I sat there, wondering what had just happened.
“Do you?”
My immediate response was sir, yes, sir! But that wasn’t true. And I was tired of taking orders, even well-meant ones. “I acted like him, Marco—”
“Bullshit! You let a necessity do double duty, that’s all. You didn’t go looking for someone to bleed for you, you didn’t take joy in what had to be done. You’re sitting here beating yourself up over it—do you think Tony ever did that?”
“Maybe he did, in the beginning—”
“Like hell!” Marco chewed angrily on his cigar. “I’ve known that fat prick for centuries, even before I came to Mircea’s, and he was always the same. The Change doesn’t change who you are, it just gives losers like him more power than they know how to handle. Mircea should have put him down years ago. But he’s the sentimental type, too, at least when it comes to family—”
“I’m not sentimental!”
“Sure.” Marco leaned forward, and a shaft of moonlight lit the big, handsome face. “That’s why you’re sitting out here, shivering and tearing yourself up, instead of going to bed like you ought to, because you’re fine with it.”
“I’m not fine with it! I just—” I stopped, because I wasn’t sure what I felt anymore. “You don’t use someone’s death like that. You just don’t.”
“Maybe if you’re human, you don’t,” he agreed. “But you’re not one, and you’re dealing with some next-level badasses. Sometimes, you gotta give ’em a slap. That’s true of the master as much as anyone. He’s a good guy, but if you give him an inch, he’ll take the whole fucking continent. You don’t realize it yet, because you’re tired and cold and hurting, but you made a smart play tonight.”
I looked at him, and knew there were tears in my eyes, but I couldn’t help it. “Then why do I feel like this?”
Marco got up and folded me into a hug, and as always, it was like hugging Gibraltar. But it felt good. “’Cause you’re not Tony,” he told me softly. “Now go to bed before I carry you there.”
It wasn’t an empty threat; he’d done it before, with no more difficulty than anyone else picking up a wayward kitten. “I can’t,” I said. “I need to talk to the guys first.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Marco didn’t ask why. Maybe he already knew. He just went to collect the boys, after tossing me a throw from off the back of the sofa, although he could have summoned them mentally just as easily. But maybe he thought I needed a moment.
He wasn’t wrong.
Talking with Marco usually helped me sort out my thoughts. He might not always be right, because nobody was always right, and he was rarely diplomatic. But I didn’t need diplomacy; I needed honesty, and he always gave me that.
But sometimes, I couldn’t give it back.
There were things I couldn’t tell Marco, things I had to sort out for myself.
Like Mircea saying passionately that I’d misunderstood, that he’d told me about Lover’s Knot to prove that he wouldn’t go behind my back.
“I’ve known about this for weeks,” he’d said, the dark eyes urgent, willing me to understand. “And I’ve done nothing other than confiscate all traces of the spell! I won’t do anything—”
“And the others?” I’d asked roughly. “Who else knows?”
“No one. The spell is truly lost this time. Even Claude doesn’t have it—”
“And who took it out of his mind? Was it you?”
I’d seen the answer on his face before he’d replied. Of course it had been him. He’d trust no one else with something like that.
So there was someone who still knew it, then.
“I’m not going to use it, Cassie!” he’d said, frustration in his voice as well as his face. He hadn’t understood how I would take this. He really, really hadn’t. “No one will hear about it from me, no matter what you decide.”
“This isn’t more blackmail, then?” I’d asked steadily.