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He looked over at the girl and then back at me. “I’m just standing here.”
Yeah, that was the problem. Some vamps managed to pass as human, if you squinted, even without a glamourie. But Marco wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t the looks so much, although two hundred and fifty pounds of predator is not easily disguised by a pink golf shirt, or the casual slouch he affected when standing so he didn’t loom over people. But mainly, it was the ’tude. The guy could be smiling and he still looked like he could rip your throat out in less than a second.
It didn’t help that it happened to be true.
He’d never worried me, possibly because I’d grown up with Alphonse, a Marco clone except not as good looking. But I’d learned early on that, despite the fiction, vampires weren’t mindless predators and they didn’t kill for no reason. And anyway, the smallest, most ineffectual one imaginable—Fred, for instance—could wreak just as much damage on a human as Marco, so what difference did looks make? But most people didn’t see it that way, and in Marco’s case especially, I’d seen grown men flatten themselves against a wall when he walked by, instinctively dropping into prey mode, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed.
God only knew what effect he was having on a girl who apparently thought I was scary.
“Go on.” I pushed on him, which of course was useless. “Get me a drink.”
“You’ve got a drink.”
“And now I want another one.”
“You don’t need another one. You had an Irish coffee earlier—”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, like Fred did more than wave the cork over the—”
“—and now you’ve got a beer. I don’t want you yakking all over the place again.”
“I never yak—” A bushy eyebrow went north. “Okay, one time. But that wasn’t from a hangover.”
“And this one isn’t going to be, either.” And he took my beer.
“Hey!”
“Is that coffee I smell?” he asked the girl, going over with a swagger and a grin, because despite all evidence to the contrary, Marco believed himself to be charming. And okay, sometimes he was, in his own big, hairy, swarthy, muscley way. But I didn’t think she was likely to be impressed.
She wasn’t, but not quite in the way I’d feared.
She shoved his outstretched hand away and pushed past, as if she barely even saw him. And maybe she didn’t. Because her eyes were on the witches and I decided I might have been wrong earlier. They weren’t afraid.
They were pissed.
“You . . . you dare . . .” she gasped.
“It’s all right, Rhea,” the Valkyrie said, looking uncomfortable.
“It is not all right! You weren’t there—you didn’t see! She saved us, she saved us all, and with nothing—and you dare—”
I didn’t know what was going on, but the witches were going frowny, and the air was getting tense and things had been bad enough as they were. Marco must have thought the same, because he put an avuncular hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Hey, why don’t we—”
“Unhand me, vampire,” she snarled, harsh enough to make him blink. And draw his hand back. And look at me.
“Cassie—”
“You know, I would like some of that coffee, after all,” I said bright
ly, not really expecting it to work.
But it did.
The girl curtsied—yeah, that’s what I said—deep and elegant and perfect. The kind Eugenie had always tried to teach me, but I’d never quite mastered. And then she withdrew, fading back through the swinging doors almost before I could blink.
Okay. That had gone . . . surprisingly well.
And then I turned back around to find the three witches still staring at me. And still unhappy. In fact, one was now actively glaring.
