Curse the Dawn
Page 29

He came from an era when it was common to have a wife to play hostess and a mistress or two with whom to play at other things. I’d never heard anyone speak of a long-term lover in connection with Mircea, but then, I hadn’t asked, either. And I’d never been to his main court in Washington State. That was despite the fact that he’d discovered my existence when I was eleven, after a call from Raphael, his resident stooge at Tony’s court.
Mircea was Tony’s master, which by vampire law allowed him to put a claim on me. At best, he’d hoped that I might inherit the Pythia’s position and give the vampires their first shot at controlling that kind of power. At worst, I was a genuine clairvoyant, and those aren’t a dime a dozen. But he’d nonetheless chosen to let me grow up at Tony’s rather than take me back to court with him.
I’d always assumed that had been to ensure that the Circle didn’t find out about me. They had a proprietary interest in magic users in general and clairvoyants in particular, and they might have given him trouble. Tony’s court was a lot lower profile than Mircea’s, and therefore safer. But now I wondered if maybe there had been another reason as well.
A beautiful dark-eyed reason.
I groaned and threw an arm over my eyes. Damn it! There were only ever questions when it came to Mircea, never answers. It was starting to get really old.
My head hurt, my body ached and I wanted to just stop thinking for a while. But something about those photos was nagging at me. I suddenly realized that Mircea hadn’t appeared in a single one, which seemed a little strange considering how many there had been. I’d have assumed that he was the one taking the pictures, but the woman hadn’t been looking at the camera in any of them, at least not that I could remember. It was like she hadn’t even been aware of it.
So what the hell was he doing? Paying someone to take photos for him, to keep track of her? And if so, why? Why not just take her if he was that smitten? Who could a master vampire possibly need to stalk?
I could only think of a few options, none of which seemed all that likely. Did she belong to another master, maybe even another Senate member? In that case, yes, he could refuse to give her up. But masters traded their servants all the time, and Mircea was perfectly capable of talking the moon down from the heavens when he wanted. If he was that motivated, he would have found something or someone the woman’s master would have taken in trade.
So was she a senator herself who’d rejected him? That seemed even less plausible. Most vampires viewed sexuality as merely another marketable commodity. I couldn’t imagine any senator turning down Mircea’s advances when they would likely bring her an important political alliance. Vampires almost always thought in terms of profit and loss, even about intimate relations. And there would be no profit in refusal.
That left me with one idea, and not one I liked. The Senate had recently suffered some losses in the war. Was it possible that the woman in the photos was one of the senators who had died? Could that album have been some kind of memorial Mircea had compiled of his lost love?
The thought that he might have been pretending interest in me even while mourning someone he’d loved for decades, maybe centuries, made me almost physically ill. And what hurt the most was that he hadn’t needed seduction to get me on his side. I’d already been there. He just hadn’t noticed.
“What ees it?” Francoise asked, sounding concerned.
I realized that I’d totally missed whatever she’d been saying, too busy pondering my train wreck of a love life. I sat up and blanked my face, but she just raised an eyebrow. Damn it. It had been too long since I’d had to regularly control my features. I was out of practice.
“Nothing. It’s just . . . I sort of know how you feel.”
She looked surprised. “Lord Mircea, ’e ’as a woman?”
“I don’t know.” I got up and started to pace, but the damn high heels hurt my feet. I sat back down again. “I don’t know anything. We never talk.”
“Pourqoui pas?”
“He’s been gone most of the time lately, on Senate business. And when I do see him, he has so much else on his mind that it’s hard to bring up relationship stuff.” Next to war, politics and the supernatural world threatening to implode, it seemed a little trivial. But the result was that I’d somehow ended up married—at least from the vamps’ perspective—to someone I knew next to nothing about.
“You should talk to ’im,” Francoise said, eyeing the overhead light fixture. Luckily for Dante’s, it was bolted into the ceiling.
“Yeah.” Only every time I tried, talking wasn’t what we ended up doing. Not to mention that I had absolutely no idea how to broach the subject of a possibly recently deceased ex-lover. Or whatever she was.
Francoise arched an eyebrow and started to say something, but a rap on the door saved me. She threw up her hands, turned around and snatched it open. Randy stood there looking sheepish, as much as is possible for a guy wearing skintight black jeans and a matching muscle shirt. At least I think it was a shirt. It might have been paint.
