“He was telling the Saxons what we were doing the whole time. To keep me safe, supposedly.”
Stellan’s whole body tensed. “Did he tell them we’re here?”
“He says he hasn’t talked to them since we found out what they’ve been doing. I think he’s telling the truth.”
Stellan raised a finger and two glasses of something clear appeared in front of us. I choked mine down without asking what it was and signaled for another before the bartender had a chance to turn around again.
It was only then that the taste hit me, and I gagged. “That’s disgusting.”
“Vodka,” he answered.
“Do people actually like drinking that?” The next round arrived and I tried to down it again, but a reflex kept it far away from my mouth. I just held it, swirling.
Stellan cleared his throat. The dim light deepened the hollows under his eyes. “So you and Jack . . .”
“Can we not?”
He nodded and took a sip of his own drink.
In about thirty seconds, my stomach started to feel warm. In another minute, it spread to my head, and in another, I felt a little floaty. Finally, I looked around. Despite the vampire lighting, the bar was cozy and friendly, like everyone here had known one another for years. It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood bar you saw in the US, with old grizzly men getting wasted on Bud Light. We were the only ones here taking shots of liquor. Most of the patrons were drinking espresso or sipping wine.
“Done,” I said into my drink.
Stellan raised his eyebrows.
“Me and Jack. Finished. Over. Whatever we were before, we are now nothing.”
I waited to feel pain wash over me, but the sharpest edges had dulled. I deliberately didn’t look up to see Stellan’s reaction. Behind us was a makeshift dance floor, and a guy was doing a completely inappropriate robot to the sultry French music coming from the speakers. My head felt even fuzzier.
We sipped our drinks in a companionable quiet for a few minutes while I calmed down even more. I liked that about Stellan. He didn’t have to fill all the silences.
I leaned on my elbow and watched him watch the rest of the bar. His hair still looked blond in the strange light, though his skin glowed red. He had saved my life in Greece. He’d been pretty good at saving my sanity since then. I wondered what he was thinking right now. He was probably making fun of me in his head. He was probably berating Jack.
And . . . I watched the rest of the bar watch him. One girl and two boys did the most obvious double takes I’d ever seen after noticing him, and then they looked at me with this mix of fascination and jealousy.
Stellan waved his hand in front of my face, and I realized he’d caught me staring at him.
I giggled a little. My drink didn’t taste as bad as it had before. “Bottoms up,” I said, and clinked my glass against his before draining the rest of it with a minimum of gagging.
Stellan raised one eyebrow. “Easy there, party girl. We have things to do tomorrow. Important things.”
I ignored him. Now I understood why people drank. All I’d thought about in the past few minutes was how pretty the boy standing next to me was. A couple more, and I could forget everything that had happened tonight. And the past few days. And actually, for a long time. “More,” I said.
Stellan ordered two more drinks in French, but I understood a few words now, and I knew he’d gotten mine with soda. “I’m not drunk.”
“I like this shirt. I don’t want to clean vomit off it later.”
I elbowed him in the side, then did a quick pirouette. My bag didn’t quite keep up. It smacked into the bar with a thud, but I kept spinning. “See?” I said over my shoulder. “Not drunk, or I couldn’t do that.”
“Yes, and you absolutely would have done that sober,” Stellan said wryly. I stopped abruptly and stared at his hand, which was suddenly on my waist, steadying me.
I watched him notice, too, then remove it, slowly. I climbed onto one of two just-vacated bar stools. When he sat next to me, I said, “Do you even like the Dauphins? Except for Luc, you don’t seem to care about them nearly as much as Jack cared about the Saxons.”
“Where did that come from?”
I shrugged.
Stellan’s knee hit mine as he sat at the stool next to me. “I do what I have to do for myself. And my sister.”
I remembered seeing him at the ball, talking to Madame Dauphin. “You always do what they tell you, though. Madame Dauphin had you spying on me when we first met. And you did it.”
“Yes. I had to. That’s the point of this job.”
My feet reached out, legs barely long enough to hit the footrest under the bar. “You almost seemed afraid of Madame Dauphin. You’re not afraid of anyone.” The words came out before I could stop them.
“She’s . . . hard on me. I can’t do anything wrong around her.”
“She doesn’t like you?”
He smirked. “Something like that.”
I gestured for him to go on, and at first it seemed like he wouldn’t, but then he took a gulp of his drink. “Okay. A year or so ago, I may have . . . I misjudged a situation.”
I shook my head, not sure what he was trying to say.
“It’s always been in my best interests to stay on her good side. She’s always liked me. Until that point, I didn’t realize just how much.”
It took a few seconds longer than it should have for me to understand. I twisted my bar stool to gape at him. “Wait. Madame Dauphin tried to . . . ?” It sounded like a bad soap opera.
Stellan swirled the splash of vodka left in his glass, and I had a horrifying thought. “Did you?”
“No. But maybe I should have. Now she does everything in her power to make things hard for me. Before, I was in line to take a position that would let me travel to Russia to see my sister a few times a year. Then . . . I wasn’t. Which is another reason the thirteenth thing could be helpful. The tomb. Whatever we find.”