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I breathed a slight sigh of relief. Dee had been wrong. There was no one here.
Pritkin shrugged. “They took the fight elsewhere,” he said, crossing the lumber and glass obstacle course to the balcony. I followed, having to concentrate not to break my neck.
Outside was a wreck of destroyed patio furniture, shattered glass and a pool filled with flotsam. And a body, I saw sickly. Someone wearing a war mage coat was bobbing gently on the surface. Pritkin fished him out, and then I almost wished he hadn’t because the face was mostly gone.
I bit my lip and looked around. I wanted to check the rest of the apartment, but what if I found Rafe’s body? Had they gotten him out in time? What if I found—
“We need to check the place for survivors,” I said, cutting my thoughts off. I wouldn’t think that way. I wouldn’t think at all. I’d just go look because I couldn’t stand not knowing.
We didn’t have a flashlight, but the casino’s light through the windows was enough to see by, once our eyes adjusted. We found three more bodies in the dining room, none of them vampires. There was something to be said for masters, after all, I thought with relief. And then I wondered if they’d leave much of a corpse, with some of the spells the mages could throw. My stomach sank back down to my toes.
I’d turned to move on to the kitchen when Pritkin caught my arm. He put a finger to his lips, and the next moment, I heard it—a shuffling sound, like someone walking through the debris and not bothering to be quiet. We reentered the darkened living room to see a shape outlined against the expanse of windows leading out to the patio. It took me a second to recognize it.
“Sal!”
She turned slowly, obviously not surprised to see us. Of course, with vampire hearing, she’d probably known we were there all along. “Cassie? Do you know what happened? Where is everyone?”
“You just got back?” I asked, already knowing the answer. She hadn’t been here when everything went to hell. I imagined that it would be a little bit of a shock to come back to this. It was shocking to me, and I knew how it had gotten this way.
“A few minutes ago. I didn’t want to interrupt if the meeting was—”
She broke off at the sound of the front door opening. A moment later, Marco stepped into the room. Like Sal, he took a moment to survey the damage. “Well, I guess anything would have been an improvement,” he said, coming down the stairs.
Sal moved a few yards back, keeping her eyes glued to Marco. “It looks like we’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep. It’s almost daylight.”
He shook his head. “Won’t do, Sal,” he said quietly. “The master ordered five of you to stay away until just before dawn. And only you came back.”
“And you,” Sal snapped. She looked him up and down contemptuously. “You can ape Mircea all you like, but the finest clothes in the world will never give you his power. And everyone knows how much you hate him for that!”
It took me a second to realize what they were talking about. With everything else, I’d almost forgotten the trap Mircea had laid for the traitor. I looked at Marco, suddenly tense again, but his eyes never left Sal.
“Hate’s a little strong,” Marco demurred. “But you’re right. I like power. I just got limits on what I’ll do for it.”
Sal kept her eyes on Marco, but she spoke to me. “Cassie, think about it. Mircea told us the kind of person they’ve been looking for. Someone close to a senator, someone trusted, someone with resentment Myra might have been able to use!”
“He did say that,” I agreed, as Pritkin shifted next to me. He was trying to keep Marco and Sal both in sight as she started backing up. I don’t know why; the only thing behind her was the balcony, and we were twenty floors up.
“And Marco said it himself—I’m just a hick,” Sal reminded me. “Just like you. A nobody from a court so far out in the sticks, most people never even heard of it!”
“Making you too powerless for Myra to have bothered about,” Marco agreed.
I blinked at him, c
onfused. “Are you confessing?” I demanded.
He looked slightly amused. “Would that surprise you?”
“Hell, yes! Mircea made you my bodyguard! And he didn’t trade you out, even after he got Marlowe’s list of suspects. He would never have done that if . . .” I trailed off, belatedly realizing what I’d just said.
“Sounds like she’s voting for you, too, Sal,” Marco murmured.
“Just tell me where the Consuls are, Cassie,” Sal said, ignoring him. “We need to warn them that there could be trouble.”
I was in too much in shock to reply, not that Marco gave me a chance. “Of course, there’s an easy way to settle this,” he told her. “We’ll just wait until the master gets back and ask him.”
“He’s not my master,” she hissed.
“He might have been, in time. He’s a good one, as masters go,” Marco said with a slight twist to his lips.
