“Naw, keep it,” he said.
“Damn. The one shirt I can’t seem to get rid of,” he said. I leaned into his shoulder and giggled. The shirt had stopped smelling like Henry and smelled like all Ben, which was fine with me.
Ben, Cormac, and I piled out of the car and waved good-bye.
Finally we could get back to our rooms, I could have a long, hot soak in the tub and work all the knots and cramps out of my injured hip and leg. I didn’t even want to know what color the bruises had turned.
In exhausted silence we rode the elevator up to our floor. We’d have to talk about the last couple of days sometime—debrief from our debriefing. But we all seemed to agree that could wait until after a good scrubbing and a long nap.
The elevator doors opened, and we exited and turned toward our rooms. At the far end of the hallway, a figure stood and turned to face us. He looked like he’d been waiting.
Roman wore his long overcoat, and the understated shirt and tailored slacks he always did. His hands were in his pockets, and he regarded us, frowning. The lines in his face seemed set in stone. The hall seemed too bright for him; I’d always seen him in shadows. His face looked even more severe in the light.
Ben leaned forward, baring his teeth, clenching his hands like claws. Cormac reached into his pocket, presumably for his cross, stake, or both. I nearly jumped over Ben to get at Roman. I wanted my paws around his throat. His skin would feel so soft and buttery under my claws …
And then we froze, because he hadn’t reacted. He wasn’t afraid of us. He could stop us before we did anything. Maybe one of us could get him while the other two distracted him. And then what? Vampire smackdown in the middle of the hotel? How would we clean that up? So we all just stood there.
“May we talk?” Roman said. As if this was just a chance meeting among friends.
“I think I’d rather we didn’t,” I said.
Roman arced a brow.
“What do you want?” Cormac said. His jaw was set, angry—he held a stake tucked back against his arm; he wasn’t even trying to hide it, and Roman didn’t seem at all concerned about standing before the hunter.
“The Dragon’s Pearl. Where is it?” Roman asked.
“Anastasia has it,” I said, frozen, unblinking.
“And where is she?”
Slowly I shook my head. “I have no idea.”
“No idea at all?”
“None,” I said, smiling a little because it felt like a victory.
Roman pursed his lips, all the anger he was likely to show. “You have an opportunity to walk away,” he said. “Stop these games, these quests of yours. Stop getting involved, and I’ll let you alone. You’ll never see me or mine again. The war will be over for you. Here and now, we’ll call a truce.”
Wasn’t that exactly what I kept saying I wanted? Just walk away, stay in Denver, stay safe, look after my own little world. Think about starting a family. Anastasia had left me a very large mantle—eight hundred years of fighting this man who stood before me. But I didn’t have to take it on. I couldn’t fight Roman. We both knew that.
But if not me, then who?
“You wouldn’t be asking for a truce if you weren’t worried about me, at least a little,” I said, pulling out all the alpha attitude I’d learned over the last few years. Stand tall, stare hard, and show a little bit of fang.
He bowed his head, hiding a smile. Normally, looking away from my stare would have meant that he was conceding a point—recognizing my strength, bowing out of a challenge. But with him, I couldn’t be sure that interpretation was the right one. Even staring at him, I wasn’t meeting his gaze—I hadn’t made a real challenge. I got the feeling he was laughing at me.
“I’m just trying to save myself the trouble of dealing with a nuisance,” he said. “You’re a nuisance, Ms. Norville. Nothing more.”
You have been battling demons for a long time now, and holding your own among gods.
“Then you obviously have nothing to worry about,” I said.
“You wolves are slaves. You’ve always been slaves. In the end, you’ll see that you’re no different.”
“Thank you for the history lesson,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
Behind us, a door opened. Next to me, Ben flinched, turning and snarling at the new threat. Cormac shifted to try to look at the door while keeping Roman in view.
A few doors down, an older Hispanic woman, her graying hair braided behind her, leaned out, squinting into the light. She held a blue terry-cloth bathrobe closed at her throat.
Closing his coat around him, Roman glanced over us one last time, then strode to the doorway at the end of the hall, leading to the emergency stairs. He went through, and the door thudded closed behind him.
I smiled an apology to the woman, who ducked back into her room, shaking her head, muttering.
Shivering, I squeezed shut my eyes and hugged myself. I’d been holding myself up by sheer force of will, and now I turned into a puddle of melted nerves. Ben put a hand on my arm and drew me into an embrace, which I slumped into. Cormac was staring at the door, after Roman. He still held the stake ready.
“Why doesn’t he just kill us all?” Cormac muttered finally.
For the same reason we couldn’t stake him in the middle of a hotel hallway, I was guessing. Roman wasn’t used to stepping into the light.
We went back to our rooms long enough to pack and clear out, then checked out of the hotel. We were more than happy to pay for the night we would not be spending there, just for the chance to leave.
* * *
WE HAD to track down the car we’d left
