Ilona Andrews - Magic Rises

“I’m with you,” she said.

We reached my door. I waited until Andrea opened hers across the hall and went inside, and then I stepped into our room and shut the door behind me.

A sizable room, as far as bedrooms went, with tapestries and rugs on the stone walls. An open door offered access to the bathroom on the left. A large wooden poster canopy bed waited in the center, complete with silk pillows and gauzy purple curtains. It looked like something out of the historical romances Andrea liked to read.

Curran came out of the bathroom.

I nodded at the bed. “Someone robbed an ancient music video.”

“I know. It creaks like a sonovabitch, too.”

“Great. If we decide to make love, we might as well just get down to it in the hallway. Half of the castle will know about it anyway.”

Curran closed the distance between us. His voice was a quiet whisper in my ear. “There are no peepholes that I can see, but someone is listening to us. I heard him breathing through the wall.”

So we were trapped in this stone cage, with a pack of unstable shapeshifters, trying to protect a woman in need of urgent psychological help, and spies were listening to our every breath.

I put my arms around Curran and leaned my head against his shoulder. “Have I ever told you how much I like the Keep?”

“No.”

“I love it.”

He grinned. “Even the stairs?”

“Especially the stairs.” The stairs separated our top floor from everybody else, and the walls were soundproof.

He kissed me. His lips sealed my mouth and the world stopped for a long moment. When we came up for air, I didn’t care if anybody was listening to us. Little golden sparks danced in Curran’s eyes. He didn’t care either.

“Do we have time?” he asked.

I looked at the clock. Twenty before ten. “No. We’ll be late.”

“Tonight, then.”

I grinned at him. “It’s a date.”

Guard Desandra, get the panacea, go home. A simple plan. All we had to do was get through it.

The dinner took place in a colossal great hall, and I walked into it with my hand on Curran’s arm. The Beast Lord wore a black suit and a gray shirt. Curran always stopped me in my tracks, whether he wore jeans and a T-shirt, sweatpants, or nothing at all, but this was new. Custom-cut, the suit flattered him while allowing for freedom of movement, and if he had to change shape, the weak seams ensured that the suit would come apart with minimal effort.

In all of our time together I had seen him in a formal suit exactly twice, including today. Curran could be described in many ways: dangerous, powerful . . . insufferable. “Elegant” usually wasn’t one of the adjectives used, and as he walked next to me, I wished I had a camera so I could commemorate the moment. And then blackmail him with it.

He shrugged again.

“You keep doing it, the suit will fall apart.”

“I should’ve worn jeans.”

“Then I’d look ridiculous next to you.” I should’ve worn jeans, too.

“Baby, you never look ridiculous.”

“Smart man,” Aunt B volunteered behind us.

I wore a black dress. Like Curran’s suit, it was custom-made for me by the Pack’s tailors specifically for the trip. The elastic fabric hugged me like a glove, giving a deceiving impression that it was constraining. The artfully draped skirt fell in straight lines, hiding the fact that it opened enough to let me kick an attacker taller than me in the head, and the diagonal strap over my right shoulder ensured that the dress wouldn’t fall off if I had to move fast. The dress also had to be doing wonders for my butt, because Curran had managed to run his hand down my back twice since we left our rooms.

But even the best dress offered no way to hide Slayer, so I didn’t bother. The dress came with a built-in fabric sheath, lined with leather, and my sword rested securely against my back. I’d left my hair braided. Plain black shoes with a low heel fit my feet like slippers. I would’ve felt better in my boots, but boots didn’t go with the dress. Even I had standards.

I did have to surrender my knives, but I wore a bracelet on each wrist and a long necklace, all made of braided silver. They looked like strips of chain mail and weighed as much. Curran insisted on my new fancy jewelry. Given that we were trapped in a castle filled with hostile shapeshifters I didn’t fight him on it.

Behind us Desandra walked in, sandwiched between Barabas and Derek. Aunt B, Mahon, and George followed, then Andrea and Raphael. Raphael was a picture of urbane elegance in black, while Andrea wore a deep rust-red. It looked like blood and she was a knockout.

Doolittle declined to go to dinner and remained behind in his quarters, and I asked Eduardo and Keira to stay with him as well. This place was making me paranoid. They locked themselves in and barred the door before we left. Hopefully Keira wouldn’t decide to explore her buffalo steak fantasies.

Vast, with towering walls, the great hall seemed cavernous. Four big tables, each large enough to seat at least twenty people, stood in two long lines, leaving a large space between them. Toward the opposite end of the chamber, a head table, shaped like a rectangular horseshoe, waited on a raised platform.

I scanned the room, looking for problems. Three exits: the one we just came through, one on the left, and one on the right, each manned by a pair of djigits. No matter where I sat, unless it was at the head table, my back would be to one of the doors. Ugh.

On the left a discreet stairway led to a minstrel’s gallery, a high indoor balcony that spanned the length of the entire left wall. Shadows shrouded the gallery. I saw no movement, but if I wanted to kill someone, I’d put a sniper up there.

None of this was making me feel warm and fuzzy.

About fifty people milled about the hall, some talking in small groups, others by themselves. Men wore suits and tuxedos. Women wore gowns. Most eyes flashed with a shapeshifter glow. People turned and looked at us, looked at Curran, looked at the handle of my sword protruding over my shoulder. A few men looked lower at my chest. They were shapeshifters and notoriously difficult to kill, while I was a human. The fact that I carried a sharpened strip of metal on my back didn’t worry them any. I was an oddity, the human mate. They appraised me like a horse at a livestock market, and my breasts were clearly making a bigger impression than my sword.

Curran locked his teeth.

“We just got here,” I whispered. “It’s too early for you to start killing people.”

“It’s never too early for me,” he said.

“Double standard much?”

Hibla met us halfway across the hall and led us to our seats. Curran and I sat at the head table on the right side of an oversized wooden chair that wanted very much to be a throne and had to belong to the head of the table. Place of honor. Whoop-de-doo. At least my back was to a solid wall.

Curran took his seat, I sat next to him, Desandra sat next to me, and Andrea parked herself on the other side of Desandra and looked at the balcony. Raphael sat next to her, and Mahon and Aunt B sat next to him. George stood behind her father. Barabas stood behind me.

“You’re hovering,” I told him.

“I’m supposed to hover.”

I settled in the large chair. The minstrel’s gallery loomed above us to the right. It bothered me. I couldn’t see into it. If someone shot at us, I wouldn’t know until it was too late. We might as well have pinned a target to Desandra’s head.

“Hibla?”

Our guide leaned toward me. “Yes, lady?”

“Could you tell me who chose these seats?”

“Lord Megobari.”

Great. Changing seats would likely offend him to death, and besides, all seats at this table offered a great target from the gallery.