I looked over her shoulder to where Christian was still watching me with a narrow-eyed glare. "Thanks, but no, thanks. I don"t think your friend there likes me overly much."
Joy tipped her head to one side while Roxy grinned.
"Christian won"t be there. He"s never up that early. It"ll be just us three. And possibly Raphael."
"That"s her fiance," Roxy added helpfully.
I couldn"t help but glance at Joy"s very pregnant stomach.
Roxy shot her friend a pointed look. "I told you that you guys should have gotten married as soon as you knew you were preggers. What that poor child is going to have to go through if you don"t tie the knot in time..."
"Come to tea, please," Joy said, exuding warmth and happiness that slipped past all my guards. I hesitated, then took the card. Joy"s smile grew wider.
"You think we should tell her about the steps?" Roxy asked Joy.
"Steps? I prefer elevators, thank you. Easier on the legs."
Joy looked thoughtful. "I hadn"t thought of that, but you"re right. Christian just completed the second step. If that doesn"t convince him, nothing will. Now he has to believe me."
"What sort of step? Convince him of what? Believe what? Why do I feel like you guys are talking about Eskimos, and I"m trying to explain how to make fudge?"
Roxy nudged me with her elbow. "You"re going to love the third step. Trust me on this."
"Third step of what?" I asked them both.
Joy rubbed the small of her back, grimacing as she did so. "We"ll tell you about it tomorrow. Four o"clock. We have lots to talk about."
I had a feeling that was going to prove to be the understatement of the year.
Chapter Four.
By the time I made it back to my hotel room, it was too late to call the SIP offices and try to get the name and address of the hermit (man or woman, I wasn"t sure which) I thought might be able to help me with my Release problem. I took a long bath instead, soaking my leg until I was all pruney, then got into a pair of soft sleeping shorts and a T-shirt, wrapping myself up in an oversize lumpy green bathrobe. With my scarred leg and odd eyes and decidedly frumpy nightwear I might not be a fashion plate, but I was certainly comfortable.
"Well, Mr. Kitty, it looks like it"s just you and me again tonight. I hope you do your disappearing act tomorrow when the maid comes in. I"ll send you on as soon as I can, but don"t hold your breath until then. I need to talk to that hermit first."
I spent some time writing up notes on the evening"s events, then pulled on my sweatpants and shirt to pop downstairs to leave Corrine an e-mail saying I had her book and would bring it home with me. That done, I hung around the lounge for a bit, but eventually the strange looks I was getting (sweatpants and sungla.s.ses were evidently not considered haute couture) were enough to send me back up to the privacy of my room.
"I see privacy is a relative term in London," I commented as I closed the door behind me. Christian was in possession of the sole comfortable armchair in the room, his legs crossed with casual elegance, the fingers of one hand rubbing his chin as he watched the three-legged cat roll on its back and bat with ineffectual paws at the fringe of the bedspread. "How did you get in here, what do you think you"re doing, what was your little game last night, who were those people who ran off, how dare you think I knew anything about that madwoman with the gun, and are you or are you not a vampire?"
Sleek sable eyebrows pulled together as he rose gracefully to his feet and made an exquisite bow. "I don"t believe we"ve been formally introduced. I am Christian Johann Dante. Your name is..." He frowned. "Allie?"
"It is. It"s short for Allegra."
"Ah. I dislike diminutives; they are so common. I will use Allegra."
My hackles went up instantly. I crossed the room to snag the wooden seat sitting before the dressing table, hauling it into a position from which I could more effectively glare at him. "Is that so? Well for your information, Mr. Stuck-up, my twin brother gave me that nickname. My brother who died eighteen years later in the same accident that crippled my right leg. So you"ll have to pardon me if I don"t find it at all common."
He stood watching me for a moment until I made an annoyed sound and told him to sit down.
"I am sorry that you lost your brother. I, too, lost a dearly loved brother in my youth. It took me many years to forgive myself for living when he died."
I glanced up at him, startled that he felt the same way about his brother"s death that I did when Leslie died.
"Tell me of this accident. How old were you when it occurred?"
I slammed the guards on my mind down tight against the gentle probes I could feel him sending out. No one played in my head without an invitation. "Why don"t you try answering a few questions before you start asking them? Namely, how did you get in here?"
He shrugged, an elegant move that matched all of his other elegant moves. Even though he was dressed in a simple black sweater with simple black pants, I had the strangest sense that I wasn"t seeing him as he really was-he should be dressed in silk shirts with ruffled fronts and lace on the cuffs, I thought, with those colorful vests that men wore a couple hundred years ago, and tight breeches and boots that reached to his knees. And a riding crop-he looked very much like a riding crop kind of guy.
"I wished to speak with you. I had no idea that your room was already occupied." This he said looking at the cat, now engaged in licking its belly, "or that you would find my presence so objectionable. I felt that after the evening"s deplorable event we had some unfinished business to settle."
"Uh-huh," I said, not in the least bit convinced. "Unfinished business like just what were you doing last night? And how did you get out of there so quickly? Wait a minute-answer my last question first: Are you a vampire?"
