And it threw me off balance every damned time. It wasn’t aggressive; it wasn’t painful; it wasn’t a challenge. It was just there, subtle and unconscious and quietly devastating because it also wasn’t unwanted.
The worst of it was that I’d found myself slowing down when we came near a door. Not for any good reason, just to make sure I got that touch. Or standing a little closer to make a random brush that much more likely. Or—and this was when I really knew I was in trouble—actually considering growing my hair out, just because I knew he’d like it. Even though the reason for keeping it short—denying the bad guys an easy handle—was significantly more important to my fucking survival.
So, we had a problem. And I didn’t think that the method I used with Stinky, that is, letting him get away with it, was a great idea here. Louis-Cesare wasn’t a neglected child or a puppy I’d found in a Dumpster. He was a master vampire and master vampires didn’t follow you home and hang out on your back porch.
Okay, except for Ray. But he was clearly demented and anyway, he was fifth-level and had a good reason. Whereas Louis-Cesare was first-level with his own family and his own court, probably every bit as lavish as Mircea’s since he’d been a senator, too, until a few weeks ago. And that made our worlds about as far apart as they could possibly get.
I didn’t want him here.
I didn’t need him here.
I needed him gone. Out of my life before I got used to having him around. Before it hurt more than it was already going to when I finally womaned up and—
“You don’t relax easily,” he murmured.
“I’m a dhampir. This is relaxed,” I said. It was supposed to be harsh, a verbal hands-off, but instead it came out tired and kind of sleepy.
Louis-Cesare didn’t comment. He just cupped those big hands around my face, and slowed way, way down. Running parted lips over my cheek and jaw as if just being permitted to touch my skin was a privilege.
And okay, that wasn’t helping. And neither were the arms that wrapped around me, pulling me off the table and back against a warm body inside a fuzzy sweater. Or the mouth that found my ear and my cheek, which had deflated at some point I hadn’t noticed. Or the way his breath caught when he finally met my lips.
And then the back door banged open and a flood of yellow light hit us. And a familiar voice said, “Oh. Sorry.”
I looked up to see Claire, silhouetted in the light, not looking even a tiny bit sorry. Maybe because her hair was frazzled and her apron was drenched and she smelled like dish soap. And she had a big black plastic tub in her hand, the type we used for cleaning off the tables in the garden.
Which, I belatedly realized, hadn’t been done yet.
And she wasn’t going to get any help from the fey. Their warriors might lay down their lives for Claire, but they wouldn’t do dishes for her. Or peel potatoes, or carry out the trash, or help with any of the other household chores that had multiplied in number and difficulty with a dozen extra mouths to feed.
The twins were more easygoing, but trolls aren’t known for a light touch, and we preferred not to have to replace all the dishes. Again. So every night we traded off, and it was my turn to clear the tables, only with everything that had happened, I’d managed to forget.
“Give me that,” I said, reaching for the tub as she tried to edge around us. And had it snatched away.
“You’re not doing it tonight,” she told me, pushing sweaty hair off her face.
“Why not? You got stuck with the dishes.”
“I’m not half dead!”
“Neither am I.” I was actually feeling a lot better now that I had some food inside me. Hunger was always a bigger problem than some pulled muscles or a bruised jaw. My metabolism could take care of those pretty fast on its own, even without vampire assistance. But it couldn’t feed itself. And healing took a lot of energy.
“You need to get some sleep,” she said crossly.
“I slept most of the day. And I’m not leaving you with all the cleaning up to do.”
“You are if I say so,” she told me. Because Claire never met a person she didn’t try to boss around.
And most of the time, it worked. But not tonight. “It’s tables or dishes, Claire. One or the other.”
She sighed suddenly, and gave up. Too tired to argue, probably. “Tables, then. No need for both of us to get soaked.”
But Louis-Cesare didn’t like that idea. “I will do it, if you will rest,” he told me.
Claire blinked at him, as if she must have heard wrong, and I laughed. “You will do it?”
“Why not?”
I licked my lips, so very, very many comments warring to be the first one out. But Claire looked him over critically. Of course, he wasn’t dressed for housework.
He was wearing the same khaki trousers and blue sweater as this afternoon. He wore sweaters a lot; I didn’t know why. Vampires could regulate their temperature a lot better than humans, but a sweater in August looked strange. I guessed maybe he liked the way it felt against his skin.
