“What?”
“You owe me, you so owe me!”
“Did you get it?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Thanks for asking!”
“Billy! Did. You. Get—”
“Yes, damn it, yes! I got it! I got it!”
“Thank you,” I told him fervently.
And shifted.
Chapter Three
“Don’t,” I told Marco, a decade and a half later, when he opened the door to the Vegas hotel suite I called home. “Just . . . don’t, okay?”
Marco is my chief bodyguard. He’s about six foot five, maybe two hundred and fifty pounds, and built like a freight train. My legs aren’t as big around as his arms, which might feel weird except that most men’s aren’t, either. He’s a swarthy, hairy, foulmouthed, cigar-munching, example of machismo who is usually covered in weapons he doesn’t need because he’s also a master vampire.
Which is why it’s annoying when he decides to play mother hen.
Not that that appeared to be happening tonight.
“Hadn’t planned on it,” Marco said, and yanked me inside.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, because Marco was looking kind of freaked-out. That was worrying on someone who, I strongly suspected, had been assigned to lead my bodyguard because he was the oldest of Mircea’s masters. He’d seen it all and he didn’t rattle easy.
Although he was kind of looking rattled now.
“We got a problem,” he told me grimly.
I shook my head, letting loose a little cloud of Tony’s lousy housekeeping. “No.”
“What does that mean?”
I’d have thought that was obvious since I was dragging in at two a.m., covered in soot, plaster, and sweat, with a bruised ring around my neck and an all-but-destroyed T-shirt. But apparently not. I edged around him, balancing a cup and a bag of heart-destroying pastries from the coffee shop downstairs, because it wasn’t like I was going to live long enough to have to worry about cholesterol.
“It means I’ve had enough for one night. I’m tired; I’m going to bed. If there’s a problem, it can wait until—”
I stopped, because I’d just noticed the living room. It would have been called sunken if it hadn’t been on the twenty-second floor of the hotel. It was a tasteful medley of white and blue and yellow, since I’d had a say in redecorating after the last disaster hit. It was also usually deserted, the guards preferring to hang out in the lounge with the pool table and the beer fridge.
But that wasn’t true tonight. Tonight, every guard on duty was either sitting in the little conversation area, smoking out on the tiny balcony, or gathered by the bar. It was like a party.
Or maybe a wake; the guys were looking pretty damned grim.
“Why’s everybody out here?” I asked Marco, who had followed me down a short flight of stairs.
“’Cause of them in there,” he said, hiking a thumb at the lounge. Which I’d just noticed was closed off, with the pocket doors shut tight. I’d never seen them that way; the guys preferred an open floor plan to better keep an eye on me.
But it looked like they felt they could do without an eye on whoever was inside.
“Who’s ‘them’? I don’t have any appointments tonight.” At least, I really hoped I didn’t. The kind of guest I got at two a.m. tended to be of the fanged variety, and not the fun kind. “Tell me it’s not more senators,” I said, because I really, really wasn’t up to that.
“I wish.”
I sighed and crossed my filthy arms. “Okay. Out with it.”
But he didn’t come out with it. “Where’s Jonas? You’re supposed to be with him.”
I shrugged. “Home?” I’d dropped him off in the lobby before going for coffee. And it had been a while, since despite the fact that I looked like a war refugee, I’d still had to wait in line.
Vegas.
“Damn it!” Marco looked genuinely put out. No, that wasn’t right. Marco looked almost—
The sliding doors opened and a small vamp sidled out, before slamming them dramatically shut behind him. “Refreshments!” he said shrilly.
“What?” Marco glowered at him.
“You heard me,” the vamp said, wild-eyed. “They say if they have to wait any longer, that they deserve—”
“I’ll tell you what they deserve,” Marco said menacingly.
“—something to eat, but you know we don’t have any food in the place and I don’t know what—” The vamp stopped abruptly, staring at me.
Or, to be more precise, at my small white bakery bag.
“No,” I said, trying to hide it behind me. But a second later, it was in his hand anyway.
The guy who had just crossed a room in an eyeblink was named Fred. He looked like an accountant when he stood still long enough—with wispy brown hair and a somewhat portly figure—which was fair, since that’s what he had been before getting tapped for guard duty. I still hadn’t found out who he’d had to piss off to get stuck with that.
