“Yeah? So?”
“What do you mean So?” Men can be so obtuse sometimes. “He’s not a soldier under your command. This is family, not the army. And Alex doesn’t understand that you love him and want to protect him and that’s why you are all over him like white on rice. Tell him you like him. Tell him you admire what he can do. And back off and let him make mistakes. He’ll respect you more for it. Sheesh.” I went back to my research. Eli tucked his thumbs in his pockets and meandered up the stairs, I hoped to play nice-nice with his baby brother.
Before dark, Alex sent me an e-mail with an attachment, and stood over me with a half-proud, half-sheepish grin as I opened the document he’d sent. As I studied the file, he fidgeted, sitting down, standing up, roaming around and around the room. Without looking up, I said, “Stop. Light somewhere. Explain this to me.”
“It’s how Lucas Vazquez de Allyon is making some vamps sick when they to go Blood-Call for a date, without letting his Typhoid Mary out of his sight.”
I felt lighter, as if someone had just taken a lead overcoat off me. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Proof that Blood-Call has everything to do with the sick master vamps.”
I leaned back in my chair and said, “Okay. Shoot. Convince me.”
An hour later, I realized that the Kid had hacked into another government agency and found something in the CDC’s employee files that might help lead us to someone who could heal all the sick vamps in the nation—proof of what the plague really was, and how it had been developed—because it wasn’t something that had appeared naturally. Alex was grinning like a trained monkey, and I smiled back. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“So, do I rate a Big Mac?”
“Nope. The lady had to tell you to shower,” Eli said from the opening to the safe room. “But you did good, kid. Real good. I’m proud of you.” Eli turned back without waiting to see what effect his words had on Alex. The Kid glowed pink from his palms to his ear tips. I managed not to grin, which might have spoiled it for him, and nodded instead, my eyes on the screen. “What he said. Good work.”
“Okay. Okay, then.” Alex stood, bristling with energy, with purpose, with poorly concealed delight. “I’ll have a cup of coffee. You want one, Eli? Jane, you want tea?”
“Sure,” we both said at the same time. Eli tipped his head around the door just enough to see his brother go into the kitchen. When the Kid was gone, Eli tilted his head at me in thanks. And I realized that, maybe, we had just become a team. Turning away, I called a high-level parley at Katie’s.
*
Alex, showing his nerves by the way one knee jerked spasmodically, stood in front of a specially picked small group of vamps and humans. I stood over to the side, where I had a good view of every person in the group. Leo, who I wanted to stake on sight or curl up at his feet, sat front and center in a padded chair that looked like a throne. Katie, his heir, Grégoire, his second heir should Katie predecease him, Troll, Grégoire’s B-twins, Brandon and Brian, all the clan heads still alive after the battle, and a smattering of humans and servants sat or stood around the walls. The room was crowded, even with the silver cages removed and the furniture back in place, and over it all rode the half-muted tingle of power and the scent of Leo Pellissier, peppery parchment, still tainted with the faint, fermented hint of too much blood. It made me grind my teeth, and I had to breathe slowly to keep my heart rate from speeding and betraying my emotional state. The MOC didn’t look my way, to see if I was okay, or still hurt from his attack.
The room fell silent for long, awkward seconds and finally Leo turned his head and met my eyes, his own guileless and superior. Even though my brain said to ram a silver stake through his black heart, I still wanted to fulfill his wishes, the result of the dregs of the binding that still trapped me. I wondered fleetingly how bad it would be if I had no way to resist, if the binding was permanent, and not something that Beast and I could destroy eventually. I didn’t want to think about what a person would do or become if she had no will at all. Rather than do what I wanted most, I broke the master’s gaze and nodded to Alex.
He cleared his throat. “Hi. I’m Alex.” He wiped his sweating palms on his pants. “Okay. Well. Yeah. Okay.” He took a breath and launched into his spiel. “The disease is from a mutated strain of the Filoviridae ebola virus, one that can be safely carried by humans,” Alex said, opening with a bang. It was clear from Leo’s reaction that even old vamps knew of the Ebola virus. The MOC sat back in his chair slowly, as if putting distance between himself and Alex. The other vamps took a collective half step back.