“I am sorry to intrude on your home, Mr. Glass—,” Rozhkov began.
Michael held up a hand. “Michael. Please.”
“Very well, Michael. Named for an angel; that is a lot to live up to, yes? I myself am named for a saint, and the father of the Russian alphabet. Our fathers expected much from us. I wonder if they were satisfied.” Rozhkov shifted slightly. “You may send your man away. I am no threat to you.”
“He’s not my man,” Michael said, and wondered exactly how Rozhkov meant that. Probably in the antique sense, as if Shane were some soldier in service to a feudal lord. “He lives here. Housemate.”
The other vampire shrugged, as if all these fine distinctions were too much for him to bother with. “It is no matter. I only meant that these matters were for our kind, not his.”
Shane was hovering near the doorway, openly staring; Michael gave him a frown, and Shane ignored it, lounging against the wall. If a vamp told him to go away, he was absolutely going to stay. It was just Shane’s basic nature.
“He’s fine,” Michael said. “What do you want?”
Rozhkov’s pale gold eyebrows twitched just a bit, surprised by what he probably perceived as rudeness; he composed himself almost instantly into an expression of patience. It was irritating. “I wish to meet the girl.”
Claire. They always wanted to meet Claire, sooner or later; for a quiet, somewhat shy girl, she tended to have rock-star status in vampire circles. That was probably because she had the cachet of being the first human to manage to survive working with her bipolar vampire boss, Myrnin, in ages—or that she had Amelie’s good favor. Rare for the Founder of Morganville to take such an interest in a human.
“You don’t have to ask my permission,” Michael said. He was genuinely grouchy now. “Claire lives here. I don’t own her.”
“Ah. I see we are misunderstanding one another. I do not mean that one.” Rozhkov dismissed Claire with a tiny wave of his hand. “I mean the one blood-bound to you.”
Eve? Michael sat back. So many ways to respond to that, none of them adequate to the rush of anxiety he felt. Vampires didn’t come asking about Eve. They were almost unanimously content to ignore her and hope she would go away. Claire was accepted by them as a valuable resource; Eve had been seen as an oddity when he’d begun to date her, a temporary thing of no real importance. But since he’d married her, all hell had broken loose. The humans didn’t trust her. Neither did the vampires.
So having a vampire show up specifically to meet her was . . . unsettling.
“Let’s get a few things straight. She’s not my girl,” Michael said. “She’s not blood-bound, whatever that means to you. She’s my wife, but that doesn’t mean I own her.”
“I have heard you are married,” Rozhkov said. He didn’t seem moved at all. “Blessed by the sacraments of the church and by our Founder. To no one’s pleasure but yours, it would seem. It will all end badly.”
Michael took a second to remember why he shouldn’t punch the man right in the superior, thin smile. “Why do you want Eve?”
“That is my business, and not yours, since you so plainly do not—as you put it—own her.”
Shane coughed. It sounded like asshole. No way to tell if Rozhkov caught it at all.
“Eve’s not here,” Michael said. “Sorry. Want to leave your number?”
He got that faint, superior smile again. “No, I do not,” the man said, and rose from his sitting position. “I will try again. Informative to meet you, Michael Glass.”
“Same here.”
It was not quite dangerous, the look they exchanged, but enough to run a shiver down Michael’s spine, like the lightest brush of death-cold fingers. He held the stare. However young he was—human age, and vampire—he knew coming from Amelie’s bloodline gave him power . . . perceived and real. He had some abilities he’d never tried to use. They were there, like boxes on a shelf he’d never opened. He opened one now, and felt a new, strange sensation slide chilly through his nerves. He felt his body shift balance, just a little, and suddenly he could sense Rozhkov’s essence, like a thin shimmering cloud around him. Blues and pale yellows.
Rozhkov was weak. Something was wrong with him. Badly wrong. It lasted only a moment, and then the vision faded.
One thing was certain: Michael didn’t want Eve anywhere near him.
“Thanks for coming,” Michael said. It was insincere, and he knew Rozhkov could hear it. Rozhkov gave him a tiny, strange shrug in response.
“It is nothing,” he said. “I only attempt politeness out of some minor respect for your sire.”