I knew who he was managing to annoy tonight, though.
He saw my expression. “No, no, no!” he said, backing up, his big gray eyes going huge. And then the little weasel ran for it.
“Come back here!” I demanded, but Fred wasn’t. Fred was a blur, clutching the bag I’d just stood in line twenty freaking minutes for, and heading for the kitchen.
Only to find me waiting on him when he arrived.
“What—how—shit!” He stared at me, hand over the heart that wasn’t going to attack him, since it hadn’t beaten in a few hundred years now. “You know I hate it when you do that!”
“Then give me back my stuff!”
“I . . . can’t,” he said, looking around desperately.
Marco had come in behind him, but he wasn’t doing anything, just standing in front of the door with his massive arms crossed, waiting it out.
“Please,” Fred said tragically when I grabbed for my property. And then, “Please! Please! Gaaah! Gaaah!”
I let go of the bag, because I honestly didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him. “What the hell’s wrong with him?” I asked Marco.
“He’s afraid.”
Fred didn’t deny it.
“Of what?”
“Of them in there.” The thumb hike was backward this time, over his shoulder. But it didn’t help, since the shutters partitioning the kitchen from the lounge had been closed, like they were for the formal parties we never had.
“Who in there?”
Marco opened his mouth, but it was Fred who spoke. He was looking in the bag, and he didn’t seem happy. Maybe because he’d squashed it in all the agitation, and a smear of red had bloomed like blood on one side.
He grabbed a plate and turned it upside down, dumping out the contents. And then he just stood there, staring at three sadly mushed pastries. “What are those?” he demanded.
“What do they look like?” I snapped. Damn it, most of the powdered sugar had come off, and that was the best part.
Big gray eyes lifted to meet mine, with the look of a man seeing his doom. “What did you buy?” he squeaked.
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know! They have all kinds of things down there—dainty tea cakes and tiny tarts and pain au chocolate and finger sandwiches and those cute little baby macaroons! Why didn’t you get the baby macaroons?”
“I don’t like macaroons.”
He stared at me. “What do you mean you don’t like macaroons? Everybody likes macaroons!”
“Well, I’m somebody and I don’t,” I said, reaching for the plate. And getting my hand slapped for my trouble.
“But . . . but I can’t serve them these,” he said, a little madly. “And room service takes forever and there’s always a line downstairs and what am I supposed to do?”
“You’re supposed to tell me what’s going on before I strangle you,” I said ominously.
But Fred was past that. Fred looked like he thought strangling would be a step up. He was hunched over the plate, his eyes darting around the kitchen’s gleaming surfaces as if he thought a tea service and accompanying canapés were sure to appear somewhere.
“Oh God . . ” he said miserably when this did not happen.
I looked at Marco, expecting a little sanity. Only to find him regarding the plate, too. “Maybe you could . . . fluff ’em up,” he said, apparently serious.
“Fluff ’em up? Fluff ’em up?” Fred hissed. “They’re jelly doughnuts! There’s nothing to fluff!”
“They’re my doughnuts,” I said, reaching for the plate again. And had it snatched away.
“Have an apple,” Fred snarled, tossing me one from a bowl.
“If I’d wanted an apple, I wouldn’t have bought doughnuts!”
“Well, that’s too bad,” he hissed, hunched over my dinner like Gollum with the ring. “Because I’m not going out there and telling a bunch of mumble—”
“What?”
“—that we don’t have anything for them. I’m not, do you hear?”
Not really. “A bunch of what?” I asked, for clarification.
The darting eyes made a return, and his tone was barely audible. “Wumble,” he said reverently.
“What?”
He looked up, a faintly annoyed frown creasing his forehead. “Wichel!”
“What’s a wichel?”
Marco sighed. “Witches,” he translated.
“Witches?” I frowned.
“Yes!” Fred said vehemently. “Witches! Witches! Wi—” He suddenly realized he’d been yelling, and bit off the word. And crouched down behind the kitchen table so, I suppose, Marco and I would be the better targets. “Witches,” he whispered.
I put a hand to my head. I just wanted a doughnut. A sweet, squashy, jelly-filled reminder that there were good things in life, however much fate seemed determined to deprive me of them.