
Louis-César planted himself in front of me while Tomas walked Pritkin back to his place by the door. The Frenchman appeared slightly stressed. From what little I’d observed of him, that was probably the equivalent of anyone else throwing a fit. “Mademoiselle, I need your attention for a moment, if you please. I know that you are tired and that this experience has been difficult, but please try to concentrate.” I felt like pointing out that I hadn’t been the one getting us off topic, but thought better of it. “Do you recall the name Françoise?”
I looked at him warily. So we were back to that again. “Yes.”
“Please explain why you thought that name would convince me to spare you.”
I looked at Tomas. He nodded curtly. “I have told them what I know, but I did not understand much of what we did. I only know that—”
“Be silent!” Louis-César ordered him sharply. “We cannot afford to have anything you say influence her.” He turned back to me, and his eyes were a dark blue-gray like gathering storm clouds over the ocean. “Please tell me.”
“Fine, but then I want to ask a few questions, okay?”
He nodded, so I went through it all, how he’d touched me and I’d somehow ended up in the castle, skipping over exactly where I was and what we were doing when I first arrived. “They burned her to death, but there was nothing I—we—could do. We had to stand t
here and watch it happen. Then I came back and you said something about wishing I hadn’t had to see that, and you called her Françoise. Don’t you remember?”
Louis-César looked faintly green. “No, mademoiselle, that is not how I remember our short time in this room. Neither does Mircea, nor Raphael. You fainted while I was attending your cheek, and when you awoke, you were upset and disoriented for a time. We attributed it to your recent experiences. You did not mention anything about a woman named Françoise. I was given a tour of the dungeons of Carcassonne once, it is true, but as far as I am aware, no one died that night.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “It was quite horrible enough without that.”
“I didn’t dream it!” I was getting more confused by the minute. “You’re saying you never knew anyone by that name?”
“One.” Louis-César’s voice was quiet, but his eyes could have ignited a match. “A young gypsy, the daughter of one of the guards at the castle. She worked as a servant, I believe in order to save for her wedding to some young man.”
“What happened to her?”
He looked sick. “I never knew. I assumed her father thought we were becoming…too close, and had her sent away. I had something of a reputation in those days, and Françoise was one of the servants who regularly attended me. But I never touched her. I do not want a woman in my bed who is not there willingly. And a servant would have had little choice if I had…made advances. I would not have put her in such a position.”
“Then why did someone want to kill her?”
He sat down on the edge of the sofa as if I’d punched him. “Because I was fond of her. I gave her a necklace—a mere trifle—because she had no jewelry and such beauty should be adorned. And twice I gave her money—again, trivial sums only, as my own resources were not great in those days. I thought only to help with her wedding expenses, and to repay her for her kindness. She must have told someone, or else they saw her wear the necklace and guessed…” He said the last as if talking to himself.
This wasn’t helping. “Why would someone kill her just because you liked her? Who hated you that much?”
He leaned over, elbows on his knees, and his hair hid his face. “My brother.” The voice was chokingly bitter. “He did worse to frighten me into submission through the years.”
“Can you tell us anything else about that vision, Cassie?” Mircea’s face was very serious. “Any detail could be vital.”
“I don’t think so.” I thought about it—I hadn’t been in the best mental state for making observations at the time—but I’d covered pretty much everything. “Except that the jailer used a weird name for me—us, I mean. M’sieur le Tour, or something like that.”
Louis-César jerked as though I’d struck him. “Is that significant?” Mircea asked him.
He shook his head. “No. It is only—I have not heard that name in a great many years. I was called that once, although not usually to my face. It translates as ‘the man in the tower’; I was often imprisoned in one. It had other meanings, too, at times,” he added softly.
I glanced at Mircea, who looked grave but didn’t comment. “Tell us about the second vision, dulceat?.”
I nodded, trying to ignore the fact that my little tarot cards had been even more on the ball than usual. I decided not to mention it. Louis-César had said the name wasn’t important, and I didn’t want them taken away. “Fine, but I don’t understand it, either. Normally I See what once happened or what’s about to happen, but it’s like watching TV. I observe, and that’s it.”
“But not lately.”
I shifted uncomfortably. I hadn’t had time to process what had been happening yet myself, so how could I explain it to someone else? “It’s been…different in the last day or so. I don’t know why. Maybe because I was in someone else’s body when I shifted the second time. That’s never happened before.”
“You never possessed anyone before tonight?” It was Pritkin’s voice, and it was laced with skepticism. I wanted to ignore him, but I also wanted to know what was going on.
