“Okay, you want to translate that for me?” I waited, but he didn’t say anything else, and his posture was as closed and uninviting as a statue.

Or like a guy who’s just remembered his mistress is waiting upstairs.

Screw this, I thought bitterly. It was exactly like last time, only then I hadn’t stepped back. I’d let him take my face in his hands, let myself lean into his touch, just enough to fall and keep on falling. Only to have him leave, without a word, to chase after his mistress.

It was the same woman he was going to redeem tonight. And then this would be over and he would be gone, and I couldn’t wait. I snagged my abandoned bottle and the duffel bag off the floor and headed for the bedroom without another word, frustration lingering like a sour taste in my mouth.

It’s the beer, I told myself firmly.

Mircea’s bedroom was the same gray expanse of boredom I remembered. Like the rest of the apartment, it was ultramodern, sleek and minimalist, like something transplanted from one of the glass-and-steel high-rises. It didn’t fit well in this old-world charmer any more than the blinding white bathroom did.

Some things just weren’t meant to go together, I thought viciously, and stepped into the shower. I turned it on high, refusing to think about anything except the pounding water and the enveloping steam. It didn’t work. That shouldn’t have surprised me. It hadn’t worked any better all month.

He was a vampire. I was a dhampir, born to detect the monster within the pretty package. And until now, I’d had a flawless record. But breeding, training, and experience all failed me in his case. When I looked at Louis-Cesare, I didn’t see a monster.

Part of the problem was his unique talent for appearing human. I’d never met another vampire who got all the little things right so effortlessly, who breathed as though he really needed to, whose heart rate went up when I came in the room, who flushed in passion. If it hadn’t been for the frisson that went up my spine whenever we met, he might have fooled even me.

But it wasn’t the appearance that had me so confused. A lot of vamps looked pretty damn human, but they didn’t act it. From the newly changed babies to the age-old consuls, every damn one of them evidenced the same focused self-interest, cold-blooded practicality and utter ruthlessness.

Everyone except for Louis-bloody-Cesare.

He didn’t live by the vamp code; he had his own. It was classist and had a heavy overtone of noblesse oblige, and it frequently made me want to smack him, but it was a code nonetheless. He didn’t always act in ways that would benefit himself, the mess with Alejandro being a prime example.

Every other vamp I knew would have either sacrificed Christine, if Tomas was considered too much of a threat, or have killed him and taken her back. Some of them would have made Alejandro pay for the insult later, but none would have so much as considered any other options. They probably wouldn’t have even seen any.

Vampires were emancipated when they reached the level of their master, and sometimes before, because the more powerful they became the harder it was to control them. Eventually, the problems in keeping them outweighed the benefits. I could just see Mircea’s face if someone suggested that he divert a huge amount of his personal power for more than a century to hold a vampire in thrall who could be of absolutely no use to him. Yet Louis-Cesare had done exactly that.

First-level masters varied in power, and obviously, Louis-Cesare had been stronger than Tomas. But even so, the cost must have been enormous, a constant, ongoing drain with no end in sight. And for what? The benefit of a vampire he didn’t even know? It was the sort of behavior that made my brain hurt because it challenged everything I knew about the self-serving breed.

Not that it mattered. Whatever he looked like, whatever he acted like, Louis-Cesare was a vampire. I needed to remember that.

I also needed to figure out what the hell I was going to wear. I didn’t intend to try to compete—vampire parties are all about outshining, outdazzling and outdoing everybody else, and my wardrobe wouldn’t have been up to the challenge even if I’d had access to it. But I also wasn’t wearing a smelly old T-shirt that wasn’t even mine.

Fortunately, Mircea is a shade over six feet tall, while I am barely five two. That makes his shirts on the order of dresses for me, easily hitting midthigh or lower, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t spare one. He was the biggest clotheshorse I’d ever met; if he hadn’t had a steady stream of mistresses through the years, I’d wonder about him.

I’d settled on a big shirt and maybe a cummerbund for a belt by the time I stepped out of the shower—and saw a piece of black silk hanging from the hook behind the door. It was a dress, sort of. It was mostly straps on top, cleverly designed to reveal more than they covered, yet managing to stay on the right side of slutty. The skirt was more problematic, long and black and slit high enough that my lack of underwear was going to be a problem.