“What are you doing ’ere?”
He shrugged, setting a lot of muscles rippling. “I thought I could help you move. To wherever you’re going,” he added quickly as Francoise’s expression darkened.
“We ’aven’t decided zat yet,” she said with a good attempt at nonchalance.
“I think I might know a place,” I told her, prying my weary body off the bed.
A few minutes later, me, Randy, Francoise and her bags of loot arrived at what had once been a tiki bar on the hotel’s fourth floor. It had recently suffered an unfortunate fire and renovations were still ongoing. The rebuilt stage smelled of varnish and the bare drywall on the walls still awaited paint. It was probably the only quiet place in the whole hotel.
Unfortunately, quiet was about the only thing the bar’s back room had to recommend it. The place was tiny and had no bathroom, and we had to move boxes of plastic leis and condiment packets out to make room for a second bed. But it was livable. I should know; not so long ago, it had been my room.
“Okay. This is . . . cozy,” Randy said, looking around.
“It used to be a storage closet.”
“I’d have never guessed.” I shot him a look and he shrugged. “At least you won’t get evicted.” No, I didn’t suppose so. No self-respecting vampire would be caught dead in it.
“I like eet,” Francoise said, trying to navigate the maybe one-inch-wide aisle between her bed and the wall.
“It’s just temporary,” I promised.
“Yes. Lord Mircea will arrange something for you.” I could already see her mentally removing my bed.
I’d been thinking more of the room next door. It was smaller but a lot more colorful than this one, with a floor-to-ceiling stained glass window depicting a battle scene. The window had met an unfortunate accident—they seemed to be pretty common around here since I showed up—and hadn’t yet been replaced. A plastic sheet printed to look like it had been stapled over the gap but it let in the heat. I needed to ask Casanova when he thought a replacement might be expected.
But that could wait. There were more pressing issues at the moment. I left Francoise to arrange things to her liking and borrowed the key to her old room. If I was lucky, I’d have time for a shower before I was evicted again.
I woke hours later to a thump and a scream. The latter started in a falsetto and ended up in a baritone, which was enough to tell me that it wasn’t Francoise even before the profanity started. I tensed, my lids flew open and I saw a hulking eight-foot shadow looming over me. I screamed.
“Honey, I know it’s last year’s wig,” someone snapped. “But it’s Liza. It’s timeless.”
I reached up and flicked on the overhead light, and the shadow resolved itself into an eight-foot-tall woman rubbing her shin. Part of the height was due to the aforementioned towering black wig and part to seven-inch platforms. The rest of the package was swathed in a skintight sheath short enough to be considered a shirt and constructed entirely of black sequined bow ties. It strained over shoulders wider than most men’s and showed off heavily muscled legs. The total effect was linebacker in drag.
It took me a minute to realize that was because she was, in fact, a linebacker in drag.
“Who are you?” I demanded shrilly.
She looked insulted. “Darling, have you been living under a rock? I’m Dee Sire.”
I just looked at her.
“Of the Three D’s?”
I shook my head.
“We used to be the Double D’s, but then we picked up a third . . .”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but a quick survey showed that whoever she was, she didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon. Unless she had one stuffed in that enormous wig. She could have stuck an AK-47 in there and no one would know.
“What are you doing in my room?” I asked a little more calmly.
“I know how it is: you have one too many drinks, you’re looking for the ladies’ and you stumble in here. Fair enough, but, sweetie, this ain’t your room.”
“It is at the moment,” I said testily, looking around.
Francoise was nowhere to be seen, probably still out with Randy. He’d talked her into dinner and she’d invited me along, but Randy had been giving me pleading eyes behind her back and anyway, I’d been too exhausted to eat. Not to mention that the only clean clothes I had were the Dante’s T-shirt and sweatpants I’d bought at the gift shop to sleep in. No one had seemed to know where my luggage was and everything Francoise owned was six inches too long on me.
“What do you want?” I asked, finger combing my hair.
“No need to get snippy. And if you don’t want to wake up in the stockroom with no idea how you got there, I’d lay off the sauce.”
“I don’t drink! And I know exactly how I got here. I was—Wait a minute!” I stopped, staring from her to the still-locked door. “How did you get in?”