He laughed.
"Can I help it if I have a bunch of questions?" Roxy asked with an infuriated look back at me. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime situation here and I'm not going to waste it! Besides, you got to ask all the questions when we were seeing the castle; now it's my turn."
"Questions about the origin of the Conspirators' Gallery are not quite as offensive as asking someone what they pick out of their teeth. Stop being so rude."
"You don't mind me asking you personal questions, do you?" she asked him.
Christian gave her a look that said yes, he did mind, but she ignored it. "See? He doesn't mind. Now, about this eternal damnation you suffer—"
"Oh, for God's sake—Roxy, lay off him!" She turned around in the seat to level me another glare before turning back to pout out the window, but both glare and pout left me unfazed. I watched the back of Christian's head as we drove the few miles back to the hotel. It was difficult reconciling the friendly, amusing Christian I'd grown to like with the tormented immortal who viewed me as his only means to salvation.
And it left me feeling guiltier than ever.
I leaned back against the soft leather seat and closed my eyes, thinking back over all the times his mind had touched mine, trying to adjust my mental picture of him with the emotional one his mind had left me. It was him I felt approaching the bar the first night. It was his hunger that filled me when he bent to kiss my hand, not Raphael's as he stood watching us. It was his desperate need that scared me the night Raphael came to my room. And it was his wordless scream of anguish that ripped through the night when I gave myself to Raphael. Christian was wrong about me, I knew he was. But how was I supposed to make him understand that?
I let my body relax into the seat, trying to clear my mind of everything but what I wanted to do, following Miranda's rules regarding meditation. I stretched and reached with my mind.
Christian ?
Immediately he was there, his thoughts warm and reassuring. Or they would have been except that I felt anything but reassured with the ease he invaded my head. Beloved? You call to me?
Oh, no! What had I done? What if only his Beloved was supposed to be able to communicate with him mentally? My mind scurried around trying to remember what I had read from Christian's books about mental communication between a Beloved and her Dark One. What if only a Beloved was supposed to be able to communicate mentally with him? I thought I remembered reading he could talk to others that way, but what if I was wrong? My hash was really fried if that was so. I resisted the temptation to see if he was looking at me in the mirror, deciding that as of that moment, all mental communication with Christian was verboten.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you just then. I wanted you to know how bad I feel about how things have turned out. I know you don't believe me yet, but I'm going to prove to you somehow that I'm not the one who can save you. Better than that, I promise to help you find her. I don't want you to suffer anymore, Christian, I truly don't."
His eyes glittered blackly in the mirror. "It is, perhaps, a subject we can discuss more fully at another time."
I shook my head. "No, it isn't. You don't have to worry about Roxy, she won't repeat anything. I told her what happened in your dungeon. She understands."
He glanced at Roxy. She just smiled at him.
"Not that I have a lot left to say. I think I've pretty much said it all."
"I, however, have not said all," he replied mildly, and turned his eyes back to the road.
Glaring at his head helped a bit; so did a stringent round of mentally calling him every variation of the terms pigheaded and obstinate. For a while. By the time he dropped us off at the hotel, I was resigned to the fact that I would have to redouble my efforts to make him understand that I was not what he wanted me to be.
"Are we going to brave the crowds?" Roxy asked as we stood in the parking area of the hotel, looking at the meadow below.
"Do you have to ask?" I turned to smile at Christian. "You're welcome to join us if you've got nothing else to do. That is, if you don't mind being around a bunch of people. If we don't bother you, I mean. Having all the people… around… you…" My words trailed off under the knowing look he gave me, my cheeks heating up with embarrassment over what I couldn't put into words.
"She means if you've fed," Roxy chirped. "I don't suppose you'd let me watch—" He transferred his look to her. "No. You're right. It's a bad idea."
"If you will allow me, I believe I will join you later at the fair."
"Sure thing," I said brightly, trying not to acknowledge that he was off to prey on some unsuspecting victim. "Later. We'll be there. Somewhere."
"Bon appétit," Roxy said.
I grabbed her by the arm and hustled her down the grassy hill toward the fair. "For God's sake, Roxy, you don't tell a Dark One bon appétit!. That's utterly tactless!"
"Why?" she asked, stumbling over a clod of dirt. "I want him to have a good meal. What if he picked someone who was born in an off year? Or someone with a blood disease? You may not have any plans for him later, but I do, so I'd like him to be in a good mood. I want to hear all about the stuff he hasn't written yet, all the dirt on the Dark Ones. And he promised me it was my turn next with the thumbscrews in the dungeon room."
I looked back over my shoulder as we reached the bottom of the hill. Christian was silhouetted against the glow from the hotel, the wind setting his long coat flapping around his legs as he stood frozen, watching us.
"Raphael can't be done soon enough for me. I sure hope nothing goes wrong at the fair tonight," I muttered under my breath.
Roxy heard me. "What could go wrong tonight? You're not reading any rune stones tonight, so the world ought to be safe from any of the disasters, catastrophes, and general acts of God that follow when you do."
There are times when Roxy isn't particularly prescient.
I found Raphael by one of the two tents that served prepackaged food and hot beverages. Although the fair was not licensed to serve alcohol, many customers brought their own in. With the crowds gathering for the big festival a few days away, Raphael was particularly hard-pressed to weed out those who had overindulged and were making a nuisance of themselves. He was escorting two women and a tall, skinny young man off the fairgrounds, telling them they could come back later after they'd sobered up.
"From the way they're staggering—not to mention the bits of song interspersed in their condemnation of your actions—I'm betting they sleep it off rather than return later."
"That's the general idea." Raphael smiled as he turned to face me. There were lines of stress alongside his mouth, and his beautiful eyes looked troubled and distracted. I squelched my plans to tease him into a frenzy of lustful thoughts, and tried instead to smooth away the frown that creased his forehead.
"Not going well tonight?"
"No worse than what we expected." He caught my hand and pressed a warm kiss to my palm. "How did your evening with Dante go?"
I swallowed back the horrible memory of Christian's torment. "OK. I'll tell you about it later." Much later. Say, five or six years later.
A burst of static and unintelligible garble came from the radio clipped to his belt. He seemed to understand it, however, because he barked a command into the radio, and grabbed me as he started back toward the fair proper.
"Here. You take this." He pulled his trailer key out of his pocket and shoved it in my hand. "I'll be there as soon after closing as I can. Rico needs help with a fight near the main tent. Stay away from that area until we can clear it out."