*
Dinner was served at midnight. I had expended some calories—Doolittle’s healing made the body burn through food with wild abandon—and I was so ravenous, I could’ve eaten one of those mountain goats in the courtyard raw.
Sitting still while Desandra napped and the castle staff poured alcohol on the vampire blood, set it on fire, and then scrubbed it off the floor, diligently ignoring my questions such as “How did a vampire get into the castle?” and “What was it doing in the wall?” gave me a lot of time to think.
I started thinking about Curran and Lorelei, decided it would drive me nuts, and focused on the winged shapeshifters instead. I wished I had access to the Keep’s library. I wished I could call a couple of people and ask them if they’d ever heard of something like that. But I had no resources beyond what was in my head and what few books I’d brought with me. Fixating on lamassu would do me no good; there was no indication that lamassu were shapeshifters. When an investigation first began, you simply collected facts. I was still in the collecting-facts stage. Drawing conclusions at this point would cause me to select facts that supported my theories and ignore those that didn’t. That was a slippery slope at the end of which lay more dead bodies.
Magic had ways of spitting out new and bizarre things into the world, so just because I hadn’t heard of them didn’t mean these guys didn’t have a long and bloody history somewhere. Up until now, I would’ve questioned the existence of weredolphins as well, but having killed a few turned me into a believer. If a werewhale waddled into the castle, I wouldn’t blink an eye. I’d look for a harpoon, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
So suppose this was some odd scale-covered weirdo type of never-before-seen shapeshifters. Why wasn’t Hugh turning the castle upside down looking for them? Hibla struck me as smart and capable but also a bit inexperienced. That wasn’t a strike against her—it was unlikely that this castle had ever been attacked and she cared about keeping it safe, so much so that she’d swallowed her pride and come to me for help. Considering how everybody and their mother had been lamenting the fact that I was not a shapeshifter and, therefore, must be inferior, Hibla’s coming to me was nothing short of a miracle.
So she didn’t have the experience to deal with it, but Hugh had experience in spades. Why wasn’t he taking any action?
The better question was, did he engineer this whole thing? If this was some sort of elaborate setup, I couldn’t see what he had to gain by it, but I couldn’t mark him off the list of potential suspects either, just like I couldn’t cross out Jarek Kral, the Volkodavi, or the Belve Ravennati.
I would have loved to eliminate one suspect. Just one. It didn’t even matter which one. If I could drop one faction from the list, I would do a jig right there in front of everyone and weep for joy.
The cleaning staff left. Derek raised his head and sniffed the air.
If somebody ever hired us for another bodyguarding job, I’d fight tooth and claw to bring Derek with us. He smelled people coming before I ever heard them.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Isabella,” he said.
The matriarch of Belve Ravennati was coming to pay us a visit.
“I don’t want to talk to her!” Desandra jumped off the bed and took off for the bathroom.
Okay. I got up, and Derek and I blocked the doorway. Isabella Lovari strode down the stairs and toward us. A young dark-haired woman accompanied her.
They stopped before us.
“I’ve come to check on my grandchild.”
Someone must’ve told her about the vampire. “Desandra is safe. The babies are fine.”
“I will see for myself.”
“She doesn’t want to see you right now,” I said.
“I will have to insist,” Isabella said.
“Or you could choose to talk to her later at dinner,” I said.
Isabella narrowed her eyes and looked me over slowly. “For a human in the den of beasts, you have a lot of arrogance. What makes you think you’re safe?”
I’m sorry, I was a human? I had no idea. What a surprise. “What makes you think I’m not?” And what an awesome comeback that was. Wow, I showed her.
Isabella smiled, her eyes cold like two chunks of coal. “When an alpha stands in front of you, the proper response is respect and fear, you human idiot. Were you a shapeshifter, you would know this.”
Name-calling, huh.
Derek bared his teeth.
“If I cringed every time an alpha of another shapeshifter pack showed his teeth, I would be you.”
Isabella glared at me. The woman at her side tensed.
Did you like that? Here, have another one. “Where I come from, we don’t give up our daughters-in-law just because Jarek Kral snarls. But I understand you do things differently. If Kral ever decides to take away your lunch money, let me know and we’ll help you out.”
Isabella blinked. The dark-haired woman said something in Italian. Isabella’s stare gained a deadly edge. “This will help you not at all. You are being replaced, and you are so stupid, you don’t even realize it. When a shapeshifter loves a woman, he doesn’t let another woman hunt next to him, nor does he let her finish his kills. When Lennart throws you away, I will be waiting.”
She turned around and marched away, her younger escort in tow. I waited thirty seconds.
“Did this happen?”
Derek paused before answering. “Yes.”
“So he let Lorelei finish his kills?”
“Yes.”
“Does this mean something or is she just blowing smoke in my face?”
Derek sighed. “He shouldn’t have done it. It’s something wolves do. It’s not like offering food, but it’s close.”
My chest suddenly acquired a heavy rock. It rolled inside me, hurting.
“It can also be taken a different way,” Derek said. “Parents let kids finish their kills. Older brothers let younger kids do it . . .”