“There’s some panties and things on the counter,” Ray said, from inside the duffel.

I’d parked it on the floor beside the door. I picked it up and peered into the hole in the side. “Are you spying on me?”

“Hell, yeah. Get me out of here.”

“Why? So you can get a better view?”

“So we can talk while you get dressed.”

“I’m not getting dressed,” I told him, threw a towel around myself and went out into the bedroom. It was dark and empty, except for the wash of light from the bath, so I passed through to the living room. Louis-Cesare was on the couch with the lights off, staring out over the view of Central Park.

I held up the dress. “What is this?”

He looked up, his eyes dark in the dim light. “I had it sent over.”

“It’s one o’clock in the morning!”

“Concierge,” he said simply, like he’d picked up the phone and ordered a pizza.

“There are shoes.” I’d tripped over a pair of black satin heels on the way out of the bathroom.

“You wished to dress for the occasion—”

“I said I wanted a bath.”

“—and I thought to oblige you. And myself. I have never seen you in a gown.”

I crossed my arms and glared at him. “How did you know my size?”

He just looked at me. And yeah, okay, I could probably guess his pretty accurately, too, if it came down to it. Not that it mattered.

“I’m not wearing this.”

He regarded me in silence for a moment. “Do you wish to fight with me, Dorina?”

“Yes!” At the moment, that was exactly what I wanted.

“If it will help.” I blinked. He’d spoken in the toneless kind of voice new vamps used when they hadn’t yet learned to operate dead vocal cords. Except Louis-Cesare never made slips like that.

A passing car lit up his face for an instant, and the strained blankness of his expression jolted me with an unpleasant shock. He looked like a vamp for the first time: the face beautiful, but pale and cold, like it was carved out of marble; the chest immobile, unbreathing; the eyes fixed and unblinking. I felt a chill run down my spine.

The man I knew was haughty, impatient, demanding, passionate. Not this blank. Not this thing.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded.

“Nothing.” Toneless, flat, dead.

Yeah, that was convincing.

Chapter Sixteen

I walked over, the dress trailing on the floor behind me. I sat on the edge of the coffee table across from him because I was still dripping. “Try again,” I told him.

He didn’t say anything.

“I’d have thought you’d be pleased,” I pointed out. “You’re getting Christine back.”

“I am relieved,” he said, after a moment. “Elyas is a sadist, delighting in the pain of others. I did not like to think of her there.”

“You think he hurt her?”

“No. He assures me that she has not been harmed.”

“And you believe him?”

“Yes. He enjoys the fear of his victims more than their pain, and Christine… As she once said to me, after one has lost their soul, what else is there to fear?”

“She hasn’t lost her soul,” I said impatiently. “Hell, Mircea is more devout than I am.” I didn’t mind going to mass so much, but confession was damned annoying. Even the supernatural confessors the Vatican kept on call always got a little… distraught… when I showed up. And, really, there weren’t enough Hail Marys in the world.

“But she believes she has,” Louis-Cesare said simply. “Her family was very devout. It was thought for a time that she would become a religieuse.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How does someone get from prospective nun to vampire mistress?”

“Christine was one of those rare individuals born with magical ability without coming from a magical family. She was never given any training, and therefore did not know about her gift until it began to manifest as she came of age.”

“That must have been a shock.”

“She mistook it for a miracle. She was a novitiate at the time, and people began to flock to the abbey to see her levitate the Host or to light candles with merely a touch. She believed she was the vessel of God’s grace, for she could find no other reason why she should be able to do such things. But magical power is like any other kind: it requires training to work safely—training she did not possess.”

“I have a feeling this isn’t going anywhere good.”

“No. One evening, she was startled while attempting to light the bank of candles before the altar, and the spell went awry. Within minutes, the chapel was in flames, the roof beams collapsed and many of the nuns died. The abbess survived, badly burned and newly convinced that they had taken a devil amongst themselves. Christine was whipped by the abbess and forced to run for her life with only the clothes on her back. Some of my vampires found her several days later, half dead from dehydration and unhealed burns, stumbling down the road near my estate.”