“And so are we. We have no freaking clue what they’re up to!”
Ray looked pissed, and I couldn’t blame him. Walking in there at all was bad enough; walking in with no real plan was…not bright. But the only clues were inside, and if I was going to figure this out, that was where I had to be.
And pray for inspiration.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?” Ray asked.
It took me a second to realize he was talking about the tie.
“Women don’t wear these things,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, but their men do.”
I thought back to all the one-night stands, most of which hadn’t been with the kind of guys who owned tuxes. And none of them would have been likely to let me anywhere near their throat, if they had. Unlike a certain auburn-haired vampire, whose only reaction to my lips at his neck had been to hold me closer.
Before I fried his brain, that was.
I closed my eyes. He was going to be okay. He was Louis-freaking-Cesare. He was the ex-Enforcer of the European Senate, the only guy in memory to keep another first-level master as a servant, the guy who made other badasses suddenly remember their manners. He might look ornamental, but he was tough as nails and he was going to be okay. And so was Mircea. Because if things went south, I fully intended to grab them both and run like hell. Fuck the Senate; I was here for family.
“They didn’t stick around long enough for me to learn,” I said abruptly, and let him go.
And the next second, the chauffeur was opening the door and we were there.
Chapter Forty-two
That was the longest stair climb of my life. I didn’t look left; I didn’t look right. I don’t know what the hell I was looking at, because nothing really registered. If I hadn’t seen it from the car, I wouldn’t have even known which direction to go. All I could manage to do was to put one foot in front of the other and push.
Against POWER, like nothing I’d ever experienced. This wasn’t ants crawling over my skin, or even a few extra atmospheres. This was an unrelenting tide beating down on me, slamming into me, wave after wave and more with each step, until all I could do was focus on my feet and try to stay upright.
I noticed when Ray slid a hand under my arm, like an attentive date—and one who was exerting a lot of upward pressure to keep me from falling on my face. I didn’t know what he was feeling; maybe not that much, since he was a vamp, too. But I always felt like I’d picked up a pair of hundred-pound weights every time I got near this place, and my exhaustion tonight only made things worse. I was going to face-plant any minute if the damned stairs from hell didn’t end already.
Annnnnd they didn’t.
I faltered, but Ray caught me halfway down. “Are you okay, dear?” he asked, but with an edge that made it into “Get up or I’m leaving your ass here, I swear to God.”
I got up.
“Fine,” I croaked. And on we went.
And on. And on.
But it was like we’d somehow stumbled onto a down escalator. Because no matter how far we climbed, the top never seemed to get any closer. And it was beginning to feel less like stair climbing and more like mountain climbing, one of the really tall ones with no oxygen and no Sherpa to help carry the load.
And then I suddenly found the Sherpa, and he was riding on my shoulders. Along with a couple of his friends and maybe a yak. Because the consul was an anal-retentive bitch and she’d arranged the guards by rank.
That left the weaker ones, relatively speaking, at the bottom, and at the top…well, it explained why the blasts of power coming from both sides were no longer washing over me. They were slicing right on through and meeting inside my skull. And threatening to rip it apart.
I gasped at a particularly strong gust, and Ray’s grip tightened. “I told you not to wear those shoes,” he said, his voice strained. And then, “I’ll get you a drink when we get inside.”
“Sounds good,” I croaked, even knowing that it was a lie. Inside was an illusion that had never existed and never would because life consisted only of this infernal stairway and he had to be kidding me with inside.
But I gritted my teeth and pushed on, since there were exactly zero other options, fighting my way through air that didn’t feel like air anymore, but liquid. First water and then molasses and then something that was fast approaching a solid. And then I wasn’t moving at all, and was so far gone that it took me a second to realize that I’d just hit something.
It turned out to be Ray, who had abruptly stopped in front of me.
“A moment, dear,” he said, giving a little whinny of a laugh. “I have to give the man our tickets.”
I nodded, trying to look nonchalant…and then realized that I didn’t need to try. The ticket thing should have worried me, because it meant that we were no longer just two faces in the crowd but were being individually scrutinized. This was the moment of truth, when I was going to be recognized or not, depending on who was on duty, something I had absolutely no control over. It was the sort of thing I hated, the random chance in every missi