We. Alwayswe. “I need to meditate and check out my soul home. Maybe visit with Aggie One Feather. Other than that, I don’t know.”
“Concur.”
“Areyouokay?” I asked.
“No.” He stood and walked to the door, opened it, and stopped in the shaft of light from the hallway. “I got some clean clothes from your locker downstairs. They’re in your satchel.” He left the room and closed the door softly, very carefully. He had said satchel. Not purse. Eli had once called it a purse.Once. I’d decked him and he neversaid it again. I do not carry a purse. But this time there was no teasing. He was fighting slamming the door. Eli was really messed up.
I turned off the electric blanket and rolled slowly to the floor, the blanket sliding across my skin like steel wool. The soles of my feet hurt when I transferred weight to them. I ached deep inside when I moved. Standing slowly to let my body accept what gravity was doing, moving things around inside me, I touched my side with fingertips that were hypersensitive and dry, as if all the moisture had been leached from them, leaving me with mummy skin over skeleton hands. I found a puckered scar up under my arm, higher than I had thought. There was no blood on me or the bed, not wet, tacky, or dried. Someone had stripped me and cleaned me. I smelled of lavender soap and a female human. Thank God for that.
The wound wasn’t right, however. It felt as though it had healed with microscopic shards of glass sticking from inside the new skin. I hissed softly at the touch and tried to see the scar in the small mirror over the delicate table, but it wasn’t a real mirror; it had no silver backing to insult a vamp wanting to see himself clearly and without pain. I couldn’t get a good look, only enough to tell that my hair had come down from the bun at some point and hung in a scraggly, knotted half braid. I slung it out of the way, the movement making me aware of my scent and the smell of Leo and Edmund still on me, almost, but not quite, hidden by the smell of the soap.
Vampires have scent-marked Jane,Beast thought happily.
Gag, ick, and ewww,I thought back.
Beast chuffed with laughter.
Inside the satchel was my soap from home, shampoo, conditioner, and scentless moisturizer. Comfortable clothes I could pull on without too much pain. Someone knew how to dress when injured in the chest. Eli had been injured in the chest. I had never asked how because his brother had nearly gone to prison searching for that info in DOD and Pentagon databases. It was classified. But he knew how to dress for pain. I knew without asking that he hadn’tleft my side, so he had sent for the things. There was even a bottle of water in the bottom. Portable. Unbreakable. Nice.
Sitting on a tiny bench, I managed to get into the shower and clean myself of strong-smelling soap and vampire saliva, all without falling down and hurting myself. Again. I slathered on the moisturizer and the jojoba oil soaked in, making my skin feel nearly hydrated. I went back to the satchel.
I dressed in cotton panties and a pair of yoga pants with a soft waistband. There were a selection of tops, and I chose a very tight, seamless Lycra camisole, one that would give my wound some elastic fortification, pressing against it with a steady pressure, not letting cloth or seams rub across it. Wearing it would mean I could go braless. I didn’t think I could wear a real bra, not even a sports bra, until the wound healed properly. Until I shifted intoPuma concolorand the wound went away. I stepped into it and pulled the body-hugging cami up from my feet into place. The tight fit felt good on the wound, and the shivery feeling in the tender flesh eased. I slid into a soft gold cowl-neck sweater that I loved.
There was a brush and comb in the bottom of the satchel along with a scrunchie. And my tube of red lipstick, and my stakes that had been in my hair. And my official cell. And my thigh rig with one of Eli’s nine-millimeters in it. I had left mine at home and my shoulder holster wasn’t going to work, not tonight. Eli had known. His thoughtfulness was nearly my undoing. I was thirsty and shaky and tears pooled in my eyes. One fell and landed on my hand while I tried to unsnarl my braid. I remembered the blue eye that had faded green. I needed to talk to Gee DiMercy.
I gave up on my hair and checked the load on the nine-mil, set the safety, and weaponed up. The sweater hung long and I tucked the hem into the top of the thigh rig to keep it out of the way.
A knock came at the door and I said, “It’s open.”
Edmund stepped into the bathroom. I had expected Eli. The vamp stopped with that undead, block of marblething they do, and he sniffed. A strand of horror in his voice, he said, “You are crying.”
