I looked up to find his eyes closed, his head thrown back, his face more vulnerable than I’d ever seen it. I stared for a long moment, wanting to memorize that expression. For once, it wasn’t something gleaned from a tumbled mass of memories, a stolen glimpse into someone else’s pleasure. It was something we’d made together, something new and uniquely mine.

A moment later I was down the fire escape with Ray and running flat out for the car, my heart thundering in my ears.

CHAPTER 18

I didn’t intend to end up drunk in a seedy dive. It was pretty cliché, after all, but there are times when the only response to life’s little jokes is to get hammered. And if this wasn’t the greatest joke ever, I didn’t know what was.

There’s a bar downtown that’s so well-known to the regulars that it doesn’t need a sign. Just as well, since it’s named after the owner and there was no way that many syllables would fit. I left Ray’s body in the back of the car, because if Cheung found it here, good luck to him. The garage was guarded by a couple of demons who really loved thieves—preferably seared with a shot of tequila.

I took the duffel in with me. After everything I’d been through to get it, there was no way it was leaving my sight. Possibly ever.

I grabbed my usual booth in the back, under a suspended TV that flickered blue light across the tabletop. It was showing one of the telenovelas the bartender loved. He wandered over after a minute and put down my usual, beer. “Nice dress.”

“The reserve, Leo,” I told him, scowling. There was nothing on the regular menu that was going to give me the burn I needed.

The shaggy eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say anything, just took the bottle away and shambled into the back.

Claire was going to be worried. It was going on sixteen hours since I’d left the house, and I needed to call her. I also needed to get the ball rolling with Elyas, or at least make the attempt. But I didn’t want to do either. I didn’t want to think at all. I wanted to keep drinking until I was so staggeringly smashed that I couldn’t remember how stupid I’d been.

But I wasn’t sure Leo had that much in stock.

He returned and sat a small blue bottle on the table in front of me. I drank the contents straight, keeping pace for three shots with the cigarettes a guy at the bar was chain-smoking, until I started to feel the burn. Then I slowed down and stared at the TV without seeing it.

It was just the novelty of it, I told myself. A vampire who didn’t act like I might go for his throat at any minute was a new experience, much less one who talked to me like a person, who held me like I might be fragile and who bought me silly, soft clothing, like he wanted to know how it felt against my skin….

I decided the whole not-thinking thing had been the best plan, after all.

Another inch gone and the glass hit the table, tipped and rolled off the edge. Leo slid into the opposite seat. “Want to talk about it?”

“No. Want to get wasted.” I started to retrieve my errant glass, but succeeded only in hitting my forehead on the very hard tabletop.

“I think you’re already there,” he told me, and pushed my hair out of my eyes. His face was craggy and scarred, but his mouth was soft, the eyes assessing my condition without judgment. “If you were anyone else, I’d say it was man trouble.”

“He’s not a man.” Not anymore.

Leo raised those caterpillar eyebrows. “Some Weres can be very nice.”

“Not Were, either.” I took a drink straight from the bottle and wondered why I hadn’t gone home to get shit-faced. Oh, yeah. I hadn’t wanted to drive that far.

“You’re dating a demon?” He leaned forward. “What kind? And don’t tell me it’s one of those damn incubi. They get all the pretty girls.”

Leo was only the first part of a half-hour-long name, but it fit. His type of demon has vaguely leonine features, and he always wore his sandy blond hair long. Like all bartenders, he could be damn talkative, although usually he had more tact than this.

“Just drop it, Leo.”

“I knew it. It is an incubus. Useless damn things—”

I slammed down the bottle. “It’s not a demon, okay? And can I please get drunk in peace?”

“Not a—Oh, no.” He looked shocked. “You’re not dating a fey. You can’t trust those bastards, Dory. Ask anybody.”

“Just because they overcharge you for your supply—”

“It’s price-gouging,” he said resentfully. “They know nobody but fey can make the stuff, so they set the price as whatever they want and we damn well have to pay! You don’t want to have dealings with them.”

“Funny thing—they say the same about demons. And he’s not fey.”

Leo wrinkled his massive forehead. “Not human, Were, demon or fey? What’s left?”

“Hey, once you go vamp, you never go back,” Ray said from the depths of the duffel.

Leo jumped. “What the—”

Something buzzed against my hip. It was my phone, wedged up against me inside the duffel bag. I almost didn’t answer it, but it was Mircea, and I was going to have to talk to him sooner or later. Considering how that usually went when I was sober, I decided to try it drunk for once.

“You’re dating a vampire?” Leo asked, looking shocked.

“No, just boinking,” Ray told him.

“I’m not—That’s not even a word,” I told him, and hit TALK.

“Dorina?” Mircea wasn’t putting so much effort into the dulcet tones this time, I noticed.

“Yeah?”

“Where are you?”

“Downtown. Leolintricallus—something or other. It goes on for a while.”

“We get an additional syllable for every century we live,” Leo said, frowning. “Although I never thought I’d live long enough to see this. What the heaven were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t.”

“That’s clear enough!”

Great. The only thing worse than falling for a vamp would be having Leo tell everyone I’d fallen for a vamp. “Look, Leo, it’s not what you—”

“Dorina!” Mircea’s voice snapped.

“You sound annoyed.”

“It would not be without cause!”

“What now?” I asked wearily.

“Point number one,” he said grimly.

“Wait. There are points?”

“You do not tell me you are being chased by Hounds, and that you will call me back and then fail to do so! You have not answered your telephone for the majority of the evening!”

“I didn’t have it for the majority of the—”

“Point number two: you have free access to my properties, but I would very much appreciate it if in future my bedrooms were off-limits!”

“Woah. You did the boinking in your dad’s bedroom?” Leo looked vaguely impressed.

“Stop eavesdropping!”

“Are you kidding me? Your life is way better than anything on the soaps lately.”

“Dorina.” It sounded like Mircea might be grinding his teeth.

“Is there a point number three?” I asked. “Because you’re interfering with my drinking here.”

“Yes. If it will not inconvenience you too greatly, I should like to speak to Louis-Cesare.”

“Sorry. You missed him.”

“And yet Horatiu tells me he recently left tracking you.”

“Tracking?” I asked, getting a sinking feeling.

I jerked open the duffel, and there it was, buzzing softly. I stared at it for a moment in disbelief. He’d tagged me. The son of a bitch had tagged me with my own damn charm.

“I’m going to have to call you back,” I said grimly, clicked the phone shut and jumped up—only to find myself staring into a pair of burning blue eyes.

“Uh-oh,” Ray muttered.

Louis-Cesare didn’t say anything, unless you count breathing heavily.

“Look, this isn’t what you think,” I said, getting a solid grip on the duffel. “I wanted to get Ray away so we could talk—”

“There is nothing to say. You will return the vampire to me. Immediately.” His tone might have been that of a king talking to a peasant. It made me quietly furious.