Karen Chance - Midnight's Daughter

I waited, but the only response to my nice logical argument was Louis-Cesare’s hands tightening on the wheel. “I’ve had no run-ins with the Black Circle that could explain them sending a whole hit squad after me,” I continued. “So they were after someone else. And there’s only two of us.”

A long pause. “Jonathan is a… personal issue,” I was finally informed.

“There aren’t any personal issues at a time like this.”

Louis-Cesare reached over and flipped on the radio. He settled on an eighties station where Eddie Van Halen was going to town on a guitar riff. Nice, but I suspected he just wanted something loud. I scowled at my reflection in the eggplant-colored windows, wondering when my partner had decided that I’d recently been lobotomized.

The plain fact is, anyone the Senate wants dead gets dead. That holds true even for powerful dark mages. It might be more difficult in their cases and therefore take a little longer, but there’s no one they can’t reach in the end. Yet Jonathan was still alive. Meaning that Louis-Cesare hadn’t asked them for help.

Now, maybe he just wanted to take care of the mage himself—he had said it was personal—but I doubted it. I felt the same way about Claire, but if anyone had harmed her, the Senate would hold him for my tender mercies. Taking their help didn’t mean ruling out personal involvement. So there was something about Louis-Cesare’s history with the mage that he didn’t want known.

“You can’t hide it from them forever,” I told him, just to make it clear that I was keeping up.

“I am hiding nothing.” The words were calm enough, but the Mustang was all but flying down the highway.

I was left with the certainty that whatever Louis-Cesare was keeping from me, it was very personal and very disturbing. But there was exactly nothing I could do about it. “If that’s how you want it.”

His hands flexed on the wheel, their tight clench loosening slightly. “That’s how it is.”

“Hey, Marlowe. You ever consider staking your decorator?” I glanced around the once-immaculate suite of rooms that now, like much of MAGIC, resembled a rummage sale in an inner-city neighborhood. A scorch mark in the shape of a human body marred one wall of the laboratory, next to the hall door that was half-torn off its hinges. And if there was a whole test tube or beaker in the place, I didn’t see it.

“Ah.” The handsome brunet vamp spun on his lab stool to face us. He smelled of Cuban cigars, cinnamon and some funky ointment with too many ingredients to list. The latter was emanating from the bandages wrapped around his head. His curls escaped from under them in dispirited clumps, but I didn’t have the urge to laugh. Any wound that a vamp couldn’t heal without resorting to gross-smelling concoctions was enough to have killed a man. It looked like the war had caught up with him recently. “That explains the stench,” he said, with a smile that never came close to his icy brown eyes. “I thought something had died in here. But no, that would be in about ten seconds.”

“Not unless you want Daddy on your ass,” I told him insolently. The few times I’d been to MAGIC had been with Mircea, who tends to make other vamps sweat, crawl and genuflect. I didn’t have that advantage now, but figured I could take a half-dead vamp, even Marlowe, if necessary. “I’m here on family business.”

“You’re a lousy liar.”

“Actually, I’m a great liar, not that I’d bother in your case. It’s much more fun to tell you the truth.” I placed a bloody piece of burnt-out metal on the table in front of him. “Speaking of which, the jet got torched. I think this was from the left wing, but I’m not sure.” He stared with no expression at the piece I’d pried out of the steward’s head. I parked myself on the neighboring stool and tried to look commiserating. “They just don’t make ’em like they used to, do they?”

“I most emphatically do not need this,” Marlowe said, turning a nearby clipboard over so I couldn’t read it. It probably contained nothing more interesting than the estimated repair costs, but he gives a whole new definition to the word “paranoid.” He makes even me look laid-back.

“I may have something you do need,” Louis-Cesare told him, dumping the still-unconscious mage onto the debris-covered floor. “This one was among those who attacked us.”

Marlowe looked the mage over in disgust, while I watched Louis-Cesare. His eyes were perfectly clear, like the sky on a bright June day. He wasn’t worried, which meant that the mess on the floor knew squat about him and Jonathan. Those summer eyes met mine over Marlowe’s head with a question and I shrugged. I had no vested interest in helping the Senate, and plenty of reasons to enjoy watching them squirm. His secret was safe with me.

“Dislocator,” Marlowe sneered after getting a good look at our captive. He glanced at me. “Do you know the penalty for being caught with one of those?”

“Dark mages,” I said, shaking my head regretfully. “You can’t trust ’em.”

“You expect me to believe that one of his allies threw this at him?”

I was surprised, shocked even. “What other explanation is there?”

Marlowe nudged the guy in the ribs with his toe. “Is that what he will say when he wakes?”

“Who knows? Mages, such liars.” I wasn’t worried. The captain wasn’t likely to rat on the person who’d saved his life, and Louis-Cesare had promised Mircea not to do anything to hurt me. Turning me in to Marlowe would definitely go against that promise. It seemed we both had secrets.

Nonetheless, I kept my bag close to hand, since there were some other unsavory devices still inside. There would be a lot more as soon as I got the chance to visit a certain old acquaintance in Vegas. Drac wanted me alive for now, but why? And for how long?

“We do need your help,” Louis-Cesare was saying, which seemed to get Marlowe’s attention more than my attempts at conversation. I left them to talk things over, because I saw a familiar shadow dart by the door and into a room across the hall. If it had been any farther, I’d have let it go. I have an excellent sense of direction and don’t usually lose my way, yet MAGIC’s layout seems to change every time I’m there. It could be a spell, one of its many built-in defenses, or simply nerves on my part. I strongly suspected that a whole coterie of dark mages would be more welcome around here than I was.

I met another vamp, one of Marlowe’s boys, coming in the door and smiled at him. He bared fangs, but cringed away slightly at the same time, as if I’d really stake him in front of his already pissed-off master. I pushed past him and crossed the hall, noting that it was riddled with bits of serrated iron that were half-buried in the floor. Normally, these form what passes for decorations on the sconces and chandeliers about the place, but in times of attack they become lethal projectiles that target anyone not on the approved list. Since my name was definitely not on that document, I was glad to see that they appeared inactive.

I pushed open the door and saw whom I’d expected. “Hello, Uncle.”

Radu, in his usual swashbuckling attire, champagne-colored satin in this case, froze in place. He had the guilty look of someone caught in headlights with a body, a shovel and a big hole. I found his expression interesting, since not much disconcerts the older vamps, especially not ones who have seen and done as much as he has.

I glanced around, but nothing seemed unusual. We were in one of the small, unremarkable rooms that litter the rabbit warren of MAGIC’s lower levels. Like the one across the hall, this one looked more like it belonged in a hospital or laboratory than a supernatural stronghold. But there were no alien bodies in formaldehyde or anything else to account for Radu’s expression. He smiled nervously, the famous turquoise eyes that had once garnered him the nickname of “the Handsome” wide and scared.