“So, that’s when you saw Curly?”
“No, that’s when I almost got scared to death. The Circle broke a hole in the roof and sent some of their boys down on ropes, only I didn’t know that, right? So there I am, freaked out, mud everywhere, including in my eyes, and there’s this mist of water in the air, making everything sort of foggy. And then one of those assholes starts running at me, and he hadda helmet with a searchlight on it, and looked like some kind of one-eyed monster—” He paused. “You know, a real one-eyed monster, not—”
“I get it.”
“Anyway, that’s when I saw Curly.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He was with one of his boys, some young, skinny guy, and they were booking it across the other side of the theatre. I called out, and I know that bastard saw me, but he just kept going. The guard shot one of those Spidey webs at the hole in the roof and they bounced.”
I thought of the young guard who had been Dorina’s ride. Maybe she’d managed to get him out, and Curly, too? But if so, where were they now?
“Beats me,” Ray said, when I asked. “We used to call him Squirrelly Curly, ’cause he runs at the first sign of trouble. He had bolt-holes everywhere, back in the day. That’s why he wanted out of the business. He don’t have the nerves for smuggling.”
“It looked like he was still in the game to me.”
“Where his precious theatre was concerned, sure. Nothing was too good for that thing. Damn, if he’s alive, I bet he’s pissed—”
“Enough to rat out the people he was working with?”
Ray stopped. “Why?”
“Something Dorina overheard.”
He scowled. “You know it’s weird when you talk about yourself in the third person, right? It creeps me out.”
“It doesn’t do a lot for me, either.”
“Then why not stop it?”
“I can’t stop it.”
“Why not?”
“Because she isn’t me!”
“Creep factor intensifying.”
“Would you listen? She was roaming around the theatre’s guts while we were upstairs, and she overheard—”
“Roaming around? She can roam around now? Like what? A ghost?”
“Not exactly—”
“When did this start?”
“Just recently—”
“I know it’s just recently, or I’d know about it!” He glanced around the room, and he was looking genuinely spooked. “Is she here now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know?” He got up.
I pushed him back down.
“Just listen.”
“You can’t spring something like that on a guy and then say, ‘Just listen.’ Like it’s nothing. Is she gonna keep doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Just . . . adding more powers?”
“I don’t know—”
“Well, what do you know?”
“That you’re getting on my last nerve!”
We sat there, glaring at each other for a moment, before Ray let out a breath he didn’t need. “All right. I’m listening. What?”
I told him.
“Okay, no.” He got up and headed for the door.
I caught him halfway.
“Look, Ray—”
“No, you look! Geminus’ group was straight-up savage, okay? Everybody knew it; nobody messed with ’em. Until he died. And the damned Senate got involved and cleaned house! They killed every one of his boys who were even suspected of smuggling—”
“I know that.”
“—so if anyone decided to go right back to what just got half their family butchered? They are not the kind of guys you wanna mess with!”
“I don’t want to mess with them. I just want to know who they’re working for. If they’re in it for themselves, smuggling some refugees or fey wine or whatever, then fine—”
“That’s not what they’re smuggling. That response last night? You don’t get that over wine!”
“That’s my point, Ray. If they’re working with Aeslinn, they could be bringing in some very bad stuff for the war.”
“Then why not just tell the Senate? Have them deal with this?”
“Ray, I’m on the Senate. But if I’m going to talk them into diverting resources in the middle of a war, I need to have some evidence to offer. All I have right now is something Dorina overheard, which made it sound like first the albino and then a mage had taken over control of Geminus’ family. And you know that’s impossible.”
Ray shook his head. “It’s not impossible. In the trenches, you make alliances where you have to.”
“Yeah, only I don’t think it works like that for senators. But we know Geminus was working with Aeslinn before he died, and a bunch of dark mages. So, if the mage is Aeslinn’s contact—”
“Then the vamps wouldn’t be working for a human, but for a king of the fey.”
I nodded. “And their ally in the war.”
Ray frowned. “So you need Curly to find out if you’re right.”
“He was working with them. He has to know something.”
Ray sighed. “Maybe. Or maybe he just grabbed the first offer he got after Geminus bit the big one. People like Curly and me, we team up with mages or weres or whoever the hell is gonna help us survive.”
“Even a dhampir?”
“That’s different. You and me, we got a bond.”
I started to dispute him, but there was suddenly something in his face, something I’d probably worn on my own, more than once. Ray looked like a guy who was bracing to get hit, with words if not with fists, because he’d just risked something. And every time he did that, every time he trusted anybody, he paid for it.
I’d spent a lifetime like that, and yet, like Ray, I always seemed to come back for more. Always seemed to hold out hope for something . . . I wasn’t even sure what. Acceptance? A place I belonged? Some kind of certainty in an uncertain world, that somebody had my back, and would always have it?
So I didn’t say anything.
Except to ask if something was wrong, because I’m nosy like that.
Ray sat on the edge of the desk. His dark hair flopped in his face, and his blue eyes were serious. More so than I could remember seeing them.
“My boys . . . they’re not doing so good,” he told me. “When Cheung cut me loose, he didn’t bother to think, or didn’t care, that he was doing it to them, too. And then the club burnt down, and most of our stuff went with it. I keep telling them that we got a new place, that you’re our master now, but they don’t believe it. They tell me, ‘What’s a senator want with us?’ They think you’re gonna kick us out, and then they don’t know . . .”
He didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t have to. Somebody like Ray needed a protector. He was going to have to cut a deal with someone, and soon, and he would not be negotiating from a position of strength. He and his boys were likely in for a very tough time, if they found any place at all. And if they didn’t— Well, in some ways, the vamp world was like the human.
It wasn’t kind to those of us on our own.
I didn’t know how this thing between Dorina and me was going to play out, and it seemed insane to take on any more responsibilities until I did. But if the worst happened, and if Ray and company had been acknowledged by me, then somebody in the family would take care of them. They’d have to.
We Basarabs stick together.
“Yeah,” I told him, after a moment.
Ray looked up. He’d been contemplating his naval, with a crease in his forehead, and his eyes shadowed with worry. He looked like he’d forgotten what we’d been talking about.
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah. I guess we have a bond.”
Chapter Thirty-one
There was a ceremony. There’s always a ceremony with vamps. Although, I don’t think it normally involves a bunch of guys in towels and dripping hair, some half-shaved, going down on one knee to kiss my nonexistent ring.
They seemed a lot happier, though, by the time I finally pushed the last squashy ass out of my bedroom window to go look for Curly. And then headed downstairs, wearing Ray’s worried frown, because I now had to find lodging for fifteen—sixteen, counting him—kind of pathetic vampires, and had to do it soon. Which was why I was halfway to the porch before I looked up.
And saw Louis-Cesare standing just outside the door.