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“We have done some research,” Mircea told me, pouring shampoo into his palm and starting on my filthy hair. He paused to pick something out of it, which I deliberately didn’t look at, and then continued. “Based on the size of the Circle when the spell was first cast versus what it is today, we estimate that our enemies would have to destroy more than ninety percent of the current mages for the spell to fail. Not a likely scenario.”
It was a little hard to think with his fingers kneading my scalp, but I tried anyway. “But not an impossible one. And where apocalypse is concerned, I’d prefer a sure thing.”
“And I would prefer you to stay out of it.” He pulled me to my feet, and a warm drizzle from a rainforest shower head set into the ceiling began sluicing the suds away. I frowned at him through silvery beads of water, too annoyed to be embarrassed.
“Apollo won’t let me stay out of it,” I pointed out. “Other than the Circle, I’m at the top of his hit list. It’s going to be a little hard to draw him out without using me as bait.”
“There is a vast difference between being bait and being a target,” Mircea noted, wrapping a huge Turkish bath towel around me. The black silk of his shirt had gotten wet and was clinging to the muscles in his stomach and arms. I tried really hard not to stare.
“Funny; they feel about the same from where I’m standing.”
I gingerly got out of the tub and sat at the dressing table to check the extent of the damage. The furrow carved by the bullet in my hip was gone, courtesy of Mircea, I assumed. He had a limited ability to heal injuries and had helped me once before. A puncture mark I didn’t remember getting stung my calf and there were a few burn marks on my hands. They matched the still-tender scars on my stomach and wrist from a recent adventure I was trying hard to forget.
Mircea’s eyes lingered on the scars, too. “Magical healers can work miracles compared to their non-magical counterparts, but there are things even they cannot heal,” he said softly.
“I guess I’ve been lucky.”
Mircea didn’t say anything, but his expression was eloquent. Luck didn’t last forever. How long would it be before mine ran out?
A finger brushed aside my hair and trailed lightly over two little bumps on my neck. They weren’t noticeable, being tiny and the same color as the rest of my skin, but Mircea found them easily. Not surprising, since he’d put them there. They were his mark, the one that identified me as his in the vampire world.
We might as well be married as far as vamps were concerned, despite the fact that I hadn’t actually been asked. Hadn’t, in fact, realized what was happening until the marking was long over. It wouldn’t have mattered to another vampire, who would have considered herself lucky to belong to a Senate member. But although I might have grown up with them, I wasn’t a vamp. And I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of being owned, no matter how nice the fringe benefits.
“You aren’t going to distract me,” I told Mircea severely, because he was doing a damn good job of it. “I need to come to terms with the Circle, and they aren’t going to understand my living with you.”
“You’re already living with me. I own this hotel.”
“It’s open to the public and you aren’t here on a regular basis. Moving into your personal quarters, even if they are the size of a house, isn’t the same thing. The Circle won’t like it.”
Mircea bent down and trailed his lips over the twin marks, making me shiver. “Do you know, dulceat, I am getting very tired of hearing about what the Circle does and does not like.”
“So am I. But we have to face—”
He stopped me with a kiss that turned my spine to JellO. This wasn’t the way this argument was supposed to go, I thought vaguely as my fingers curled into the wet fabric of his shirt. I was right; I should be winning. And nobody should be sticking a tongue in anybody else’s mouth.
“You’re too precious to lose,” he told me, when I broke for air.
“If anything happens, I’m sure the Senate will—”
“I wasn’t talking about the Senate,” he said, a strange smile ghosting his lips.
Our eyes met and it was suddenly hard to breathe. “Oh.” I felt oddly small and strangely powerful at the same time.
“And I am not proposing to take you to MAGIC, at least not immediately. I have been called away on family business.”
“Again? You just got back.”
“And because I cannot trust you not to undermine my servants in my absence—”
“I didn’t—”
“—or to stay out of trouble for even a few days, you are coming with me.”
Chapter Four
The family’s customized Boeing Business Jet wasn’t so much a plane as a flying hotel suite. It had glove leather seats the size of recliners in the dining area that were clustered around a shiny maple table. There was more maple on the walls and a luxurious coffee-and-cream-patterned carpet on the floor, and the bathroom boasted
almost as much granite as the one at Dante’s.
