“Whose then?”
She put her hands, both of which were back to normal, I was relieved to see, on her hips. “Did you or did you not tell Louis-Cesare that I needed domestic help?”
“I…Not in so many words, no.”
“Well, he interpreted it that way. They showed up a couple hours ago and took over. So far, they’ve done the laundry, mowed the yard, cleaned the house to within an inch of its life—despite my telling them that the spell would just return everything to the way it was, anyway—shampooed the cats and replanted my marigolds!”
“Your marigolds?”
“They said the lines weren’t straight enough!” She looked pissed. No one gets points for telling a Virgo that she doesn’t know how to keep house.
“Why didn’t you just dismiss them?” I asked.
“Oh, now why didn’t I think of that? Because they wouldn’t let me! That vampire sent them to you and you’re the only one who can tell them to go. And that’s exactly what you’re going to do! And then you’re going to march yourself back up here and get a bath—”
“I’m doing nothing of the—”
“—and then you’re going to get dressed and unpack that ridiculous bag and come downstairs again and we’re all going to have a nice meal, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. It’s not safe—”
“Bullshit.” Claire swearing was odd enough to shut me up. “We lived together for almost two years, didn’t we?”
“Yes, but—”
“And how many times did something like last night happen?”
“Once is enough! And it also happened a month ago—”
“And what else happened a month ago?”
“What are you—”
“Damn it, Dory!” Her eyes had focused on my bag, which was still on the floor, and she leaned over and jerked something out. “You’ve got it on you!”
“Of course I’ve got it on me,” I said, wrestling her for my little blue bottle. “What did you expect after—”
“I expected you to take a moment and wonder if this wasn’t the problem!” Claire said, and threw it viciously at the wall.
It didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces, but only because the glass was so thick. It did, however, stick halfway into the wall and stay there. I turned my eyes from the new hallway decoration and back to Claire, who was practically incandescent.
“My abilities draw out your power, release it, destroy it!” she told me angrily. “That’s what a null is. But the wine isn’t a null.”
“Well, it’s doing something.”
“Yes! Yes, it is! It stops your fits, but it doesn’t remove the cause. It’s like closing the valve on a steam engine. It might keep the steam from escaping, but it doesn’t do anything about the pressure.”
I’d been about to say something, but at that I stopped. And just stared at her for a moment. “That’s what you think is happening?”
“I don’t know,” she said, exasperated. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Nobody knows what that stuff does when ingested by a dhampir. All we know is that it brings out latent magical abilities in humans. But you’re not human.”
“But you believe it’s been putting a kind of stopper in my fits.”
She shoved frazzled red hair off her forehead. “Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? You drink it, and it stops your fits, because it shuts off any escape valve for that part of you. But it doesn’t do anything to let off the pressure. So it just keeps building and building. And sooner or later—”
“Pow.”
“Very much pow.”