They wanted to play? Fine. Let's play.
I crossed one leg over the other and peered over at Caleb with my best seductive pout. "What? A girl can't have a little fun with her immortality?"
"You are hardly immortal," Caleb countered with a tight jaw. His gaze slid over to Antoine. "You are nothing more than what your master has made you. Take him away, and what do you have left?"
The hair on my arms stood on end as Caleb focused all his attention on Antoine. Something was happening. Something not good.
Antoine didn't react for a moment. His face as unbothered as ever by the threat ahead of him. Then he was writhing on the floor, grabbing his head. I jerked to get up and then let out a gasp of pain as Odette tightened her grip on my hand to where I thought she might actually break it.
"Stop it," I snapped, my voice breaking as I said it. "Please, stop it."
"If Antoine dies, then you die and all our problems are solved," Caleb stated his focus never wavering off of Antoine.
"Now, now, Caleb." Tuma tut-tutted. "We cannot destroy them simply for a personal dislike for the accused.” Caleb didn't listen to Tuma for a moment and then the purple people eater said his name once more, just once, in a way that even I would not dare to disobey.
Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime of watching Antoine cry out in pain, his eyes blindly searching around him for something to stop the agony, Caleb blinked, dropping his gaze from Antoine. Marcus went to Antoine's side where I wanted to be but didn't dare try to get to him. Odette still had a tight grip on my hand, her tiny little nails drawing blood from where they clawed at me.
Odette lifted my hand, her eyes finding mine as her small tongue darted out and licked the blood that dripped out. "Oh," her eyes widened in surprise. "I do see why they like you so much. You taste good."
I grimaced. "Uh, thanks. Can I have my hand back now?"
Odette looked like she wanted to say no.
Tuma cut in before she could answer. "Odette give Miss Piper her hand back."
Pushing her lower lip out in a pout, Odette released me, her gaze settling on the vampires before her. She slipped off the couch and walked around the table to stand before the six of them. She swayed back and forth with her hands behind her back, so her skirt moved like a little bell.
"They're very pretty," Odette glanced over her shoulder at me. "Do you love them?"
Hesitant to tell them any of my weaknesses, I kept silent. Only when Tuma said, "I too wish to know how this relationship works," I dared to answer.
I cleared my throat and met Odette's gaze. "I love them."
"How?" Odette asked curious as the child she portrayed yet the years in her eyes told a different story. "How can you stretch your love to cover them all? Is it not painful?"
My brow furrowed at her question. "Love is not something that is limited. If it's painful, then it isn't love."
"Are you sure?" This question came from Caleb, who looked sharply at the Durands and then me. "Hasn't the house of Durand caused you nothing but pain and suffering since the day you met them? You even cut yourself the very first day of your employment."
I gaped at Caleb, closing the hand that held the scar from the broken vase. "How...how do you know that?"
Tuma brushed my hair away from my face, drawing my attention to him. "Caleb is quite well versed in the ways of the mind. He can not only read what is in the minds of others but manipulate it so that they only know what he wished them to know."
"It is easy to slip in a suggestion or two into the minds of others," Caleb explained, his eyes locked on mine. "Even so much as to suggest one saw something they did not." His lips ticked at that phrase giving away his guilt at turning the bartender against us.
"Or even making a company sell their shares to the lowest bidder." Odette giggled and danced around the Durands as if she were hearing some music the rest of us did not.
"Why?" I questioned my head pivoting around from one of the council members to the other. "Why are you doing this to us?"
"Can you not think of anything?" Tuma quirked a brow, a hint of his fangs showing as he smiled at me. "While we commend you on taking out Boris and his blood trading, we cannot overlook your assistance to the hunters."
"Hey," I jumped up shaking a finger at him. "There's a reason for that. We were on the run. We didn't have a choice."
"There is always a choice," Caleb responded with a calm that frightened me.
I gritted my teeth.
They weren't going to listen to me. They'd already made up their mind. Now they just wanted to watch us squirm and beg. I would not give them the satisfaction of either.