Death's Mistress

I walked out into the hall, yawning. The stairs were basically kindling, with more missing than still in place, and the wallpaper hung in dispirited strips, a victim of the damp that had mostly receded. But the ceiling looked better than I remembered.

It was still possible to see all the way up to the attic, but I was having a hard time figuring out which opening Claire and I had used to get the mattress down. None of them looked large enough for a twin, much less her queen. Even better, no more rain appeared to be getting in.

I found Claire in the kitchen, wrestling with the ancient stove. Her hair was a limp mess around her flushed face, and her glasses were about to slide off her sweaty nose. The house has air-conditioning, but with the wards on full, it didn’t work any better than the lights. It had to be ninety degrees in there.

The kids were at the table. Aiden had spread the chess set out on his half and appeared to be attempting to dry it out. He had stripped the soldiers of their armor and laid it out in a line on a paper towel, and was now struggling to get a small ogre out of its damp clothes. The ogre wasn’t too happy, but without its weapons, it could do no more than shake tiny fists.

Stinky was at the other end of the table, sleeping. Or at least I thought so, until a pitiful groan erupted from the fuzzy lump. I walked over, trying to get a look at him, but he kept shielding his eyes.

“He’s been sick twice since he woke up,” Claire told me, looking worried. “And he won’t eat anything. I gave him some aspirin, but it didn’t seem to help. I was about to wake you and ask if you want me to call a healer.”

I pulled his head up and peeled the woven place mat off it. It left a checkerboard pattern on his cheek, which did nothing to hide the pallor and the under- eye bruising. I watched him for a moment, then went and got a dishrag and filled it with ice.

“Sit up,” I told him. I was rewarded by a slitted eye glaring at me from under a snarled mass of hair, but no horizontal movement.

“What are you doing?” Claire asked.

“He’s not sick.” I pulled him up again and slapped the compress over his eyes. He mewled with protest until the cold started to work. Then he groaned in appreciation and flopped his head back down.

“He’s hungover?” Claire asked, looking faintly appalled.

“Considering that he drained most of a bottle of your uncle’s home brew last night? I’d say it’s a safe bet.”

I squatted down beside his chair. “Hurts, doesn’t it?” I got a faint nod. “Are you going to stay out of my stash from now on?” A more vigorous nod. And then another groan. I decided he’d been punished enough.

“Have you seen my cell phone?” I asked Claire, staring at the empty recharger in my usual morning haze. I always envied the types who could roll out of bed and be bright-eyed and sharp within seconds. It took me a good hour, and that was with the help of large amounts of caffeine.

“No. Why?”

“Since it’ll be a few days before any backup can arrive from Faerie, I thought I’d call Mircea. Get some protection down here.”

Claire glanced up from the stove, brow furrowing. “What kind of protection?”

“The Senate’s ru

“You mean vampires.” Her voice was flat.

“It’s the Senate. What else?”

Her expression tipped over into a full- fledged frown. “I thought about what you said last night, about what Aiden would bring in ransom. I think the fewer people who know he’s here, the better.”

“I’m a little more concerned about the people who already know he’s here,” I said sardonically. “The house wards should stop the riffraff.”

“They won’t have to if nobody knows he’s here in the first place.”

“I’ll tell Mircea to be discreet.”

“I’d prefer to let fey deal with fey.”

“Olga’s boys are resistant to most magic, including the fey variety,” I told her, while rifling through the bread box. “And God knows they’re strong enough. But there’re only two of them, and they aren’t exactly deep thinkers. And whatever else I can say aboutsubrand, he’s not stupid.”

“Neither am I. And I know better than to trust a vampire!” I couldn’t blame her for being wary. Claire had been kidnapped by Vlad on his recent rampage. She had every reason to mistrust the breed.

“They’re not all the same,” I admitted uncomfortably. Louis-Cesare, for example, seemed determined to mess with my head, constantly challenging my preconceptions about what a vampire was and how one behaved. It was only one of many ways the guy was a pain in the ass.

“You can say that when your job is killing them?” Claire demanded.

“My job is hunting revenants—” She looked confused. “Vampires who had something go wrong with the Change.”

“Wouldn’t they just”—she waved a spatula—“stay dead, then?”

“Most do. But once in a while one will survive physically, but mentally… Let’s just say he’s not all there. And a revenant will attack anything—human or vampire—that gets in his way. And since he’s insane, there’s no reasoning with him. He has to be put down.”

“And you’ve never killed any vampires other than these revenants?” she asked, skeptically.

“I take commissions occasionally to hunt down vamps who have violated Senate law in some way. But I don’t go around killing random vampires.” I wouldn’t have lasted long if I had, no matter who daddy was.

“I don’t see much difference,” Claire said, scowling.

I thought about Mircea’s expression if he knew he’d just been lumped together with Vleck and a bunch of slavering beasts with little more brains than an animal. “You probably shouldn’t mention that view around any vamps you meet,” I said drily.

“I’m not going to be meeting any.” It sounded final.

“You ought to reconsider,” I told her seriously. “It’s easy to distrust something that views you as food, but right now—”

“I don’t want those things near my son, okay? I’m sick of guards I can’t trust!”

“They’ll be master-level vampires on loan from the Senate. They’re not going to do any snacking.”

“I know they’re not, because they’re not going to be here.” She saw my expression and sighed. “Think about it, Dory. What could they have done last night, other than get carved to pieces?”

“I think you might be surprised.”

“Well, I don’t. I’ve seen what a fey warrior can do.”

“And I’ve seen a master vampire in action.”

She shot me an exasperated look. “Ifsubrand could get through the wards, he’d have done it, rather than resort to creating those things.”

“Which he could do again.”

“He knows that I can defeat them now. It would be a waste of time.”

“And the next thing he comes up with?”

“He’s not going to be coming up with anything today,” she said firmly.

You hope, I didn’t say. Because it would have been a waste of time. Claire was as stubborn as they came when she was convinced she was right, which was frequently. It didn’t help that she usually was. I just hoped this wasn’t going to be the exception that proved the rule.

I gave up on the phone and started looking for a mug instead. There weren’t any in the usual spots—scattered around the table, littering the counters or piled in the dishwasher someone had installed back when olive green appliances were all the rage. It didn’t actually work, but sometimes people stuck things in there anyway. But not this time.

“What are you doing?” Claire asked, watching me.

“Trying to find the mugs. They’ve all disappeared.”

She rolled her eyes and opened a cabinet, and there they were—several rows of gleaming white cups, all perfectly aligned. She’d even gotten the stains out. Must be fey magic, I decided, pouring my morning brew.

I took the coffee and picked my way up the stairs to my room. I found it suspiciously clear of ice, snow or even water. I kicked a heel against the old floorboards, and they seemed solid enough. There was some staining, but they were dry.