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“It. And feel free to try.”
“Sure. And then have to deal with Daddy? I don’t think—”
“So the rumors are true?”
“What rumors?”
“The ones that say she’s not just any dhampir. That she’s actually—”
“Cassie! In here.”
That last was Mircea’s voice, and a second later, I found myself being pulled through a door into a tiny room. With nothing in it. And that included master vampires, thank God, because I’d been about
to drown out there.
But this . . . this was nice. Or calm, at least. We were in what I guessed was some kind of reception room, although it wasn’t very welcoming, without so much as a picture on the wall or a single chair, and then we were through a door on the far side and into—
“Don’t step on the rugs,” Mircea told me. “Just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
I didn’t get an answer. Because the room’s only occupant had just looked up from a small desk to scowl at us. Or at Mircea, I supposed, since his eyes passed right over me to fix on his colleague.
“Are you through with your little fit?” Marlowe asked acidly.
“No. Cedar. What do you know about it?”
“The tree?”
“No. The spell. We think that’s how it’s pronounced.”
“‘We’?”
Mircea looked at me. “I only heard it once,” I said awkwardly.
“But if you had to guess?”
“Say-duh? Say-drr? SAY-der? I’m not real sure. I was kind of—”
“Who are you talking to?” Kit demanded, getting up. His eyes swept over me again but didn’t stop. I pulled my bath towel a little higher anyway.
Mircea repeated my variations on a theme. “Some type of ancient magic,” he told Kit. “I need everything you have on it.”
“You realize we’re leaving in less than an hour?”
“Then you’ll need to hurry, won’t you?”
Kit scowled harder, but then he got that constipated look a lot of vamps used when they were communicating mentally.
Mircea threaded his way expertly through the carpets. I followed, a little gingerly, because the floor was slick, highly polished marble tile, and the slippery little rugs were everywhere. They were odd-looking, partly because none of them matched, partly because most weren’t more than a couple of feet wide, but mostly because they were the only attempt at décor.
Mircea’s office had lacked the stamp of his character, but at least it had been fairly attractive. This . . . was not. It didn’t have a plant or a picture or a pillow. It didn’t have a single chair other than the one Marlowe was sitting in. It didn’t have much of anything, despite being a fairly large room, just the small rolltop desk, a hell of a lot of carpets, and—
And a couple utilitarian cabinets along the far wall.
A record scratched in my head.
I was still staring at them a moment later, when a fat little vamp with a bad black toupee came bustling in through the door carrying an incongruously modern-looking electronic pad. “Type of magic?” he asked without preamble.
