Stinky was at the other end of the table, sleeping. Or at least I thought so, until a pitiful groan erupted from the fuzzy lump. I walked over, trying to get a look at him, but he kept shielding his eyes.
“He’s been sick twice since he woke up,” Claire told me, looking worried. “And he won’t eat anything. I gave him some aspirin, but it didn’t seem to help. I was about to wake you and ask if you want me to call a healer.”
I pulled his head up and peeled the woven place mat off it. It left a checkerboard pattern on his cheek, which did nothing to hide the pallor and the under- eye bruising. I watched him for a moment, then went and got a dishrag and filled it with ice.
“Sit up,” I told him. I was rewarded by a slitted eye glaring at me from under a snarled mass of hair, but no horizontal movement.
“What are you doing?” Claire asked.
“He’s not sick.” I pulled him up again and slapped the compress over his eyes. He mewled with protest until the cold started to work. Then he groaned in appreciation and flopped his head back down.
“He’s hungover?” Claire asked, looking faintly appalled.
“Considering that he drained most of a bottle of your uncle’s home brew last night? I’d say it’s a safe bet.”
I squatted down beside his chair. “Hurts, doesn’t it?” I got a faint nod. “Are you going to stay out of my stash from now on?” A more vigorous nod. And then another groan. I decided he’d been punished enough.
“Have you seen my cell phone?” I asked Claire, staring at the empty recharger in my usual morning haze. I always envied the types who could roll out of bed and be bright-eyed and sharp within seconds. It took me a good hour, and that was with the help of large amounts of caffeine.
“No. Why?”
“Since it’ll be a few days before any backup can arrive from Faerie, I thought I’d call Mircea. Get some protection down here.”
Claire glanced up from the stove, brow furrowing. “What kind of protection?”
“The Senate’s running short-staffed these days, but they should be able to spare a few masters—”
“You mean vampires.” Her voice was flat.
“It’s the Senate. What else?”
Her expression tipped over into a full- fledged frown. “I thought about what you said last night, about what Aiden would bring in ransom. I think the fewer people who know he’s here, the better.”
“I’m a little more concerned about the people who already know he’s here,” I said sardonically. “The house wards should stop the riffraff.”
“They won’t have to if nobody knows he’s here in the first place.”
“I’ll tell Mircea to be discreet.”
“I’d prefer to let fey deal with fey.”
“Olga’s boys are resistant to most magic, including the fey variety,” I told her, while rifling through the bread box. “And God knows they’re strong enough. But there’re only two of them, and they aren’t exactly deep thinkers. And whatever else I can say aboutsubrand, he’s not stupid.”
“Neither am I. And I know better than to trust a vampire!” I couldn’t blame her for being wary. Claire had been kidnapped by Vlad on his recent rampage. She had every reason to mistrust the breed.
“They’re not all the same,” I admitted uncomfortably. Louis-Cesare, for example, seemed determined to mess with my head, constantly challenging my preconceptions about what a vampire was and how one behaved. It was only one of many ways the guy was a pain in the ass.
“You can say that when your job is killing them?” Claire demanded.
“My job is hunting revenants—” She looked confused. “Vampires who had something go wrong with the Change.”
“Wouldn’t they just”—she waved a spatula—“stay dead, then?”
“Most do. But once in a while one will survive physically, but mentally… Let’s just say he’s not all there. And a revenant will attack anything—human or vampire—that gets in his way. And since he’s insane, there’s no reasoning with him. He has to be put down.”
“And you’ve never killed any vampires other than these revenants?” she asked, skeptically.
“I take commissions occasionally to hunt down vamps who have violated Senate law in some way. But I don’t go around killing random vampires.” I wouldn’t have lasted long if I had, no matter who daddy was.
“I don’t see much difference,” Claire said, scowling.
I thought about Mircea’s expression if he knew he’d just been lumped together with Vleck and a bunch of slavering beasts with little more brains than an animal. “You probably shouldn’t mention that view around any vamps you meet,” I said drily.
“I’m not going to be meeting any.” It sounded final.
“You ought to reconsider,” I told her seriously. “It’s easy to distrust something that views you as food, but right now—”
“I don’t want those things near my son, okay? I’m sick of guards I can’t trust!”
“They’ll be master-level vampires on loan from the Senate. They’re not going to do any snacking.”
“I know they’re not, because they’re not going to be here.” She saw my expression and sighed. “Think about it, Dory. What could they have done last night, other than get carved to pieces?”
“I think you might be surprised.”
“Well, I don’t. I’ve seen what a fey warrior can do.”
“And I’ve seen a master vampire in action.”
She shot me an exasperated look. “Ifsubrand could get through the wards, he’d have done it, rather than resort to creating those things.”
“Which he could do again.”
“He knows that I can defeat them now. It would be a waste of time.”
“And the next thing he comes up with?”
“He’s not going to be coming up with anything today,” she said firmly.
You hope, I didn’t say. Because it would have been a waste of time. Claire was as stubborn as they came when she was convinced she was right, which was frequently. It didn’t help that she usually was. I just hoped this wasn’t going to be the exception that proved the rule.
I gave up on the phone and started looking for a mug instead. There weren’t any in the usual spots—scattered around the table, littering the counters or piled in the dishwasher someone had installed back when olive green appliances were all the rage. It didn’t actually work, but sometimes people stuck things in there anyway. But not this time.
“What are you doing?” Claire asked, watching me.
“Trying to find the mugs. They’ve all disappeared.”
She rolled her eyes and opened a cabinet, and there they were—several rows of gleaming white cups, all perfectly aligned. She’d even gotten the stains out. Must be fey magic, I decided, pouring my morning brew.
I took the coffee and picked my way up the stairs to my room. I found it suspiciously clear of ice, snow or even water. I kicked a heel against the old floorboards, and they seemed solid enough. There was some staining, but they were dry.
Huh.
The lights didn’t work, of course, but the holes in the ceiling let in plenty of daylight, plus a couple of birds who were poking around, checking out nesting opportunities. I ignored them and went to find my toothbrush. I’d located it before I remembered: the pipes had burst. I turned the faucet anyway, just for the hell of it, and a stream of water gurgled out into the rust-stained sink. I stared at it for a moment, perplexed, then shrugged and brushed my teeth.
The shower also seemed to work, so I took full advantage, washing away the blood from the previous night and the sweat from this morning. The house was hot and, thanks to the rain, uncomfortably muggy. I was toweling off when I got sidetracked by a small square of blue.
It had popped out of the tile work at some point in the mess last night and landed on the far end of the counter that held the sink. But it was currently on the move. I watched it skate across the linoleum and pop back into place, the yellowed grout filling in around it.