Лорел Гамильтон - Obsidian Butterfly

I shook my head, and the weight of the hair made it awkward. "I am so out of here," and I started to reach out to shred the dream.

"Wait, please, ma petite. Truly, I have a warning for you." He looked up as if seeing the mirror as a sort of prison. "This is to let you know that I will not touch you. I come only to talk."

"Then talk."

"Was it the Master of Albuquerque who harmed you?"

It seemed an odd question. "No, Itzpapalotl didn't hurt me."

He winced at her name. "Do not use her name aloud within this dream."

"Okay, but she didn't hurt me."

"But you have seen her?" he asked.

"Yes."

He looked puzzled, and he lifted a white hat and slapped it against his leg like it was a habitual gesture, though I'd never seen him do it before. But then I'd only seen him in clothes like this once before, and we'd been fighting for our lives, so there really hadn't been time to notice the small stuff.

"Albuquerque is taboo. The high council has declared the city off limits to all vampires and their minions."

"Why?"

"Because the Master of the City has slain every vampire or minion that has entered her city in the last fifty years."

I stared at him. "You're joking."

"No, ma petite, I do not joke." He looked worried, no, scared.

"She didn't try anything hostile, Jean-Claude, honest."

"Then there was a reason for it. Were the police with you?"

"No."

He shook his head, slapping the hat against his leg again. "Then she wants something from you."

"What could she want from me?"

"I do not know." He slapped the hat against his leg again and stared out at me through the glass wall.

"Has she really killed any vampire that just happened to be passing through?"

"Oui."

"Why hasn't the council sent someone to kick her ass?"

He looked down, then up, and the fear was in his eyes again. "The Council fears her, I believe."

Having met three of the council members personally, that raised my eyebrows as far as they would go. "Why? I mean I know she's powerful, but she's not that powerful."

"I do not know, ma petite, but I do know they decreed her territory taboo, rather than fight her."

That was just plain scary. "It would have been nice to know that before I got here."

"I know you value your privacy, ma petite. I have not contacted you in all these long months. I have respected your decision, but it is not merely our romance, or lack of it, that is important between us. You are my human servant whether you will or no. It means that you cannot simply enter another vampire's territory without some diplomacy."

"I'm here on police business. I thought I could enter anyone's territory as long as it was police business. I'm here as Anita Blake, preternatural expert, not as your human servant."

"Normally, that is true, but the Master whose lands you are in does not obey council decrees. She is a law unto herself."

"What does that mean for me here and now?"

"Perhaps she fears human law. Perhaps she will not harm you for fear of the humans destroying her. Your authorities can be very effective at times. Or she simply wants something from you. You've met her. What do you think?" he said.

It came to my lips before I thought about it. "Power, she's attracted to power."

"You are a necromancer."

I shook my head, and again the hairpieces made it awkward. I closed my eyes in the dream, and when I opened them, my hair just hung around my shoulders like normal. "The hair was heavy."

"It could be," he said, "I am happy that you left the dress. I cannot tell you how long I have wished to see you in something like it."

"Don't push it, Jean-Claude."

"My apologies," and he did a sweeping bow, using the hat in the gesture, so that it swept across his chest.

"I think it's more than the necromancy. She figured out that I was part of a triumvirate the first moment she met me. I felt her sift through the three of us, like unwinding a string. She knew. I think that's what she wants. She wants to figure out how it works."

"Could she repeat it?" he asked.

"She's got a human servant and jaguars are her animal to call. Theoretically, I guess she could, though can you make it a three-way when you've already got marks on a human, and no animal?"

"If the marks are recent, perhaps."

"No, not recent. They've been a couple a long time."

"Then no, her human's marks will be too entrenched to stretch for a third."

"So she may be interested in me for a power she can't have? If she finds out that I can't be of help to her?" I said.

"It would perhaps be best if she did not learn that, ma petite."

"You think she'd kill me."

"She has killed all that crossed her path for half a century. I do not see why she should change her ways now."

I was standing very close to the mirror now. Close enough that I could see the gold buttons on his jacket, and the rise and fall of his chest as he drew breath. This was the closest I'd been to him in months. It was just a dream, but we both knew it wasn't just a dream. He'd put the mirror barrier between us because once we'd used our dreams to enter each other's fantasies. He'd come like a demon lover in my dreams, in my sleep. We'd done the real thing, too, but the dreams had been sweet, sometimes a prelude to the real thing, sometimes an end in themselves.

The glass grew thinner, as if the glass were wearing away. It was like a thin pane of spun sugar. He touched fingertips to it, and the glass moved like clear plastic, giving at his touch.

My fingertips touched his, and the thin barrier vanished. Our fingers touched, and it was startling, electric. His fingers slid over mine, entwining, our palms touching, and even that one chaste touch sent my breath racing.

I stepped back but didn't let go of his hand, so the movement drew him out of the mirror. He stepped out of the golden frame and was suddenly standing in front of me, our hands still raised in front of us. I could feel his heart beating through his palm, feel the rise and pulse of his body through my hand as if all of him were contained in that one pale hand where it lay pressed against mine.

He leaned down towards me, as if to kiss me, and I started to pull away, afraid, but the dream shattered, and I was suddenly awake, staring up at the hospital ceiling. A nurse was in the room, checking my vitals. She'd woken me. I wasn't sure whether I was glad or sad.

The marks had been open for less than a week, and Jean-Claude was already pushing me. Okay, okay, I needed the warning, but … Oh, hell. My teacher, Marianne, had told me that I couldn't just ignore the boys, that that would be dangerous. I thought she meant ignoring the power that bound us, but maybe she meant more than that. I was Jean-Claude's human servant, and that made things complicated when I traveled. Each vampire's territory was like a foreign country. Sometimes you had diplomatic treaties between them. Sometimes you didn't. Occasionally, you just had a couple of master vamps that were enemies pure and simple, so if you belonged to one, you stayed the hell out of the other one's lands. By refusing to contact Jean-Claude, I could screw up, get myself killed or held hostage. But I'd thought I was safe as long as I was on police business or animating zombies. That was work. It had nothing to do with Jean-Claude and vampire politics. But I could always be wrong, like now.

Why, you may ask, did I believe Jean-Claude and his warning? Because it gained him nothing to lie about it. I'd also felt his fear. One of the things about the marks, you could usually tell what the other person was feeling. Sometimes that bugged me. Sometimes it was helpful.

The nurse shoved a thermometer with a little plastic sheath on it under my tongue. She took my pulse while we waited for the thermometer to beep. What really bugged me about the dream was how attracted to him I was. When I had the marks closed off, I'd have never touched him in the dream. Of course, I hadn't let him enter my dreams when I had the marks blocked off. With the barriers up, I'd policed my dreams, kept him and Richard out. I could still keep them out, but it took more work to do it. I was out of practice. I was going to have to get back into practice, fast.