“I work for you,” I said, feeling a bit smug, “for a price.” I eased my elbows under me and lifted my body to a half-sitting, half-reclining angle. “I’m not your servant. In fact, because you’re paying me to do something I want to do anyway, it seems like you’re more the servant than I am.”
Leo laughed, real humor crinkling the skin at his eyes. “Pert. Rude.”
I acknowledged the accusations with a nod.
“In that case,” he said, “I am happy to oblige.” He studied me a moment longer. “I wish you to attend a soiree tomorrow night.” He held up a hand at the derision and denial that spurted up from inside me. “Most of the vampires in the city will be there. It will be a rare opportunity for you to see them all in one place. We seldom gather in such large numbers.”
I watched his face, and if he had ulterior motives in issuing the invitation, I couldn’t spot them. “I own exactly one little black dress. One.”
“I’m certain it will be fine,” he said without expression. “Wear your hair down. No one will notice the dress.”
I laughed, sputtering with surprise.
“George will pick you up at midnight.” He glanced at his bodyguard and blood-servant. “We’re late. I hear the car.”
George nodded and stepped to the front door. I heard the lock click and the door opened on well-oiled hinges. And Leo Pellissier and his henchman were gone, leaving behind the scent of pepper and almonds, anise and papyrus, ink made of leaves and berries, and the warm scent of his blood and mine intertwined.
There was still time to shift and let Beast roam the night, but for once, the animal in my soul was silent, quiescent. I lay on the couch in the silent house, half napping, taking a moment I seldom allowed myself, to relax. Near six a.m. I found the energy to pull myself from the couch and move into the bedroom. I stripped and soaked my party clothes in a few capfuls of Woolite while I showered, letting hot water scrub the scents and blood off of me.
I was spending a lot of time in the shower these days, but I had to rewash my hair to get the vamp blood out, combing the long length before braiding it into a single French braid. When I was clean, partially groomed for church in a few hours, still oddly relaxed, I wrapped up in the robe and checked the new outfit. Amazingly, all the vamp blood and my blood had soaked out. Pleased that I hadn’t thrown away good money, I left the clothes hanging, dripping in the shower stall, and crawled into bed. I lay there, hearing the echoing plink of water, studying my healed arm as my body relaxed into the mattress.
Leo Pellissier had healed me with vamp blood and saliva. Pretty icky in some regards. In others . . . ? One of the reasons I accepted this job, other than the fact that council-sanctioned vamp-hunting gigs were few and far between, was the half hope, half fear that one of the older vamps might recognize my scent and tell me that they had met my kind before. Leo, who had to be centuries old—older than Katie, if vamp hierarchy made any kind of age-dominant sense—had no idea what I was. As far as I could tell, he didn’t know that skinwalkers existed. But weres and elves . . . He indicated they both were real, existing somewhere.
I pulled the covers over me as the air conditioner came on with a low hum, blowing chilled air into the house. The sheets were softer than any I owned. Probably high-thread-count Egyptian cotton or something. I usually slept on polyester pulled over a lumpy old mattress, but I could get used to these. I made a fist again, feeling the pull of tendon and muscle. The healed flesh over the injury was pale and pinkish against my coppery skin. The young rogue had left slashes in the periphery of the wound, around my arm, like the tines of a bracelet. It was a wound like any wild animal with fangs might have left. Not unlike Beast might have left on the arm of someone she attacked.
Beast stirred. Not a vampire. She spat the thought, repulsed in the same way she would have been at the taste of rotten meat. Me and you. Us. More than skinwalker, more than u’tlun’ta. We are Beast. She fell silent, brooding. Not quite sure what Beast meant about us being more than a skinwalker—and Beast not being in the mood to enlighten me—I turned off the bedside light and tucked my arm under the covers.
Lying curled in bed, I let my mind wander through what I knew of myself, or guessed of myself, what Aggie had told me, what Leo had revealed, and what I had discovered online, letting my thoughts drift, knowing that, once I relaxed, seemingly unrelated facts often connected. The most important? I smiled in the dark to finally remember, to finally know, that I was definitely Cherokee. I was from a line of skinwalkers, with a father and grandmother who’d had eyes like mine. The memory proved that not all skinwalkers were evil, despite the legends and stories.