“What about her husband?” The Driver asked. “Mr.Alvarez. You gonna watch him die, too?”
“That might be exactly why I am here this night,” Asil admitted genially. “Tell me why that would be a good idea.”
“Not yet. Answer Mrs.Alvarez’s question, please,” The Driver growled. “What are you? Why do you think that you are up to facing off with a three-hundred-year-old vampire?”
“Alvarez is the vampire to whom you refer?” asked Asil. Itwas better to be clear on things than to find out one should have asked different questions.
“Alvarez,” The Driver agreed.
Three centuries was a very old vampire. Seventeenth century…no, eighteenth century. When did that happen, that three hundred years meant the seventeen hundreds?
“You should go to the ball and then leave town,” The Driver said. “If you aren’t a Gray Lord, you don’t stand any more of a chance in moving against him than Mrs.Alvarez or I do.”
Asil debated what to tell The Driver. It wouldn’t do any good trying to explain what Asil was to someone entirely ignorant of his story. Stories about the Moor had power only if they were told by someone other than the Moor himself.
He would tell him instead the results of being the Moor and let The Driver judge for himself.
“I am far older than three hundred years, and I have not survived by being stupid. I have killed old vampires before and I will live to do it again. If I say, then, that I can help you, you should believe me. Come, children, tell me your stories. Once I know what I am dealing with, I can be of more use.”
Mari-Brigid stared at him. “What are you?”
“I am a monster,” he told her truthfully. If a fae were asked the same question three times, they had to answer truthfully. For some of the fae anyway. “Tell me about your monster.”
“All right,” she said, her voice rising to his challenge.
The Driver shifted his weight, but subsided when she shook her head at him.
“It doesn’t matter if he knows.”
After a moment, the man nodded.
“My husband prefers that I sleep with other men,” she said.
Asil raised a single hand to indicate that he knew that already. That was, presumably, why they were on this date.
“He usually arranges something—like tonight. He dresses me as he pleases and sends me out.”
“Like a child playing with a doll,” said The Driver.
She nodded. “Like that. He sends me out with a stranger. Dinner or dancing. Sometimes a charitable event—he has a hand in several local charities. Theater. Then back to the condo.”
“Does he have cameras there?” Asil asked.
“No,” The Driver said. “I don’t think he wants to watch.”
“He makes me tell him,” she said in a brittle voice. “Like giving a book report in high school, except in a dark room with a blindfold on.”
Many creatures grew odd as they aged, but Asil would have thought that he’d remember a vampire with that particular kink. He nudged the wolf who lived inside him but got no answer.
“I couldn’t do that,” she whispered, looking away from both of the males in the car with her rather than looking at anything outside of the car. “I couldn’t sleep with strangers—with anyone I am not married to. The first man…he was very understanding. A gentleman. Kind, even.” She gave a hiccuping horrified laugh. “He told me I needed to find a different husband. Offered to help.”
She composed herself. “I went home, and like a fool I told my husband what I had done.” She smiled grimly, amused by her earlier self. “One doesn’t wish to live dishonestly, after all.” Her smile fled. “That hubris cost a very nice man his life. I didn’t make that mistake again.”
Her flat tone of repressed horror was enough for Asil, who knew something of old vampires and monsters.
She had not slept with the second man, either. Instead, she had taken her untouched self to her home and made up a sexual encounter mostly derived from a particularly torrid romance book.
It hadn’t taken long to learn how to get rid of the eager men.