His eyes glittered mahogany and gold at me, but other than the slight incline of one eyebrow, he didn"t look at all perturbed to be having this conversation. "I am Moravian, what is commonly referred to as a Dark One."
Well, that was a big help. "So you"re a vampire?"
His fingers made an elegant gesture that left the question unanswered.
"Okay, let"s try this: Do you drink people"s blood to survive?"
He sat extremely still. "Yes," he finally answered, the velvet of his voice giving the word a power I"d never felt before.
"Are you immortal?"
Again the hesitation. "I can be killed."
"Most living beings can. Let me rephrase that-what year were you born?"
His gaze never left my face. "In the year of our Lord eleven hundred and twelve."
I did a bit of quick mental subtraction. "That sounds pretty immortal to me. Do you burn to a crisp in the light of the sun?"
A slight smile played around on the corners of his lips. I suddenly wanted to be that smile. "Burn to a crisp? No, but I do not find sunlight particularly healthy."
"Fine. So you"-I ticked the items off on my fingers-"drink blood to survive, are more or less immortal, and avoid sunlight. Well, you know, that sounds like a vampire to me!"
"Dark Ones are frequently referred to as vampires," he allowed.
"I hear a "but" in there."
The smile grew, making me feel a bit too warm in my comfy sweats. "The mythology of vampires and the history of Dark Ones is similar, but not identical."
"Oh. So you"re like, what, a benign vampire? A quasi-vampire? Vamp light? Do you go around doing good deeds? Or are you merely a vampire with a really big chip on his shoulder who likes to push people around and slice himself up for fun and profit?"
He actually had the nerve to look martyred at my words. "You are the most irreverent woman I have ever met."
"And you"re changing the subject."
"I shall do so again: Why do you have the spirit of a cat in your hotel room?"
"Can you think of a better place to keep it?" I asked, then immediately regretted the retort. "This room is supposed to be haunted. I was trying to Summon the ghost who resides here, and got her cat instead."
"Is that what you were doing last night at the old inn?"
"You haven"t finished answering my questions."
"I believe a conversation is traditionally made up of give and take. I have given; now I expect to take."
It was the way he said it that made me feel both extremely turned on and furious at his high-handed arrogance. I stood up and fisted my hands on my hips. "Yes, I was at the inn last night to Summon ghosts. It"s what I do, I"m a Summoner. I didn"t have any success, if that is your next question. This cat is the sum total of all the ghosts I"ve managed to Summon, so I"ll thank you to be a bit nicer about him. He may not be great, but he"s all I have. And besides, I"ve tried to send him on, but something"s screwed up in my Release invocation."
He smiled again, and once again my body (pro-Christian) warred with my mind (definitely anti-Christian). "So you couldn"t have Released me last night had I been a soul in torment?"
I threw my hands up, then let them fall to my hips. "How do I know? I haven"t tried to Release a human spirit! Now, I"ve given; it"s your turn again. What were you doing there last night?"
The smile faded as he got to his feet, taking two steps until he was close enough to me that I could feel the heat from his body. He pulled my dark gla.s.ses from my face, examining first one eye, then the other; then his finger traced the line of my jaw. I wanted to pull back, to move away from the strange attraction that he held for me, but I couldn"t. His eyes were warm and dark on mine, his finger stirring little frissons of fire down my neck, blossoming out to every conceivable part of my body.
"Joy believes you are my Beloved, the woman who is meant to spend her life with me."
"Oh," I breathed, not wanting him to stop touching me, but not allowing myself to fall under his spell. I knew what it was to give power over oneself to a man; I"d never make that mistake again. With an effort, I stepped back. His eyes were shuttered as he dropped his hand.
"I think Joy has the wrong woman."
He looked at me strangely for a moment, then nodded. "I believe you are correct. I would know my Beloved the moment I saw her, and she likewise, yet I have no awareness of you unless I am in your presence. I fear I must disappoint Joy with the truth."
"I"m sure she"ll recover," I said, my voice a bit hoa.r.s.e. "I know I will strive to."
The half smile reappeared on his lips again; then suddenly I was in his arms, pressed up against his chest, his thighs hard against my legs. "Then it cannot matter if we put the question to a brief test, can it?" he asked just before his mouth swooped down to capture mine.
I will say one thing for the man: living more than nine hundred years had taught him how to kiss. His lips started out all hard and domineering, then suddenly turned soft. His tongue probed, then slid in, doing things I"d never imagined a tongue could do. I let him kiss me for about a minute before he pulled away enough to speak without his tongue in my mouth.
"You are not helping?"
"Give the man a cigar."
He pulled away even farther so he could glare into my eyes better. "You are attracted to me; I can feel it. You enjoy looking at me. Your heart rate speeds up when I am near you, yet you do not allow yourself to take pleasure in a simple kiss?"
"Look, Romeo, I"m attracted to a lot of men, that doesn"t mean anything other than that I have a healthy libido. And I doubt if anything, even a kiss, is simple where you"re concerned."
He looked oddly pleased with that statement. "We will try it again, and this time you will join in."