It was understandable. The fabric—some kind of ungodly soft angora—just enhanced the hard muscle below, and proved almost impossible not to touch. I didn’t even realize I’d been doing it until I felt a nipple harden abruptly under my hand.
And until a dishcloth hit me in the face.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Claire told me drily. “You’re on kitchen duty.”
“Why?”
“You need to cool off.”
“I’m fine,” I said, feeling my cheeks heat, and tossed the towel back.
“Of course you are,” she said, rolling her eyes. But then she left us to it.
The back of the house is one of the reasons the old place is preferable to any slick new apartment. Yes, the water had to run for ten minutes to get remotely close to hot. Yes, half the outlets would shock the hell out of you if you did anything so radical as try to plug anything in. Yes, the garden gate screamed like a murder victim at the slightest touch.
But then there was this.
It was a relic from a time when people actually used backyards for things like hanging up laundry and planting a garden and, hell, playing major-league baseball, given the size. But then the fey had moved in. The front of the house had had to remain the same, since it faced the street and people might have wondered had it suddenly turned into a literal fairyland. But the back was fenced and fairly private, and the fey had been bored and…well.
The old fence had been close to falling down, with rotten and/or missing boards and choked with weeds. But now the weeds had been replaced by vines that had braided themselves together, filling holes and then flowing along the old boards like waves. The illusion was heightened by sprays of some kind of white flower that foamed up here and there, like breaking water.
There were more flowers dotting the yard, despite the fact that most of them weren’t in season. One of those that was, the neighbor’s purple hydrangeas, had really gotten into the spirit of things. The usually sickly-looking bush had all but burst out of the ground, cascading over the fence like a waterfall and forming a waving purple puddle along one side of the yard.
In the middle of it all a miniature city had sprung up, a half circle of vaguely medieval-looking tents splashed with gold by the chains of lanterns strung between them. A bunch of huge roots had pushed up from the ground in the center, making a sitting area around a fire pit, where the artists and the fey were talking and singing and laughing and apparently getting along like gangbusters. Of course, that might have had something to do with the aforementioned cloud of weed.
That wouldn’t affect the fey, who were pretty much immune to weak old human plants. But it ensured that their guests didn’t notice certain things. Like the nearby patch of not-bluebells, which chimed with a faint tune whenever the breeze rustled through them. Or the strings of fireflies that festooned the bushes and sparkled in the trees, like tiny Christmas lights. Or the old lawn table and chairs that were living up to the name, having been completely covered, down to the individual slats in the seats, by a fuzzy blanket of bright green moss.
It was beautiful and weird and kind of disturbing and—
“Enchanting,” Louis-Cesare said, looking around as we approached three new picnic tables set up halfway between the house and the camp.
“Yeah, literally,” I said, plopping the tray on the end of the nearest table and shaking out the trash bag folded inside.
The tables sat six each, which was normally plenty, even when family and fey all ate together. But tonight there had been more people than usual, and mismatched chairs, extra place settings and visitors’ casserole dishes littered the area, making cleanup more of a job than usual. I closed up a couple folding chairs and stacked them against a tree, and then turned to table number one, only to have Louis-Cesare take the first plate out of my hand.
“I said I would do that.”
“Except we need our dishes in one piece,” I said, taking it back. “Thanks.”
“You think I do not know how?” he asked, and the dreaded eyebrow of doom went north.
“I think you do not know how,” I agreed.
And the next thing I knew, my hand was empty. And eight plates, bowls and glasses were in the bin, each in its own perfect little stack, with eight sets of silverware piled alongside. And a vampire was leaning against the side of the table, looking smug.
“I thought you had servants to do that,” I said, trying not to look impressed. Because his ego was already big enough.
“Now. But there were years when I did not.”
Yeah, I always forgot that about him. Because of a weird set of circumstances I didn’t completely understand, Louis-Cesare hadn’t spent his formative years in the bosom of a vampire family, being bullied and picked on and ordered around, but also being taught the ropes. Maybe it was why he was a pretty unconventional vampire even now.
Well, that and stubbornness. Somewhere in all those masterless years, he’d formed his own ideas about how the world worked. And by the time anybody got around to pointing out to him that, for example, senior masters did not bus tables, he’d been past caring.
