“Elyas never intended to show,” Ray said, getting worked up again. “He just wants me dead and conned that French guy into doing his dirty work!”
“Louis-Cesare. And you could have mentioned some of this earlier!” I pointed out.
“Yeah, I can’t imagine why I’d have trouble trusting the freak who decapitated me!”
“So what changed?”
“What changed is you told Louis-Cesare you want the rune. Well, you’re not going to get it from Elyas. He’s not going to give it up, and if it does its thing and makes him invincible, you can’t kill him. The only chance you got is to blackmail him. I can tell everyone what I saw if he don’t cough it up.”
“But you’d have to be alive for me to do that,” I said, seeing where this was going.
“Which I won’t be, once he gets his hands on me.”
I stared blankly at the trees. The leaves shook, the tops swaying in the freshening wind. The sky above was a troubled gray, dark clouds mounting, heralding another thunderstorm. It perfectly matched my mood.
On the one hand, if Ray was telling the truth and Elyas really had killed the fey, it opened up some interesting possibilities. He might be invulnerable, but his family and property weren’t. The fey could ruin him, making blackmail far from an empty threat. With a little luck, it might be possible to get the rune and Christine.
On the other hand, I had to convince Louis-Cesare to ignore Elyas’s offer and that wasn’t going to be easy. Christine was within his grasp; all he had to do was turn Ray in, and it was a sure thing. Blackmail, on the other hand, included risk: Ray might be lying and Elyas might dig in his heels, counting on the word of a Senate member to beat out that of a nightclub owner.
No. Louis-Cesare wasn’t going to take a chance like that. Not when he could walk upstairs and end this right now.
Get away, keep Ray alive and willing to talk. That was the plan. I glanced down at the deserted alley. The fire escape made getting out of here easy, except for one small problem. The rest of Ray was in a guest room somewhere, and I didn’t even know which one.
“If you’re lying to me to save your skin, I’ll find out,” I told him, dragging us back through the window. “And I’ll be ten times worse to you than Elyas.”
“Yeah. Like I could make this shit—”
Ray cut off midsentence because someone rapped on the bathroom door. I paused half in, half out of the window. “Dorina, it has been half an hour,” Louis-Cesare said. “Are you ready?”
Chapter Seventeen
Ray and I stared at each other. “Almost,” I said quickly. “Let me just . . . uh . . .”
I slithered the rest of the way through, set the duffel on the counter and started pawing through it. I had things in there that could kill a person fifty different ways, but my less lethal alternatives were few and far between. I’d been going into a vampire club, and not a lot works on them.
And that’s especially true for first-level masters. I rejected magical cuffs—he’d be out of them in five seconds—a stun spray—he probably wouldn’t even feel it—and a disorienting sphere, which I already knew was a waste of resources. I finally had to admit that I had nothing that could trap Louis-Cesare long enough to do any good.
“Dorina?”
“Coming!”
I started pulling on the dress, or trying to. But that top would have defeated a puzzle master. “Where are you?” I mouthed at Ray, who was watching me anxiously.
“You mean my body?” he mouthed back.
“Of course! Where is it?”
“In the tub.”
“What?”
“That old guy left me and never came back.”
Typical. Horatiu had probably forgotten he was there. “Get out the front door, fast.”
Small eyes popped. “By myself?”
“Yes! Go to the car.”
“What?”
“To. The. Car. I’ll stall him.”
I ran a comb through my hair, which was still wet, forming a sleek cap around my head. I tried again to sort out the straps, but it was hopeless. They were a twisted mess that made no logical sense.
“Dorina. Is there a problem?”
I threw open the door. “I can’t get the straps right,” I said.
Louis-Cesare stood there, his hand raised for another knock. His face was wearing that expression men get when a woman takes three times longer to get ready than she’d promised. It didn’t last long. Okay, I thought, watching blue eyes dilate black. Maybe the dress looked better than I thought.
“A little help?” I prompted.
He hesitated for a moment, but he finally stepped behind me. He made a few minor adjustments, the calluses on his fingertips catching slightly on the soft material. Miraculously, the dress fell into place, every shining strap lying perfectly flat against my skin.