I pulled my hand out from under his. I watched my hands clasp each other, twist. “I don’t want people to die because I wouldn’t help them,” I said. I felt my eyes brim with tears. “But I’m selfish enough that I don’t want to go wherever they send me, trying to find dying people. I couldn’t stand the wear and tear of seeing disaster every day. I don’t want to leave home. I’ve been trying to imagine what it would be like, what they might have me do. And it scares me to death.”
“You want to own your own life,” Eric said.
“As much as anyone can.”
“Just when I think you’re very simple, you say something complex,” Eric said.
“Are you complaining?” I tried to smile, failed.
“No.”
A heavy girl with a big jaw came up and thrust an autograph book in front of Eric. “Could you please sign this?” she said. Eric gave her a blinding smile and scribbled on the blank page. “Thank you,” she said breathlessly, and went back to her table. Her friends, all women just old enough to be in the bar, were exclaiming at her courage, and she leaned forward, telling them all about her encounter with the vampire. As she finished, one of the human waitresses drifted up to their table and took another order for drinks. The staff here was well-trained.
“What was she thinking?” Eric asked me.
“Oh, she was very nervous and she thought you were lovely, but . . .” I struggled to put it into words. “Not handsome in a way that was very real to her, because she would never think she would actually get to have you. She’s very . . . she doesn’t think much of herself.”
I had one of those flashes of fantasy.
But none of that happened, of course. Eric forgot about the girl as soon as I’d finished speaking. I didn’t think it would work out like my fantasy, even if he did approach her. I felt a flash of disappointment that fairy tales didn’t come true. I wondered if my fairy great-grandfather had ever heard one of what we thought of as a fairy tale. Did fairy parents tell fairy children human tales? I was willing to bet they didn’t.
I felt a moment of disconnect, as if I were standing back from my own life and viewing it from afar. The vampires owed me money and favors for my services to them. The Weres had declared me a friend of the pack for my help during the just-completed war. I was pledged to Eric, which seemed to mean I was engaged or even married. My brother was a werepanther. My great-grandfather was a fairy. It took me a moment to pull myself back into my own skin. My life was too weird. I had that out-of-control feeling again, as if I were spinning too fast to stop.
“Don’t talk to the FBI people alone,” Eric was saying. “Call me if it’s at night. Call Bobby Burnham if they come in the day.”
“But he hates me!” I said, dragged back into reality and thus not too cautious. “Why would I call him?”
“What?”
“Bobby hates me,” I said. “He’d love it if the feds carted me off to some underground bunker in Nevada for the rest of my life.”
Eric’s face looked frozen. “He said this?”
“He didn’t have to. I can tell when someone thinks I’m slime.”
“I’ll have a talk with Bobby.”
“Eric, it’s not against the law for someone to dislike me,” I said, remembering how dangerous it could be to complain to a vampire.
He laughed. “Maybe I’ll make it against the law,” he said teasingly, his accent more apparent than usual. “If you can’t reach Bobby—and I am absolutely sure he will help you—you should call Mr. Cataliades, though he’s down in New Orleans.”
“He’s doing well?” I hadn’t seen or heard from the half-demon lawyer since the collapse of the vampire hotel in Rhodes.
Eric nodded. “Never better. He is now representing Felipe de Castro’s interests in Louisiana. He would help if you asked him. He’s quite fond of you.”
I stored that piece of information away to ponder. “Did his niece survive?” I asked. “Diantha?”
“Yes,” Eric said. “She was buried for twelve hours, and the rescuers knew she was there. But there were beams wedged over the place where she was trapped, and it took time to remove them. They finally dug her out.”
I was glad to hear Diantha was alive. “And the lawyer, Johan Glassport?” I asked. “He had a few bruises, Mr. Cataliades said.”
“He recovered fully. He collected his fee and then he vanished into the depths of Mexico.”
“Mexico’s gain is Mexico’s loss,” I said. I shrugged. “I guess it takes a lawyer to get your money when the hirer is dead. I never got mine. Maybe Sophie-Anne thought Glassport did more for her, or he had the wits to ask even though she’d lost her legs.”
“I didn’t know you weren’t paid.” Eric looked displeased all over again. “I’ll talk to Victor. If Glassport collected for his services to Sophie, you certainly should. Sophie left a large estate, and no children. Victor’s king owes you a debt. He’ll listen.”
“That would be great,” I said. I may have sounded a little too relieved.
Eric eyed me sharply. “You know,” he said, “if you need money, you have only to ask. I will not have you going without anything you need, and I know you enough to be sure you wouldn’t ask for money for something frivolous.”
He almost didn’t sound like that was such an admirable attribute. “I appreciate the thought,” I said, and I could hear my voice get all stiff. “I just want what’s due me.”
There was a long silence between us, though the bar was at its usual noise level around Eric’s table.
“Tell me the truth,” Eric said. “Is it possible you came here simply to spend time with me? You haven’t yet told me how angry you are with me that I tricked you over the knife. Apparently you’re not going to, at least not tonight. I haven’t yet discussed with you all my memories of the time we spent together when you were hiding me at your house. Do you know why I ended up so close to your home, running down that road in the freezing cold?”
His question was so unexpected that I was struck silent. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. But finally I said, “No, I don’t.”
“The curse contained within the witch, the curse that activated when Clancy killed her . . . it was that I would be close to my heart’s desire without ever realizing it. A terrible curse and one that Hallow must have constructed with great subtlety. We found it dog-eared in her spell book.”
There was nothing for me to say. I’d think about that, though.
It was the first time I’d come to Fangtasia simply to talk, without having been called there for some vampire reason. Blood bond or something much more natural? “I think . . . I just wanted some company,” I said. “No soul- shaking revelations.”
He smiled. “This is good.”
I didn’t know if it was or not.
“You know we’re not really married, right?” I said. I had to say something, as much as I wanted to forget the whole thing had ever happened. “I know vamps and humans can get married now, but that wasn’t a ceremony I recognize, nor does the State of Louisiana.”
“I know that if I hadn’t done it, you’d be sitting in a little room in Nevada right now, listening to Felipe de Castro while he does business with humans.”
I hate it when my suspicions are correct. “But I saved him,” I said, trying not to whine. “I saved his life, and he promised I had his friendship. Which means his protection, I thought.”
“He wants to protect you right by his side now that he knows what you can do. He wants the leverage having you would give him over me.”
“Some gratitude. I should have let Sigebert kill him.” I closed my eyes. “Dammit, I just can’t come out ahead.”
