Karen Chance: Hunt the Moon

“I think they’re scared of me,” I told Marco, as another one scurried past with the same little eye flick.

“Not of you ,” Marco corrected, tossing a blood-spotted paper towel into the overflowing bin.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you attract enemies like rotten meat does flies.”

“That’s a nice image!”

“And they’re not normal enemies,” he complained. “Someone a guy can really pound. They’re ghosts or demons or a fucking god , and my boys are good, but they don’t know how to deal with that shit. It makes ’em feel helpless, and they hate that.”

I didn’t exactly love it, either, I didn’t say, because Marco was on a roll.

“And most of them thought this would be a vacation. Free trip to Vegas, stay in a luxury hotel, and all they gotta do is watch over the master’s girlfriend. I mean, most of the time that means carrying her shopping bags and being asked which color shoes goes best with her purse, you know?”

I frowned. No, I didn’t know. Their master and my significant other was pretty damn chary about his romantic past. I knew he wasn’t inexperienced—at five hundred years old, that would be kind of hard—but I didn’t have many details. In fact, I didn’t have any, just some strong suspicions, any or all of which might be wrong.

For some reason, it had never occurred to me to ask Marco.

It occurred to me now.

“You sound like they’ve done this before.”

“That wasn’t my point.”

“But have they? Have you?” It was unsettling to think that I might be just another in a long line of women Marco had babysat, at least until they grew too old to hold the attention of their perpetually thirtyish-looking boyfriend.

Really, really unsettling.

“I don’t usually do the bodyguard thing,” Marco evaded.

“But you’ve been around a while, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So just how many girlfriends has Mircea had?” I asked bluntly.

Marco sighed. “You don’t want to go there.”

“Yeah, actually, I think I do.”

“Then you want to go there with him,” he told me flatly.

“But he isn’t here and you are.” And the fact that Marco obviously didn’t want to discuss it made me wonder just what kind of numbers we were talking about. “I mean, how many can it have been?” I wondered aloud. “Five, ten?”

Marco didn’t say anything.

“Twenty?” I asked, a little shrilly.

“You know, I forget,” he replied. And then he stabbed me in the ass.

“Ow!”

“You want another drink?” he asked, as a vamp came in carrying a tray with a decanter on it.

“I want you to stop gouging me with that thing!”

He held something in front of my eyes. “See these? These are tweezers. They don’t gouge.”

“Tell that to my ass!”

“You want a drink or not?”

“I want some coffee,” I said resentfully, since I obviously wasn’t getting any answers. I clutched the sheet to my chest and tried to peer over my shoulder at my abused butt. And then I noticed the vamp looking, too. “Hey!”

“He don’t mean anything,” Marco said, as the man hurried out. “It’s just there, you know?”

“And?”

“And we’re guys. We look at women’s butts.”

“Are you looking at my butt?” I asked suspiciously.

“I gotta look or I can’t dig all the pieces out.”

“Then maybe we should call for a doctor.”

Marco patted my shoulder. “It’s okay. You aren’t my type.”

“What is your type?”

“Someone who gets in less trouble,” he said, as a sliver of glass rang in the ashtray he was using as a receptacle. “I decided I was wrong. I don’t like the wild side. I ain’t got the master’s stamina.”

“I don’t require stamina.”

“Babe, you require a freaking tank.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound complimentary. But before I could ask, Pritkin came in with a mug that smelled like heaven. He handed it to me, and I braced myself for his usual caffeine hammer to the brain. This batch didn’t disappoint; after two sips I could already feel my heart racing.

“It wasn’t demon,” he told me, without preamble.

“The hell it wasn’t.” Marco tossed another little sliver into the ashtray, more forcefully than necessary. “The guys said it was like The Exorcist in here.”

“Amityville,” I muttered, but no one was listening.

“They were wrong,” Pritkin said shortly. He looked at me and frowned, then reached over and brushed my curls out of my eyes. I smiled at him blearily, which got a bigger frown for some reason. “You are certain it wasn’t a ghost?”

I nodded. It was about the only thing I was sure about.

“Can you describe it?”

“Didn’t you see it?”

He shook his head. “A dark cloud, nothing more.”

“I didn’t see much more than that.”

“Tell me what you can. Anything would help at this point.”

I tried to think back, but my head really hurt and the room was still swimmy and there just wasn’t that much to remember. “It was dark colored,” I said slowly. “Black or gray. Or really dark blue. And it had feathers—I think.” I racked my brain, but I wasn’t getting anything else. “It was big?”

“What about your servant? Did he see anything?”

It took me a second to realize that he meant Billy Joe. Pritkin had this weird idea that Billy was for me what an enslaved demon was for a mage—a capable, obedient servant who stayed unruffled in the face of adversity. When the truth was pretty much exactly the opposite. As soon as the crisis was over, Billy had fled into his necklace and I hadn’t seen him since.

I gave him a little poke, just for the hell of it, and got back the metaphysical version of the finger. “Billy doesn’t know anything,” I translated.

“Are you certain?”

Tell him to suck my balls!

“Pretty certain.”

Pritkin ran a hand through his hair. It was sweaty, and although he’d put on a pair of old jeans, they didn’t cover the marks from being hurled through a wall. He looked about as beat up as I felt.

A particularly livid bruise trailed up his rib cage and wrapped around his back—where he’d hit the wall, I assumed. He was standing close enough that I could reach out and touch it, so I did. It was hot under my fingertips—Pritkin was always a little warmer than human standard—for the instant before he moved away.

I let my hand drop. “You should get that seen to. You might have broken a rib.”

“It’s fine,” he said curtly, as another vamp came in carrying a phone.

“For you,” the man told me, his eyes already sliding south.

“Is there anyone in this apartment who hasn’t seen me naked?” I demanded, grabbing the sheet and the phone.

“I genuinely hope so, Cassandra.”

I sighed and let my head thunk down against the padded surface of the table. I could always tell how Mircea was feeling based on what version of my name he chose to use. When he was in a good mood, it was dulceață , the Romanian endearment that colloquially translated as “sweetheart” or “dear one.” When he was less happy, it was plain old Cassie. And when he was royally pissed but not showing it because he was Prince Mircea Basarab, member of the powerful North American Vampire Senate and allaround cool guy, it was Cassandra.

“Cassandra” was never good.

But this time, it wasn’t my fault.

“This time, it isn’t my fault,” I told him, wincing as Marco found another heretofore untortured cut.

“I am not calling to assign blame.”

“Then why the ‘Cassandra’?”

“You frightened me. For a few moments, I could not feel you.”