I suddenly felt like a teenager—a little bit afraid, a whole lot excited, and filled with so many hormones demanding so many inexplicable things that I nearly lost the ability to focus my eyes.
She stopped just out of the reach of my hand. “Don’t mind my cousin’s horrible manners. The infamous Harry Dresden hardly needs an introduction.” She looked me up and down and twined a finger through a tendril of dark hair. “How could I come to Chicago so many times without meeting you?”
“But I’ve seen you,” I said. My voice was a little rough, but it worked.
“Oh?” she asked, the sexy smile widening. “Are you the sort who likes to watch, Harry?”
“You betcha,” I said. “And that time, I was watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”
Her smile faltered a fraction.
“You are Jessica Rabbit, right?” I asked. “All slinky and overblown and obvious?”
The smile vanished.
“Because I know I’ve seen you somewhere, and gosh, I’ll be embarrassed if it turns out that you were the evil princess from Buck Rogersinstead.”
“What?” she said. “Buck what?”
I gave her my best forced smile. “Hey, don’t get me wrong. You do that ensemble justice. But you’re trying too hard.” I leaned a little closer and fake-whispered, “Lara does more for me just sitting in a chair than you did with your whole entrance.”
Madeline Raith became as still and cold as a statue of a furious goddess, and the air temperature around us dropped several degrees.
I suddenly sensed Thomas’s presence beside me, and found my brother had leaned back against the railing on his elbows, his hands loose and relaxed. He was standing just a tiny bit closer to Madeline than I was.
“Madeline,” he said in the precise same tone he’d used a moment before, “go away before I beat you to death with my bare hands.”
Madeline jerked her head back as if Thomas had slapped her. “What?”
“You heard me,” he said calmly. “It isn’t quite cricket as family squabbles go, I know, but I’m tired, I don’t give a fuck what you or anyone else in the House thinks of me, and I don’t respect you enough to play games with you, even if I was in the mood.”
“How dare you?” Madeline snarled. “How dare you threaten me? Lara will have the skin flayed from your body for this.”
“Oh?” Thomas gave her a wintry smile. “After what you projected at the wizard, he’d be well within his rights to burn you right down to your overpriced shoes.”
“I never—”
“And despite the orders handed down from the King,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “Lara’s getting tired of cleaning up after you, Mad. She’d probably buy me a new set of steak knives if I found a way to make her life a bit less trying.”
Madeline laughed. It reminded me of glass breaking. “And do you think she loves you any better, cousin mine? You refuse to appear with the House at meetings of the Court, and spend your time among the kine, grooming them and bringing shame upon your family. At least tell me you are planning to take the beasts to some sort of auction.”
“You aren’t capable of understanding why I do what I do,” Thomas said.
“Who would want to?” she retorted. “You’re as much a degenerate as any of those fools in Skavis and Malvora.”
Thomas’s mouth ticked at the corner, but that was all the reaction he gave her. “Go away, Madeline. Last warning.”
“Two members of the oldest bloodlines in Raith murdering each other?” Madeline said, sneering. “The White King could not tolerate such a divisive act and you know it.” She turned away from Thomas and walked toward Justine. “You’re bluffing,” she said over her shoulder. “Besides. We haven’t heard from our little pink rose yet.”
Her voice sank to a throaty purr, and Justine quivered in place, seemingly unable to move as Madeline approached.
“Pretty Justine.” Madeline put a hand on Justine’s shoulder and slid a single fingertip down the slope of one breast. “I don’t generally enjoy does as much as some, darling, but even I find the thought of taking you delicious.”
“You c-can’t touch me,” Justine stammered. She was breathing faster.
“Not yet,” Madeline said. “But there’s not enough will left in your pretty little head to control yourself for long.” Madeline stepped closer, sliding her hand along Justine’s waist. “Some night, perhaps I’ll come to you with some beautiful young buck and whisper pretty things to you until you’re mad to be taken. And after he has made use of you, little doe, I’ll take you in one big bite.” She licked her lips. “I’ll take you whole and make you scream how much you love it as it happen—”
Thomas broke a chair over Madeline’s head.
It was particularly impressive, given that all the chairs on the balcony were made of metal.
It happened fast, during an eye blink. One instant he was standing beside me, tightening with anger, and the next there were popped rivets zinging everywhere and Madeline had been crushed to the floor of the balcony.
The air went cold. Thomas dropped the ruined chair. Madeline bounced up from the floor and threw a blow at Thomas’s jaw. He hunched and twisted, a boxer’s defense, and took it on the shoulder with a grunt of pain. Then he seized her ankle and slammed her in a half circle, smashing a 36-24-36 dent into the drywall.
Madeline cried out and her limbs went loose. Thomas swung her in another arc that brought her crashing down onto the low coffee table between the couches. She lay there and let out a single choked gasp, her eyes unfocused. Without pausing, my brother snatched both chopsticks from Justine’s hair, letting the white-silver locks tumble down her back.
Then, in two sharp, swift motions, he slammed the chopsticks through Madeline’s wrists and into the table beneath them, pinning her like a butterfly to a card.
“You’re right of course,” he snarled. “Lara couldn’t ignore one member of the family murdering another. It would make the King look weak.” His hand closed over Madeline’s face, and he pulled her head up toward his, making her arms strain at a painful angle. “I was bluffing.”
He shoved her back down against the table. “Of course,” he said, “you’re family. Families don’t murder one another.” He looked up at Justine and said, “They share.”
She met his eyes. A very small, very hard smile graced Justine’s features.
“You wanted to taste her,” Thomas said, his fingers twining with Justine’s rubber-clad ones. “Well, Madeline. Be my guest.”
Justine leaned over and kissed Madeline Raith’s forehead, her silken silver hair falling to veil them both.
The vampire screamed.
The sound was lost in the pounding rhythm and flashing lights.
Justine lifted her head a few seconds later, and swept her hair slowly down the length of Madeline’s form. The vampire writhed and screamed again, while Thomas held her pinned to the table. Wherever Justine’s hair glided over exposed fleshed, the skin sizzled and burned, blackening in some places, forming blisters and welts in others. She left a trail of ruin down one of Madeline’s legs and then rose together with Thomas, two bodies making one motion.
Madeline Raith’s face was a ruin of burn marks, and the imprint of Justine’s soft mouth was a perfect black brand on pale flesh in the center of her forehead. She lay on the table, still pinned by the chopsticks, and quivered in jerking little motions, gasping and breathless with the pain.
Thomas and Justine walked, hand in hand, to the stairs leading down from our platform. I followed them.
They passed beneath an air-conditioning outlet, and a few strands of Justine’s hair blew against Thomas’s naked arm and chest. Small bright lines of scarlet appeared. Thomas didn’t flinch.
I walked over to them and passed Justine a pair of pencils, taken from my coat pocket. She took them with a nod of thanks, and quickly bound up her hair again. I looked over my shoulder as she did.