I looked at him.
“He shouldn’t have done it,” Derek said. “But he never does anything without a reason.”
“When I asked you if you knew something I didn’t, you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t volunteer information. I didn’t want you to worry.”
I wasn’t worried. When Curran got here, I intended to trip him, sit on him, and shake him until he explained this thing to me. So far, he’d let her stand naked next to him, he’d let her hunt with him, he’d let her finish his kills—whatever the fuck that meant—and in the past twenty-four hours he’d spent more time listening to her than he had speaking to me.
A cold thought squirmed through me. From a purely logical point of view, Lorelei would make a better Consort. She was a shapeshifter, she had ties to the largest shapeshifter pack in the United States, and her father wasn’t planning to exterminate the shapeshifters because they were becoming too powerful.
Logically it made sense, but none of that mattered, because the man who’d fallen asleep next to me last night loved me. I would bet my life on it. The way things were going, I just might have to.
Derek walked out into the hallway and stayed there.
“What are you doing?”
He nodded at the stairs. Curran jogged down, jumped, covering the last few steps, and headed straight for me, light on his toes, radiating that contained physical energy that pulled me like a magnet.
I scrutinized his face. He seemed on edge, his expression worn, the line of his mouth tired but firm. His eyes said that he was tired and annoyed, and if you got in his way now, he’d snap your neck without hesitation and keep going about his way.
I crossed my arms. “You—”
Curran gathered me to him and kissed me. It was a long, lingering kiss, made from fading exasperation, relief, and happiness. He smiled at me, those eyes so warm and welcoming. “I wanted to do this all day.”
Okay. Now I was officially bewildered. I waited to see if question marks would sprout all around me, but the air stayed clear.
He noticed the hole in the wall. “What the hell happened?”
“We redecorated.” I kept my voice level. “Where have you been?”
“The Belve and the Volkodavi wanted to discuss things, and I had to sit in as a witness.”
“For five hours?”
“More or less. We just finished.”
And Isabella must’ve come here right away to bug Desandra.
Curran dragged his hand over his face, as if hoping to wipe away fatigue. “They are trying to hammer out some sort of agreement to unite against Kral. I haven’t eaten since the hunt. I’m starving.”
“Did they succeed?”
“Hell no. Everybody was tired from the hunt and irritable as fuck. They bickered about inheriting the pass, and did their grandstanding, and accused each other of things. Radomil fell asleep. For a few minutes it looked like they might actually agree on something. Then the younger brother—Ignazio—decided it would be a grand idea to jump up and announce that when his nephew was born, at least he would be born smart like his father, so he should inherit the pass and not the other kid, who’s been fathered by a citrullo.”
“What’s a citrullo?”
“From what I gathered, it’s either a cucumber or a half-wit.” Curran shook his head. “Then the Volkodavi started yelling. The Belve yelled back. Radomil woke up and someone clued him in that he had been insulted but apparently not who’d done it, because Radomil went after Gerardo and called him parazeet and viridok.”
“Parasite and bastard,” I translated. Voron was Russian. I spoke it well enough, better now that I had someone in Atlanta to practice with, and I’d hung out enough with Ukrainians to pick up the language. Curses were the second thing you learned, right behind yes, no, help, stop, and where is the bathroom?
“Ahh.” Curran nodded. “That explains why Gerardo’s mother went furry.”
“So what happened?”
“Then I roared. Then everyone got insulted and declared that they wouldn’t stand for this and the meeting was over. Good too, because I’ve had it with them. I wouldn’t give these kids to either one of the packs. They don’t give a shit about them or Desandra. As they were leaving, I could hear them yelling at each other. After Gerardo called Radomil every curse under the sun, Radomil’s brother told him that smart men keep bitches in heat on a chain.”
I developed a sudden strong urge to punch both of them in the face.
“He is lucky that he said that to Gerardo. If he’d said it to me about you, that would’ve been it. He would never say anything else.”
Curran fell silent. I turned. Desandra stood in the doorway of the bathroom. Color drained from her face. “Vitaliy said that?”
Curran looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. “Yes.”
“What did Gerardo do?”
“He called him some name I didn’t catch.”
“But did he do anything?”
“No,” Curran said.
“I see,” she said quietly. “I don’t think I’ll be going to dinner today. My bitch chain isn’t long enough.”
“Desandra . . .” Curran said.
She raised her hand. “Don’t.” Her voice shook. She was about to snap.
I needed to talk to Curran. But Desandra was about to lose it. Abandon her or straighten this out? It would be a long conversation . . .
Desandra made a small strangled noise in her throat. Damn it. He was tired, we were both starving, and privacy was in short supply. I’d waited this long; I could wait until we were alone. I turned to Curran. “Why don’t you go without me? Make an appearance, snarl, and all that. I’ll be here.”
Curran looked at Desandra for a long moment. “I’ll be back.”
“Bring us some food,” I told him. “And I really need to talk to you when you come back.”
“Okay.” He kissed me and left the room.
Derek came inside and shut the door behind him.
Desandra sank on the bed, put her hands over her face, and began to cry.