There was a ceremony. There’s always a ceremony with vamps. Although, I don’t think it normally involves a bunch of guys in towels and dripping hair, some half-shaved, going down on one knee to kiss my nonexistent ring.
They seemed a lot happier, though, by the time I finally pushed the last squashy ass out of my bedroom window to go look for Curly. And then headed downstairs, wearing Ray’s worried frown, because I now had to find lodging for fifteen—sixteen, counting him—kind of pathetic vampires, and had to do it soon. Which was why I was halfway to the porch before I looked up.
And saw Louis-Cesare standing just outside the door.
I stopped dead.
Last night, there had been powder burns on one of his temples, a cut across his lower jaw, and a bruise, livid red and purple, distorting his left cheek. Tonight, there was nothing. It was as if the whole thing at the theatre had just been a bad dream.
It shouldn’t have surprised me.
As soon as the curses wore off, healing would have been almost instantaneous. That’s why most people never saw a first-level master like that; they healed too fast. You were never supposed to be able to trace the indentation left by a bullet, or see the scattered pieces of it shining in the moonlight through half-healed skin. You were never supposed to smell his blood, or feel terror grip your heart at the extent of the damage, because it was gone in an instant, as if it had never been there at all.
But it had been there, and I had seen it.
And, suddenly, I couldn’t see anything else.
“Dory!” a lilting voice called. “We were just talking about you.”
Shit. I’d been so busy staring at Louis-Cesare, I’d failed to notice that someone else was back, too. And lounging on the swing, his long legs splayed out in casual elegance, his green eyes amused.
I didn’t know why Caedmon looked so pleased with himself until I noticed: Louis-Cesare was holding a single rose, a beautiful thing, elegant and bright red and tied with a little white bow. Which would have been more impressive if the porch hadn’t been draped with them. Like, to the point that I wasn’t sure it wasn’t about to collapse.
I didn’t know where the others had come from, because they weren’t the hothouse variety. But rather big, old-fashioned, pale pink things with fat ruffled heads that shed a subtle perfume. Or they would have, if there hadn’t been a million of them.
Then I noticed the bloom-filled creeper coming from next door, where it had crawled out of the neighbor’s rose patch and inched along the ground the way this variety didn’t, because it wasn’t a climbing rose. Or, at least, it hadn’t been. Until it scaled a tall wooden fence, dropped over the other side, scrawled across the yard, and set about making our sagging back porch sag some more with a crap ton of heavy pink blooms.
Just to be nearer to the blond in the swing.
And to piss off Louis-Cesare, judging by his expression.
Things were a little tense on the porch, because he and Caedmon had a history, and it wasn’t good. And I really didn’t want a repeat, considering how much repair work the house still had to do. And then I noticed that Louis-Cesare was in a suit.
It was a nice one, a dark blue that deepened his eyes to sapphire and brought out the red in his hair. He’d matched it with a pristine white shirt and a dark-colored tie, usually a boring combination unless it’s draped across broad shoulders and a sculpted chest. I blinked at him, because he looked . . . well, like you’d expect.
Edible.
“Going somewhere?” I asked, and he awkwardly handed me his lone flower.
“I was hoping to take you to dinner.”
I didn’t say anything. Not because Olga’s errand waited, or because I’d already eaten. But because I hadn’t expected him tonight and I wasn’t ready.
I knew what had to be done, had known ever since I realized that my days were likely numbered. Hell, I’d known it long before that, practically since I set eyes on Mr. Too-Good-for-the-Likes-of-You. But I still wasn’t.
“Dory?”
“Uh—”
“We’re already planning a feast here. My men are cooking it now,” Caedmon said, coming to the rescue with a strange little smile. And
with a wave of a languid hand toward the garden, which I hadn’t noticed because the roses were blocking half of it. But now . . .
“Did you ask Claire about this?” I breathed, my eyes widening.
“Ask me about what?” Claire said, backing out of the house. She had a tray in her hands, piled with sandwiches, napkins, and a pitcher of homemade lemonade. Which she almost dropped, along with her jaw, when she turned around. “Caedmon!”
She was staring at the fragrant smoke starting to waft this way from numerous campfires. Campfires that had been dug willy-nilly, all over her formerly nice lawn. Including a huge fire pit over which a spit had been erected to hold an entire . . .