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“Why?” He tugged my head back so I couldn’t look away. I found myself both fascinated and terrified. I’d never seen Sig angry. He had a particular gift, which was to make those in his presence feel at ease. Intuitively I knew I should be terrified of what a two-thousand-year-old vampire could do to me, but with him this close I had to fight against the unnatural calm washing over me.
I shivered, and my whole body trembled from it.
I couldn’t back down now. He’d already claimed he didn’t want to kill me, so why shouldn’t I ask him what I wanted to know?
“I need to know why you put a warrant out on Holden. I need to know or I can’t kill him. ”
“It is not your place to know why,” he said flatly, pulling me into a sitting position so we looked at each other face-to-face. “You’ve never needed or wanted to know why before. ”
“This is different and you know it. ” I put my hand on his, where he was locked into my curls, and attempted to coax his fingers to relax. I didn’t have any vampire gifts, so I couldn’t force him to do anything. I was simply hoping for a reprieve from the growing ache on my scalp.
“I can’t tell you why. ”
“You’re the Tribunal leader, Sig. You control everyone. Don’t tell me you can’t. ”
He released my hair but didn’t look away. My heartbeat quickened, and it was so loud he must have been able to hear it, but he did nothing to acknowledge the change.
“There are laws. Laws even I am bound by. Once a warrant is issued, it’s final, and its reasons are for those who issued it to know and for them alone. The Tribunal is signed into silence once we issue a warrant. ”
“You can’t tell me anything?”
“I can tell you that if I do not bring you home, Juan Carlos has no qualms about issuing a new warrant. One with your name on it. ”
The mention of Juan Carlos brought the reality of the situation into sharper focus. Left in the hands of Daria and Sig, I suspected my lease on life would be a little longer term. But Juan Carlos hated me. Not in the passive way people hate spiders or little kids hate eating vegetables. No, Juan Carlos hated me the way the families of murder victims hate the killers. He hated me the way the people of Europe hated the rats who brought them the bubonic plague.
He hated me the way women in New York City hate finding out about a clearance bridal sale at Kleinfeld the day after it happens.
Not only did he want my lease on life to expire, he wanted to evict me before the final notice. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was alive and Sig had accepted me as one of the fold, or if it was because I never showed the Tribunal the appropriate level of respect, or if it was because I was so willing to execute other vampires, but Juan Carlos didn’t like having me around.
He was also seriously scary. He’d been a Spanish Conquistador in life, which wasn’t a fluffy day job. Before he’d been turned, he’d met the wrong end of someone’s sword, and it had butchered up the side of his face. His lips had healed together wrong, and the mangled side of his mouth gave him a constant sneer. The combination of that sneer with his fangs, and the look of absolute hate in his eyes, made him one of the scariest vampires I’d ever encountered.
I never, ever wanted to be on the wrong side of a fight with Juan Carlos.
“Well gosh. ” I lay down again and placed my head back on his stomach. “If Juan Carlos wants me home, I guess that’s all the invitation I need. ” I’d rather not let my fear show to Sig. He already knew I was scared, but there was no reason to flaunt my unease.
Sig was the only member of the Tribunal who knew what I really was. It was in my best interest to stay on his good side rather than tempt fate by poking an angry bull.
“I’ll go back,” I said after a long pause.
He remained quiet. The room was filled with a literal dead silence. He didn’t move until he began to stroke my hair again. Like before, I let myself enjoy it, even though it reminded me of how Ingrid, his daytime servant, once said Sig thought of me as his pet.
“Sig?” I asked, wondering if his silence meant he hadn’t heard me.
“Shhh,” he replied. “Secret, the last time I slept next to someone with a pulse was the year seven. ” I waited for him to finish, but he didn’t, and it dawned on me he meant the year 7 A. D. “That someone was my wife, and it’s been over two thousand years since anything has reminded me so much of her. So shhh. ”
I took that in the best way I could and tried to remain silent for as long as possible, but my curiosity reached a boiling point and I could no longer contain it.
“What was her name?”
“Ingaborg. ” He was still stroking my hair.
“Is that why you singled out Ingrid? Because of her name?” Vampires had done things for more ridiculous reasons before, so it wasn’t out of the question he would base his choice for a daytime servant on name alone.
“No. By the time I met Ingrid, Ingaborg was the shadow of a memory to me. I was an angrier man in Germany during the Middle Ages. ”
“Did you have any children?”
“Yes. ”
