“I’ll explain later.” She pushed the panel open and walked into the baroque chapel. “Come on. Radu is waiting.”
* * *
Ben sat in his room in Budapest, drinking a glass of blood-wine and staring at the icon he’d stolen from a human thief to give to a vampire one.
All’s fair in love and war.
And art theft. Ben was fine with that. Farkas was a well-known thief, and he’d left his house unprotected. He couldn’t be surprised that decades of privacy, layers of aliases, and dense Hungarian bureaucracy had not been enough to protect him.
Nope.
Something else was bugging him. It wasn’t only Tenzin’s odd reaction in Farkas’s chapel. It wasn’t the eclectic mix of deities in the worship space. It was the house itself.
Which vampire designed it? Was it a coincidence? Had Gergo Farkas happened to buy a house that had once belonged to a vampire? It was possible. He could have found the passages after he bought the property and decided the house had belonged to a criminal or a kinky aristocrat. It might even have been why he liked the mansion in the first place.
But that didn’t explain the mirrors.
The carefully placed mirrors were the thing that was bugging him. Paranoid human or cautious vampire?
I’ll explain later.
Tenzin said that a lot, but she didn’t always follow through. What had she been looking at in the chapel? What about the triptych had caught her eye when there were so many other, more valuable, pieces of art in the house?
Why had she been so quick to leave when this was their last job and she clearly didn’t want to cut ties with him?
Because once they were finished with this, the two of them were done. Going their separate ways.
Finished.
And she seemed totally fine with it.
Ben rose and walked to her room. Tenzin was hiding something, and he was going to find out what it was.
He knocked on the door.
Tenzin opened it, and her lips were pale.
Ben frowned. “Have you not been eating?”
She shrugged. “I forgot.”
“Tenzin—”
“I don’t get hungry like you do, Benjamin. It’s not the same for me.”
“When was the last time you drank anything fresh? There’s a pub two floors below this with donors.”
Her eyebrow went up. “Are you my mother?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Fine. Forget I said anything.”
“Okay.” She started to close the door, and he stopped it with his foot. It was so easy to fall into familiar bickering patterns with her, he’d almost forgotten why he came.
“I didn’t come to nag you about eating regularly.”
“Good.” She tried to close the door again, but he didn’t move. “Why did you come?”
To seduce you, strip off your clothes, and make you drink from my neck.
Nope. Bad idea. That was not why he was there.
He cleared his throat. “It’s later.”
“And?”
“There was something going on at the house earlier when we found the icon. You said you’d explain later.”
She frowned; then her eyes lit in awareness. “Ah. Yes. I have been reflecting on that.”
“Thinking instead of reacting?”
“Yes.” She raised a finger. “Exactly. Thinking instead of reacting. And I think…”
He waited for longer than he usually would. “Yes?”
“I think I’m not going to tell you after all.” She pursed her lips and nodded. “Yes.”
And just like that, she’d pissed him off again. “So there’s definitely something else going on? Something I’m not seeing?”
She nodded again. “Yes.”
“Possibly the thing about this job that was throwing you off to begin with?”
“Yes! That’s probably what it was. Good catch.”
“But you’re not going to tell me.”
“No.”
“Even though we’re partners.”
She pointed down the hall toward his room. “You have Radu’s icon, so we’re not partners anymore.”
Ben blinked in surprise and felt his heart give a quiet thunk.
“…we’re not partners anymore.”
“We’re not partners anymore.” He forced the words out. “Just like that?”
“That was what you wanted.” She closed her eyes. “You said, ‘This is a temporary thing, Tenzin.’ You were very clear.”
It was the fact that she seemed totally unperturbed by it that set him off. “I also said that you should go when I asked you to go, not before we were finished.”
“Ah.” She gave him a rueful smile. “I see.”
“What? You see what?” He leaned against the door to keep it open.
“You want me around, but you don’t want to be my partner. Not really my partner. You just want me to… hang around, waiting for you to decide what you want.”
It was exactly what he’d accused her of doing countless times. “Seems fair for you to have a turn,” he said sharply. “Besides, you’re the one withholding information.”
“It may seem fair, but it’s not. I never sent you away.”
“No, you just ran away instead of talking.”
“And then you ran away.” She spread her arms. “An eye for an eye. I’m here now. Do you want to talk about what happened in Puerto Rico? Or what happened in Penglai? Or why I guarantee neither of us has had sex since we went our separate ways?”
Ben felt cold and hot all at the same time. “I didn’t come here to talk about that.”
“Fine.” She tried to close the door but couldn’t because his foot was in the way. She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t make me, Benjamin.”
“I’m amnis resistant now, remember? And according to Zhang, I’m probably just as strong as you are.” He leaned closer. “You can’t make me do anything.”
She took his movement a step further and leaned into his space.
Ben’s body roared to life. His amnis leapt toward her. He could feel the air whisper in the space between them, and every cell in his body begged him to reach out.
Step closer. Consume her. Take everything. She is yours.
“That instinct you’re feeling right now? You think I don’t feel it too?” Her voice was low and quiet, barely over a murmur. “I have not let another being take my vein for over four thousand years. I have killed any who tried. My blood and my instincts are shouting at me that you are mine in every way, yet