I stepped back. "Thanks, but I think you"ve checked my teeth aplenty tonight."
His eyes turned ebony.
"Oh, stop doing that, you big show-off!" I pushed him back and went to get a few tools from my bag. If I was going to have to entertain a vampire in my hotel room, the least I could do was take some readings on him.
That was what I told myself. My brain, however, knew that I needed to put some physical distance between us before I threw myself on him and kissed the fangs right out of his head.
When I turned back to him he was leaning against the wall, one long finger rubbing against the lovely curve of his lower lip. My mind rebelled for a moment and flashed glorious Technicolor, wide-screen memories of what it felt like to have those lips caressing mine. I told my mental projectionist to take the evening off, and started checking out Christian"s ion levels.
"Why do you wear the clothing of a man?"
I ignored the question and switched on the thermal-imaging recorder.
"I do not want my woman to ape masculine habits. Women should be feminine, soft, giving. It is your role in life, yet you are none of those things."
"Which is probably why it"s a good thing I"m not your woman," I answered, giving more orders to my mind to stop imagining what it would be like to be with him. He might be s.e.xy as h.e.l.l, but he was also domineering and arrogant, two traits that can be very dangerous.
"I said that you were not my Beloved; I said nothing about you not being my woman."
I shivered at the undertone of dark promise in his voice. I thought I remembered reading somewhere that vampires could seduce with their voices alone-of that I had no doubt. I clicked on the digital voice recorder. Maybe someone back at the UPRA offices could a.n.a.lyze his voice and see what made it so beautiful and evocative. "So were you born this way, or did another vampire snack on you and turn you?"
"You are also too independent and obstinate, and you lack self-confidence."
I ground my teeth and turned on the EMF counter, making notes of the readings. I would not let him goad me into-Hey! I squinted my eyes at him in the meanest possible manner. "Obstinate? Lacking self-confidence? Well, aren"t you just full of the insults?"
"They are not insults, just statements."
"Fine, well, let"s try on a few more for size, shall we?" I set down the EMF counter and limped over to him, poking a finger into his chest. He captured my hand with his, refusing to let it go. I ignored the wonderful things his touch did to me, and let him have it with both barrels. "For your information, Dracula, women have been emanc.i.p.ated. We can think on our own, make our own choices, and even-heaven forbid!-live our lives in comfort and happiness without any know-it-all males telling us what to do. Furthermore, I am a Summoner. It goes with the territory that my mind is strong. Strong is not obstinate. And as for self-confidence, I"m very confident in myself and my abilities. Just because I haven"t had a lot of success Summoning doesn"t mean that I can"t do it. I can, I know I can, but it"s not an exact science and there"s a lot of elements that come into play when you"re dealing with ghosts."
"I wasn"t speaking of your self-confidence relating to your skills; I was referring to the fact that you find your appearance lacking."
There"s nothing I can do about my appearance," I snapped. "I"m well aware of my shortcomings, if that"s what you mean. I don"t consider dealing with what I"ve got as best I can as expressing a lack of self-confidence."
"You hide your very feminine body behind the cover of shapeless male clothing just as you hide your eyes behind dark gla.s.ses."
"I wear pants because they"re a heck of a lot more comfortable when crawling around haunted houses than a skirt and heels. I wear dark gla.s.ses because being called a freak gets a bit wearisome after the fiftieth time. Any more questions, Sherlock? Or can I get on with taking a few readings?"
"You hide your attraction to me behind denial."
I grinned and checked him for any ultrasonic emissions. "Oh, so now we get to the truth of your complaints. You"re just p.i.s.sed because I didn"t respond to your kiss. Your smug masculine pride has been hurt. Poor little Christian, used to swooning maidens whenever you lay a lip on them, is that it? I guess the real test of a man"s attraction comes down to what he can do without the enhancement of a little mental push to aid a seduction, eh?"
In hindsight, I saw that baiting him was not the wisest course of action. Lesson to the smart: Never challenge a vampire"s masculinity unless you"re made of marble, or are dead. You just can"t win.
He was on me before I could take a breath, my body slammed up hard against his, his arms immovable and impossibly hard behind me. But it wasn"t his arms that worried me; it was the look of determination in his beautiful (now a rich walnut) eyes.
"You are impossible," he said against my mouth, his body quickly becoming aroused. Mine answered the call despite my sending out the fire department to extinguish all the delightfully tingly fires he started. "You mock me, you abuse me, you do not respect the power that I hold, and yet you make me feel things I"ve not felt for centuries."
For a moment he slipped into my mind, and I felt myself go soft against him at the recognition of his need. I hadn"t forgotten the torment I"d felt both in the dream about him and in the inn, but I had a.s.sumed it was greatly exaggerated in my mind. Now I knew it wasn"t; Christian was a deep well of desperate need, the need for the purity of love to salvage his soul, to pull him from the abyss of anguish and despair that filled him. I closed him out of my mind more as a self-preservation tactic than anything else, and rallied my strength to resist the lure of his lips just as his mouth closed on mine.