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“You needed me to stay to talk to me about how to respond to you, oui?”
Marco gave her a gentle smile. “Oui, mon ami. A simple, ‘Yes, Master’ will do when around others and you may have overstepped. ‘Yes, Marco’ is fine otherwise, around others. So long as we’re talking normally behind closed doors, I don’t give a flying fuck how you address me.”
“Flying fuck?”
“American idiom, darling.”
“I told you when you made the offer, I’ll do whatever is necessary to shore up your power base. If you need more from me, or less, you only need to let me know.”
If the information I’d recently gleaned was accurate, she’d taught Marco how to use his talents when he was a new vampire. That meant they’d fucked. A lot. I could see it now, with the two of them speaking one-on-one. I’d had a hard time seeing it earlier.
Marco stood and pulled Etta up, into a hug. “Go talk to Ryan, and try to behave. He’s offering his help.”
“Another tool in my arsenal?” she asked.
He laughed, as if this were an inside joke. “Oui.”
Etta and I walked out together, and I asked her, “What language did you speak when the two of you first met?”
“You don’t smell like a slayer.”
“I know.” I was specifically holding that scent in because I knew it made the old ones nervous.
She walked me to the first floor, looked in on a few seating areas, found them full, and took me to the kitchen. Humans were cooking, so she kept walking and I followed her outside.
“I’d hoped for something more private,” I told her.
“I’m not taking you to my suite.”
“You think I can’t get into your suite?”
Truthfully, I hadn’t been able to pull it off. Josef and Eric had done a bang-up job with the most secure areas of the house. I also hadn’t been able to break into the lower level of The Diamond Club, or the secure areas of a few other vampire establishments. I could probably bring in a tech expert to get around Eric’s gadgets, but since they were letting me in as much as they were, I hadn’t felt it that important.
Yet.
Etta shrugged and leaned against the house.
“Come,” I told her. “You can fly, right? I know a spot.”
“You trust me to fly with you?”
“Marco won’t be pleased if you break me.”
“Break you? Are you saying that dropping you in flight wouldn’t kill you?”
I shrugged. It was probably a seventy-thirty chance from this height, but she only needed to know I wasn’t likely to die. We walked to the edge and I told her, “There’s a ledge partway down, with logs to sit on.”
She lifted me as one would an infant, cradling me to her chest, which was ridiculous since I’m seven inches taller than her, but she managed it. I forced myself to remain relaxed when she went airborne, and then moved away from her as quickly as I could once we landed.
I hadn’t expected her to lift me like that, and I hadn’t liked it. I don’t submit to anyone, and I couldn’t remember when I’d last been held like a child. Probably long before I stopped being a child.
She didn’t sit on the log she’d landed near, merely crossed her arms and said, “Okay, slayer. You wanted to talk? I’m all ears.”
“We’ve been through three Eagle Kings in as many years.”
She sighed. “And none have been considered legitimate by all, since Vincent Avila is still in The Dark Queen’s dungeon, in Faerie.”
She impressed me. Vampires don’t usually bother to learn about species they don’t have an affinity for. To my knowledge, she wasn’t drawn to a specific animal. There were rumors about her using snakes to torture people, but most felt that had more to do with what the person feared than what she happened to like.
