The door to the hall burst its hinges and Louis-Cesare stood there, pale and deadly, with eyes like liquid mercury. Someone grabbed me around the waist. It wasn’t Louis-Cesare, because he had moved like quicksilver, getting an arm around the Fey’s injured throat in a stranglehold. Caedmon didn’t appear to have noticed. His eyes were on me, and an odd little smile played about his lips. “If you wanted it rough, my dear, you had only to say.”
“Let me go,” I ordered Geoffrey. My only answer was having the coverlet, which he’d snatched from the floor, thrown over me. “I mean it! Put me down this minute!” I felt myself being carried into the hallway, but the damned blood loss ensured that there was little I could do about it. “Goddamnit, when I get my strength back—” I heard what sounded like a war starting up behind me, but I couldn’t see anything for the damned sheet. I decided on a different tactic. “If you let them kill each other, Radu will stake you!”
“The master’s son is quite able to take care of himself. And I very much doubt he will kill an honored guest. Sadly, none of us are permitted to do so.” The tone was Geoffrey’s usual imperturbable one. But he let my head bounce off a half-dozen walls, vase-topped plinths and wall fixtures on the way to wherever we were going.
Chapter Seventeen
“You should have eaten your dinner, Dory,” Radu reproached me. “Chef was quite upset. That is a very complex spell, you know, and he thought you didn’t like it. And that was on top of The Pear Incident.” His tone gave it capitals. “He’ll sulk for a week. You’ll be lucky to get a peanut butter sandwich tomorrow.”
“That actually sounds pretty good.” At least I wouldn’t have to hunt it down before I could eat it.
Whatever Radu was about to say was cut off by a loud crash and a curse from above our heads. The sounds of carnage had been going on for the last five minutes. I thought it a shame—if they trashed the place, Radu would probably redecorate. I glanced around, fearful for the tasteful original touches that remained. I wasn’t scoping a way out, but Geoffrey tensed from his position by the door. He’d given me the velvet bedspread, which I’d draped togalike around me, but he obviously wasn’t going to let me rejoin the fun.
“Since you brought up food—,” I began. If I was trapped in the living room with Radu, I figured I might as well eat something. I needed to get my strength back. Among other things, I had a butler to beat up.
Radu sighed. “Sit,” he commanded. “I’ll have something brought. If Chef hears that you were prowling around his space tomorrow, I shudder to think of the consequences.”
“If he’s one of Mircea’s stable, surely you can order him to—”
“Of course he isn’t,” Radu said, tugging on an old-fashioned bellpull on the far side of the fireplace. “Have you ever heard of a vampire chef?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Nor will you. Death, you know,” he said archly, as a mirror shattered somewhere above. “Ruins the taste buds.”
“But you eat, occasionally anyway, and Mircea—”
“I’m second level, Dory, and your father is a step above me. With power comes certain advantages, but do you really think the world’s handful of upper-level masters have nothing better to do than braise a leg of lamb? That’s what we were supposed to have tomorrow, by the way, with homegrown rosemary, but who knows what we’ll get now. Chef threw it out after The Pear Incident.”
I waited while a servant came in and received instructions. Somewhere in the distance, it sounded like an entire china cabinet had been pushed down a flight of stairs. After the man left, I glanced at Radu. “What, exactly, is Louis-Cesare’s problem?”
“Which one?” I raised an eyebrow; apparently Radu hadn’t forgiven his son for the scene at dinner. Suddenly, a speculative gleam lit his eyes. It made me nervous. “He tends to be very protective of women,” he said thoughtfully. “You’re a woman, Dory.”
“Thank you for pointing that out. But I didn’t think dhampirs qualified.”
The ceiling shook, so hard that some of the plaster cracked and fell down in small chunks. Radu smirked. “It appears you’ve been upgraded.” I moved my chair slightly, to avoid being directly beneath the large, swaying chandelier, and looked up to see him regarding me with that same disquieting look. “Perhaps he’ll finally stop blaming himself over that girl,” he mused.
I knew I’d regret it, but I asked anyway. “What girl?”
“Christine, the perpetually tragic.” Radu threw a new log on the embers, apparently solely for the chance to stab viciously at it with a poker. He saw my expression. “You haven’t heard the tale?”
“Should I have?”
“Not really. It’s long and extremely depressing. Suffice it to say that, centuries ago, Louis-Cesare brought her over in order to save her life. She had been tortured because of him and he felt responsible. But he never stopped to consider that she was an ardent Catholic, and moreover one who believed the old stories about us. She thought the change had damned her, and informed him once she rose that she would have preferred a true death.”