Tears filled my eyes. I blinked them away, but not before he saw them, or smelled them.
“Jane?” Alarm in his tone.
But I held up my hand and shook my head. “I’m good. Just sleep deprived and tired and... and I feel so... grateful? Happy?” I reached over and took his hands, squeezing them as I bowed my head, saying a silent thanks. Wordlessly, I listed the ways my life was better, richer, happier. Tears scalded down my face as I silently prayed.
When I stopped, he said softly, “And I am eternally thankful for Jane Yellowrock in my life. Amen.”
I lifted my eyes to his and was startled to see tears pooled there, mirroring my own. Except I was all salty and snotty and splotched, I was sure, and he was still gorgeous.
“There was a time when I believed that I was nothing in life without the Mithrans, without my position with Leo. That without his blood I’d be useless and lacking in value of any sort. And then I met you, a woman with enough power to stand against him, tall and strong and vibrant. Without being dependent on drinking blood.” He kissed my knuckles, released one hand, and lifted his glass in a toast. “You give me courage to be Onorio. To Jane Yellowrock.”
“And to us,” I toasted back and drank. And said, “Holy crap, this is good!” I sipped again. “I actually like this one. It’s really, really good! It’s—” I had no wine-type words to describe it.
“Buttery,” Bruiser said. “You always like buttery whites. It’s excellent with the soup.”
I sopped my face with the cloth napkin and spoonedsome soup into my mouth. I wasn’t fond of squash, but this stuff was different. “Apples. It has apples in it. And something green and sweet. And chicken stock.”
“Anise,” Bruiser said. He was trying to share with me his own appreciation of wine and fine food. “It’s from the anise, or fennel, plant.”
I placed the cloth in my lap, slung my loose hair out of the way, and sat like the lady one of the housemothers had tried to make of me. “I like it.”
We ate. And ate. And when the soup was gone and the wine bottle was empty and the salmon was picked down to the bones, Bruiser took a warm towel and wiped my hands clean. The towel smelled of oranges and so did his mouth when he kissed me and led me to the couch. “Sit. We need to talk and work for a bit.”
“Yada yada.”
He sat beside me and pulled a soft fuzzy blanket over us. “Yada,” he agreed. “But I can rub your feet while we chat.”
“You are the best boyfriend ever.”
He took my feet and gently squeezed them. “You first.”
I started with the easy stuff, telling him about Aya and Aggie One Feather, the usual debrief stuff. “But there’s something else. The Kid tracked Julietta Tempeste. She came to the U.S. on a tourist visa two months ago. Alex is trying to track her.”
“Clan Des Citrons. Does Leo know?” he asked.
“I texted him an update.”
His fingers worked the kinks out of my feet as he thought it through. Bruiser frowned, the lines on either side of his nose pulling down. Those lines had become deeper with worry and with the problems that piled up against us.
His frown softened. “My turn.” He told me stuff I didn’t half listen to. “Leo got a letter in the mail from the Carusos.”
“The old funeral home directors, the ones who created revenants and the revenant concoction?”
“Yes. The letter was held by their attorneys here inNew Orleans, and mailed when it became clear that Titus Flavius Vespasianus would come ashore. They acted against Leo for decades and left under duress because Laurie’s daughter was being held by Titus. They deliberately left that bottle of Titus’s secret revenant potion in their fridge for Leo to find.”
“Deliberately? Are we supposed to fall for that?”
“The lawyer agreed to be bled and read by Leo. He believes it to be true. Leo wants us to save the entire Caruso family if possible, if he wins the Sangre Duello.”
“Easy peasy. Not.”
Bruiser smiled slightly. “Katie is in Atlanta. She invaded the lairs of a dozen Mithrans and ash-staked them in their sleep, disabling them. Then she dragged them to a room filled with silver-plated scion prisons. She’ll start her own negotiations tonight.”
“Katie did that in thedaytime?” I enunciated the last word. “Because, vampires.”
“Katie slept in the blood of eight clans. She will be the strongest Mithran in the Americas for quite some time.”
“Meaning that if she wanted Leo’s position she could have it.”
