I got a hand on his waistband, jerking him back from the edge before we found out just how much abuse a vampire body could take. He fell hard against me as I wrestled him back onto the roof. He also copped a feel.
“Cut it out, unless you don’t mind losing a few more body parts,” I told him, before I remembered that he couldn’t hear me.
His hands jerked away like they’d been burned, and he stopped, dead still.
I did, too, as a completely new idea occurred. “Sit down,” I told Raymond, who obligingly buckled his knees and parked his tush on the edge of the roof. His legs swung free over the courtyard below like a little boy’s. A little headless boy coated in gore, but still.
There are other explanations, I told myself. He could have stopped feeling me up once he’d figured out who I was; he could have sat down because he was weak from blood loss. I might be totally misreading this.
“Raise your right arm if you can hear me,” I said, and the arm obligingly shot up.
Or maybe not.
I patted down my borrowed jacket, but found only change, some matches and half a pack of cigarettes. But Ray had a cell phone in his pocket, although he didn’t seem inclined to give it up. “What?” I asked, slapping his hands. “It’s not like you can use it.”
He gave me the finger.
I ignored him and dialed a number that doesn’t show up in the phone book. It took me a minute to get through because there was some sort of party going on. And because the staff hates me.
“Senator Mircea Basarab,” I repeated for the fourth time, several minutes later.
“Lord Mircea cannot be disturbed,” yet another supercilious voice informed me. “Might I take a message?”
“Yes. You can tell him that his daughter’s on the phone. And if he doesn’t take my call, I’m going to dump that corpse he wanted in the river.”
There was some murmuring in the background, but no answer. Vamp #4 hadn’t hung up, though. I could hear party noises: music, laughter and the muted chime of fine crystal. And then a voice that managed to be more beautiful than all three.
“Dorina, are you all right?”
It was unfair what vampires could do with intonation, especially that one. Warmth, concern, love—it was all there in one short sentence, and it was all a lie. He was in a good mood because he thought I had Ray. He was going to be a little less amused when he discovered my part didn’t talk.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, my voice sounding harsh in my ears.
“This isn’t one of the numbers we have on file for you.”
“Yeah, well, there’s been a snag.”
“Do you require assistance?”
“I require answers. It seems there’s a few things even I don’t know about vamps.”
“Such as?”
“Say there’s a fifth- level master who’s lost his head—”
“I assume you mean that literally,” was the dry response.
“—and say that said appendage is no longer in the immediate area—”
“It’s missing?”
“I’ll be glad to give you a play-by-play later! Right now, I need to know why a headless body would continue to hear and obey commands.”
“It wouldn’t.” The sounds of the party faded, so I assumed he’d moved somewhere more secure for this conversation. Good. He might actually plan to cough up a few facts for a change.
“Yeah, well, empirical evidence would suggest otherwise.”
There was silence for a moment, while he debated it. I doubted he felt any shame about siring a monster who regularly went around killing his kind, but only because that particular emotion wasn’t in his repertoire. But he nonetheless avoided telling me any facts that might make my job easier. He was probably afraid that I’d use them against him someday.