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"Try me. Better yet, try Jean-Claude. You said it yourself; when you speak to me, you speak to him."
He went very still then. I knew the quality of that stillness. I'd surprised him in some way. Stillness could be as telling on a vampire as a gesture on a human.
"Touch¨¦, Ms. Blake." He made another small gesture with his hands. "You will not believe that I did it only to make our production more enjoyable to all."
"No," I said.
He did that hands-out gesture again. I was beginning to wonder if it was his version of a shrug. "Perhaps, after succeeding in city after city, I had simply grown arrogant. Perhaps I truly believed I could do you all."
"I believe you're arrogant. I might even believe that you rolled the rest of the masters individually. I'm not sure on that one, yet. I've felt your mind; I won't say you couldn't do it, just that you might not have tried."
"Then why did I try tonight?" he asked.
I smiled. It didn't feel like a happy smile, more like that curl of lips when I'm pissed. "That's what I'm trying to find out, and what you keep avoiding answering."
"Am I avoiding the question?" he asked.
I nodded, and this time my smile was almost happy. "Yeah, you are."
"Perhaps I have answered it, and you simply do not like the answer."
"Perhaps you're trying not to outright lie in case Damian, or Asher, or one of the others smells or feels the lie. But you are definitely not answering the question completely."
"Do you truly believe that if I wished to lie in front of the people you have in this room, that I could not do it successfully?"
I thought about that for a second. I fought the urge to look at Asher. Damian played his hand along my shoulder. "I think you could, but not without using more mind power than you want to use around me."
"And why do I not wish to use mind powers around you, Ms. Blake?" His voice held disdain, almost amusement. I wasn't insulted; his voice was like everything about him, practiced, calculated.
"Because you're afraid that Mommie Dearest will hear it, and pay a second visit tonight."
He tried for arrogant disdain, and made it, but I could taste the change in him. The faintest, thinnest taste of fear. "And who is Mommie Dearest?"
I stared very hard at that graceful line of jaw. I'd have loved eye contact, but didn't want to risk it. "Do you really want me to say her name?"
"You can say anything you like," he said.
I nodded, and found my own heart beating faster, my newly scarred hand clenched into a fist. "Fine"--and my voice was a little breathy--"you're afraid the Mother of All Darkness will show up again."
Did the lights grow a shade less bright, or was it my imagination?
"She is lost to us, Ms. Blake. You know nothing of her."
"She lies in a room that is underground, but high up. There are windows around the front of that room that look out upon a cave, or underground building. There's always firelight down below, as if whoever watches is afraid of the dark."
"I am aware that Valentina has been inside the room you describe, and lived to tell the tale. Do not seek to impress me with secondhand stories."
I was beginning to think that Merlin didn't know that I'd been in his head with her. Did he not know that I'd seen his memory of her coming out of the darkness? "Let's try another secondhand tale, then. I saw her in the shape of a great cat, maybe a type of extinct lion, bigger than anything that we have today. I watched her stalk you in a night where the world smelled of rain and jasmine, or something like jasmine. I mean, I don't know how long jasmine has existed as a plant; maybe my mind just calls it 'jasmine' because it's the closest smell I know."
I thought he'd gone still before, but I had been wrong, because now he went so still that I had to concentrate on his chest to make sure he didn't just disappear. So still, more still than any snake, still in the way that live things don't get. Still, as if he were willing himself not to be there anymore.
His voice was as empty as his body when he said, "You shared her memory tonight."
"Yeah," I said.
"Then you know her secret."
"She's got a lot of them, but if you mean that she's a shapeshifter and a vampire, simultaneously, then yeah, I know that secret."
He drew a breath. A lot of them did that when they came back from that still-stillness. They drew a breath as if to remind themselves they aren't dead yet.
"But Ms. Blake, everyone knows that you cannot be both."
"The strain of vampirism that we have today is destroyed by the lycanthropy virus, but maybe once it wasn't, or maybe it's a different kind of vampirism. Whatever. I know what I've seen."
"Musette brought some of the Dark Lady's cats to visit us," Asher said, "they were both, and neither."
"Yes, Belle Morte says the sleeping cats of our mother have woken to her call," Merlin said. "What do you think of that, Ms. Blake? Do you think Belle Morte has grown so powerful that the servants of the mother have woken to her call?"
"No," I said.
"Why no?" he asked. His voice was still empty, his body not moving much. He wasn't trying to play human now.
"Because Belle Morte doesn't have that kind of power."
"You have never seen her in the flesh," Adonis said, "or you would not be so quick to judge." He didn't sound happy as he said it, which was interesting. It was the first time I felt that he'd lost control of his voice.
I glanced at him. "She's powerful, but it's not the same kind of power as Mommie Dearest. It's just not."
"If Belle Morte did not wake the servants of our good mother, then who did?" Merlin asked.
I had a moment of insight. I don't get them often. I debated on whether to act on it, or ask Asher's opinion first. Then I thought, to hell with it. I was tired. I'd fed, but the healing had taken more than the feeding had given back. I was too tired for games.
"Do you want her to wake up, Merlin? Or do you fear her waking up?"
He sank back into that stillness again. "I do not know how to answer that question."
"Yeah, you do."
"Then I will not answer it."
"Are you a flunky of the vampire council, is that it?"
"Merlin has been outside the circle of inner power for centuries," Asher said.
I nodded. "Yeah, you guys filled me in on the limo ride here. He grew so powerful that he was given a choice of giving up his territory, or being killed. He gave it all up, and vanished into the mists of time. Jean-Claude thought there might be a place for him here on American soil." In my head, I thought, and the next time that Jean-Claude offers refuge to someone this fucking powerful, he better run it by me first. I'd made that clear in the limo. He hadn't even argued with me.
"If you're not working for the council, then who are you working for?" I asked.
"If I said myself, would you believe me?"
"Maybe, maybe not, don't know, try me." My hand was on the gun again.
"Why touch your gun?"