Which made me laugh through the tears. “Yeah. I don’t even know why. I need water. Tears are a stupid waste of it.”
Edmund stepped back into the room and I followed, to the far side of the bed, where he opened a small refrigerator I hadn’t noticed. From it he drew a six-pack of flavored bottled electrolyte water, chilled and icy. He opened the first bottle and handed it to me with a slight nod, like a truncated bow.
“I’m not your master,” I said.
“Drink. Please,” he added. “Slowly, so you don’t become ill.”
And toss my cookies all over his fancy décor. I got it. So I drank. I finished off three bottles of water and set the empties beside the bottle I had finished earlier. The fluid made me feel better, but I probably needed more sugar and electrolytes, because the expected spurt of energy didn’t come. Before I could fall, I sat on the edge of the unmade bed. It smelled of blood and spit and other things I didn’t want to think about. I pulled my snarled wet hair to the front and worried at it. “Who did Eli shoot?” I asked, more to make conversation and keep Edmund from noticing the tremble in my fingers than from any real interest.
“The new cybersecurity expert, for one.”
I glanced up from under my eyebrows. “New—? No one told me about this,” I said. One of our last electronic security experts had died, sitting in the chair in front of his console, attacked by a vamp from behind. It shouldn’t have happened. He should have been able to see the attack coming.
Edmund’s lips twitched. “No. She arrived yesterday, a young Mithran named Pauline Easter, out of Atlanta. When Leo choses a Master of the City of Atlanta, she will go back, fully trained in the proper way to set up cyber protections. Stop fussing with that.” He pushed my hands aside, took my braid, and levered himself on the bed beside me. I stiffened at the unexpected action and had to force myself to relax. In moments Edmund had the knots at thetip unsnarled and was finger-combing my hair. When it was free and hanging in tangled ripples, he took the comb from the satchel and began combing out the knots. I steeled myself for yanking on my scalp, but there wasn’t any. And suddenly I didn’t know what to do with my hands. A vamp, a creature at the top of the food chain, was combing my hair, like... I didn’t know like what, except it felt weird.
“I was trained in the art of being a ladies’ maid when I was a young Mithran, newly released from the scion lair,” Edmund said, a faint, amused edge to his voice, as if he was teasing me or testing me.
My eyebrows went up and he chuckled, probably smelling my surprise. The comb slowed and stroked through my hair, smoothing it, soothing me. “I insulted my original master when I first rose undead and was sold into indentured servitude to a Mithran in Charleston,” he said. “She owned a brothel, one of three in the city that catered to the most wealthy. Mithrans were cheaper than slaves,” he added, his voice now edged with a trace of bitterness, like the faint tang of poison in a fine wine. “We healed quickly, we worked nights when humans were sleeping, we didn’t have to be fed often, we could simply be set free on the docks for one or two nights a week to feed.”
“You were starved,” I murmured, and closed my eyes as he combed my hair.
“Yes. Times are... much better now, here, in America, for some. For most, I suppose, though the effects of slavery will stain a people with pain for hundreds of years. Eh.” There was a mental of shifting of gears with the syllable. “As a human, I had been educated, overly fond of myself, and a braggart. I was also unskilled in the manners and abilities my new master required, and so was set to menial labor: hauling water, chopping wood, and heating the baths in the elegant old brothel. It was an education I was not prepared for. After a year or two ofbehavior modification,” he said wryly, “I learned to keep my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself. It was that or starve into madness.
“By taking cuffs and beatings and not complaining, I worked my way up from transporting filth to the drainageditch leading to the river, to washing dishes and setting tables, to pouring wine and mead and beer for the guests, to training as a ladies’ maid. I was educated, as I said, and learned to turn my gift for words into flattery and blandishment. I developed a silver tongue. The girls liked having a man wait on them, curl their hair, trim their nails, choose their attire for the evening. Someone strong enough to protect them if they called out the safe word, though it was not called such at the time.”
Edmund set the brush down and divided my hair into four sections, then divided the one over my left eye and temple into three more sections. He began to plait this small section in some complicated pattern, not a simple braid, but one where he pulled a few strands loose to hang free with each twist. It felt soft and feathery against my skin. It would never do for fighting, but for now... And then I remembered what we were talking about.
