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“Other people’s prejudices are not my problem,” I told him furiously. I couldn’t believe that I was getting this lecture from Marco of all people. A guy who acted like an extra from The Godfather was telling me I needed to improve my manners?
“If you don’t learn some etiquette, they will be,” he said flatly. “A lot of the older vamps are touchy. They’ve been around five, six hundred years; some even longer. They’ve been waiting to hit first-level status, to be emancipated, to become the master of their own fate. But it ain’t happened yet. And most of ’em have figured out that it never will.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked, honestly bewildered.
“Some of our vamps didn’t start with us,” he hissed. “A few, like Nicu in there, have had three or four masters. For hundreds of years they’ve been shuffled around like cattle, with no control over who they served or what they did—no control over anything. All they’ve had—and all they’re ever gonna have—is respect because of their age and abilities. And if they think you ain’t showing ’em that respect, they’re gonna react.”
I swallowed, too drained for a lecture right now but sensing that this might be one I needed. No one at Tony’s had been that old besides him and Rafe. And come to think of it, Tony had been pretty damn touchy about his dignity. I’d always thought it was because of his huge ego, and maybe it was. Or maybe there were still a few things I didn’t understand about vamps.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I didn’t realize—”
“Yeah, I know. But these are things you have to think about. Because you know what Nicu is thinking right now? He’s wondering if this was a hint, if the boss’s lady disrespecting him was Mircea’s way of telling him that he’s out of favor. He’s wondering if maybe he’s about to be disowned—again—and shuffled off to another court where he’ll have to spend the next fifty years clawing his way into a position of respect. If he survives that long. He’s wondering if the ax is about to fall.”
I stared at Marco, sickened. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll explain—”
Marco rolled his eyes. “Yeah. ’Cause that’ll go over great. Don’t worry about it; I’ll tell him you just don’t know no better. But you gotta realize that things are different now. You’re not a little hanger-on at a court nobody cares about. People pay attention to what you say, so you gotta do the same.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling about two inches tall. God, could today get any worse?
“I’m not the best person to be telling you this,” Marco said, looking frustrated. “We gotta find you a teacher, and not one of those hicks you came up with—”
“You two may as well come in here,” Sal called from the living room. “It’s not like everybody can’t hear you anyway. And we hicks would like a few words.”
Great.
Casanova had gone when we reentered the living room, probably back to corral the chaos. But Alphonse, Sal and Mircea were sitting on cowhide. Mircea and Sal were on either end of the same sofa, with the middle seat occupied by lunch in the form of a young blond man. That left the other couch for me and the guys, although it was hardly a squeeze—the thing had to be nine feet long.
Sal and Alphonse topped up their drinks at the awful bar while Mircea finished his dessert. I recognized him as one of Casanova’s stable who usually worked the front desk. We’d pulled a few shifts together and he gave me a slight smile as he got to his somewhat unsteady feet. One of the guards escorted him and the main course, a twenty-something brunet, toward the foyer.
Amazingly, Mircea looked tired even after a double feeding. He was sitting slightly slumped down, with his hands crossed over his stomach and his head tilted back. It would have been a normal enough pose for anyone else, especially after a hard day. But Mircea didn’t do relaxed. He usually had a frisson of energy around him, and not just from the power he gave off. It was noticeably absent tonight.
I stared at him, trying to focus on his eyes and not on the tired lines around them. Mircea wasn’t supposed to get tired. Or sick. Or hurt. It was one of the things that had made him so attractive to me, even as a child. In a world where alliances were constantly shifting and people were constantly dying, Mircea was stable, strong, eternal.
Except that he wasn’t.
Which meant that, one day, I could lose him
, too.
If I was honest, that was my biggest reason for not wanting to let him any closer than he already was. Having someone was the precursor to losing him. It had happened over and over. It was easier not to want anything—not from Mircea, not from anyone.
Wanting, needing—they were so close, and needing always hurt.
“Cassie?” Mircea was looking at me strangely. I suddenly realized that I’d just been standing there, staring at him.
“How much blood did Rafe take?” I blurted.
Mircea gave me a small smile, but Marco hung his head and Sal burst out laughing. “What?” I demanded.
“It’s considered impolite to inquire about someone’s Change,” Horatiu informed me, tottering in with a folding table and a loaded tray. I jumped up to help him—and not just because the tray smelled divine—but good manners only won me a glower. “Sit down, sit down! Were you brought up by wolves, young woman?”
“By Tony,” Sal said, reclaiming her seat.
“Ah. The same thing, then,” Horatiu said, trying to balance the tray while wrestling with the folding table.
“Don’t mind him,” Alphonse said, rescuing my dinner before it hit the carpet. “That old goat lectures me all the time.” That didn’t reassure me much; Alphonse’s idea of good manners consisted of remembering to bury all the bodies.
“That old goat can hear you,” Horatiu said tartly.
