I pulled my hand back.
I didn’t want to disturb him when he looked relaxed. It wasn’t an expression I’d seen very often. Or ever, actually.
But then, maybe he’d never had much to be relaxed about.
I wondered what it had been like for him, in those early years. For someone trained his whole life to be the leader, the provider, the protector, to suddenly be unable to do any of those things. To be a prince without a country, or a treasury, or an army—or even a body he could understand. Because his exile had come at the same time that he’d been dealing with this whole new existence that had been foisted onto him.
He’d gone from having everything to having nothing, almost overnight. And yet, somehow he’d managed. And in Venice, of all places, which had been a snake pit of vampire intrigue, back in the day. And not only managed, but taken care of others at the same time.
I won’t always be weak.…
And he never had been. He never—
I swallowed and blinked back tears. God, I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. That attack must have messed me up more than I’d thought. Then I decided to hell with it and leaned over, placing a soft kiss on his forehead.
And heard a softer sound behind me.
I turned abruptly, because I hadn’t heard the door open. But it must have, because dinner was waiting on the threshold. Tonight’s tasty morsel was young and pale, with messy blond curls and unsettling bright blue eyes. They looked a little unfocused, like she was looking both through me and at me at the same time. She was a little creepy.
She was also useless right now.
“He doesn’t need you,” I told her, clutching at my sheet, which was slipping.
“W-what?” For some reason, she looked fairly gobsmacked.
“He’s sleeping,” I repeated patiently. “And I can give him what he needs.”
She just stood there, her mouth hanging open. I thought there was a chance that she might be a little slow. “You can go,” I repeated. “Vamoose, amscray, make like a tree. Do you get it?”
“Yeah.” The voice had gone flat, cold. “I get it.”
And then the next thing I knew, I was sitting all alone in the middle of a field filled with mud and some very startled cows. Who weren’t half as startled as I was. I got up, slid on a cow pie and went back down, landing in a puddle and splattering mud everywhere.
And somewhere far off, like an echo of an echo, I could swear I heard someone laughing.
The fuck?
Chapter Forty
A couple hours later, I was driving a stolen SUV past the parking lot of Singh’s gutted grocery. I still smelled like cow, due to schlepping across a field full of them courtesy of some witch with a sense of humor. Or maybe I was just crazy; at this point, I wasn’t ready to rule anything out.
But I thought I’d stolen an SUV and I thought I was driving it past Singh’s, so I was gonna go with that for now. I also thought that a light rain was falling, sending the crime scene tape flapping against the front door and staining the soot-streaked walls a darker hue. But not so much that I couldn’t see the two shadows lurking near a Dumpster.
I kept right on driving, only sliding to a stop at a red light down the street.
Two vamps, even two of Marlowe’s, would normally have been no problem. Hell, two vamps would normally have been an insult. But tonight…tonight, I thought they might be overkill.
Not that killing me was Marlowe’s plan—probably. But that wasn’t much comfort considering what he likely did have in store. I had the key to this mess locked up in my head and he knew it. And the assault on Mircea had given him all the excuse he needed to hold me until…
What? He brought out the thumbscrews and rack, or whatever the Senate was using these days? Or until some other mentalist was brought in to poke around inside my head?
And yeah. Didn’t that just sound like fun?
So I needed to hole up until Mircea woke up. And there was only one p
lace I knew of to do that where Marlowe couldn’t get at me. Unfortunately, he knew it, too, and he had no intention of letting me back in.
I let my fingers drum on the steering wheel.