“Oh. Yeah, wel , you insisted—” I jerked my thumb at Kyphas so she’d get the lead out and stand up already.
She shot to her feet, but with a ful -faced pout that revealed just how much Cole’s comment had hurt her.
Damn. Maybe she has a heart after all.
Kyphas raised her arms to return his hug, her hands hanging limply as if she’d inherited some zombie traits from her mom’s side of the family. Vayl raked his eyes over her.
“It would help if my walking stick was balanced on those,” he snapped. “But I wil forgive you since you are, in fact, Helena’s maid.” And then he engulfed Bergman in a hug so enthusiastic I was pretty sure I heard some Russian tourists cheering in the streets.
“How are you, my dear?” Vayl asked, patting Bergman on his fluffy head when the hug had ended. “I missed you. I had not realized our travels tired you so greatly. Here, let us be seated while you tel me everything.”
“Uh.” Bergman shot a look of pure panic over his shoulder as Vayl took him by the hand and began to lead him toward the couch. I’m not a girl! he mouthed.
Suck it up. I’m not a fat Italian housekeeper either! I mouthed right back.
Cole was making a hel uva racket taking down Vayl’s bed tent. Normal y it col apsed very quietly. Then I realized he was punctuating the folding of the poles with swal owed snorts of laughter.
Which made me smile. When I thought about it, I could see how it was kind of—
“It’s not funny, Berggia!” Bergman said.
“That’s me!” Cole hooted. “I’m Berggia. And you’re Helena!” He pointed at Kyphas. “And you are a maid. How do you like that, Ky—”
Vayl interrupted. “I assume you al have better things to do than stand around exchanging names? Madame Berggia, that ensemble you are wearing is completely inappropriate for a woman of your age and girth. And you have, once again, worn your hair down around your shoulders like a common strumpet. Must we have this conversation twice, or shal I just sack you and leave you in Morocco without a means of transportation back to England?”
I reached for the lamp on the table but Kyphas intercepted my hand. “You’l regret it later,” she murmured.
“What do you know about regret?” I snapped.
“More than you can imagine.” I caught her glancing toward Cole, but was too busy glaring at Vayl to give it much thought. Natural y, he remained total y oblivious to me.
Al his attention focused on Bergman, who he thought was the little girl he’d saved from a werewolf attack seven years earlier. Since my newest blood-borne skil seemed to be reliving his past, I’d been in Vayl’s body for a replay of that battle. So I knew he’d risked his life for her. But I thought he’d given her money when it was over and told her to leave. Until the previous day I’d had no idea he’d gone after her and promised to take care of her until she became independent.
1777-Vayl is a coldhearted shit, I thought. Unless your name is Helena.
I toyed with the idea of changing my name to something Vayl would respond to with as much love and kindness as he showed her. But it couldn’t be a tag you’d hang on your favorite great-aunt. Would people want to cal if I answered the phone by saying, “You’ve reached Myrtle!” Then I realized someone was repeating my real name into my ear.
“Jasmine? Yoo-hoo!”
I touched the receiver, waking to the ful crapality of my present life when I saw Vayl walking ahead of me, stil smoking that stinking cigar.
“Jaz! What are you waiting for?” Bergman demanded.
“Find out why Vayl’s so worried about Helena. Maybe you can convince him to lock her in her room for her own safety.”
“Bad idea,” I replied.
“Come on! I’ve been so busy playing Vayl’s favorite teenager I haven’t had time to set up the security system properly. And don’t tel me to relax because the riad’s already got an alarm. You know it’s outdated,” Bergman snapped. Meaning he hadn’t invented it.
Vayl, responding to my comment as wel , said, “I know you hate my cigars, Madame Berggia, but they help me think. And you did ask about Helena.”
“Yes, I did.”
I tried to focus al my attention on the vampire strol ing through Marrakech’s old city like he was the damn mayor, but Cole was stil interested in the security system issue.
He said, “I don’t get the paranoia. We left Astral there.” Vayl frowned. “How is Helena’s kitten going to protect her from werewolves?”
her from werewolves?”
At the same time Bergman’s snort rattled my eardrums.
“A robotic cat who can shoot a couple of grenades out her butt is no comfort when you have a demon sleeping in the next room!”
Cole whispered, “Bergman! Kyphas told me personal y that she’s not interested in your soul. It’s probably only wired for space travel anyway.”
Vayl said, “What?”
I said, “You know Berggia, Vay—I mean, Lord Brâncoveanu.” Cole and I crossed our eyes at each other.
“He has such a strange sense of humor sometimes. Now, about Helena and the werewolves—”
But Bergman wasn’t done with his side of our bizarre conversation. He said, “Even if I believed you, Cole, which I don’t, that doesn’t change what happened to… your supervisor.”
Ouch. We paused, none of us even able yet to say Pete’s name, his murder was stil such an open wound. And it wasn’t healing any faster in light of the fact that we felt we’d triply betrayed him.
Because we stil didn’t know who’d kil ed him.
Therefore—
We couldn’t avenge his death, plus—
We’d missed his funeral.
It didn’t help that Pete would’ve understood that we had to find the Rocenz pronto. And that Vayl in his present state would’ve been impossible to explain to the grieving widow.
But I preferred imagining that Pete would’ve been überpissed to find out we’d skipped the final ceremony of his life. That would’ve been a more comforting feeling.
Familiar. Like al the times he’d yel ed at me for wrecking rental cars during the course of my assignments. Not that they’d—al —been my fault.
Wah, wah, wah, my God, you’re a bigger whiner than Mom. It was my inner adolescent. Teen Me lay on her stomach on Evie’s bed because, of course, hers wasn’t made. She was reading a comic book she’d stolen from Dave’s stash while she listened to her fave radio station, WFAT, play Casey Kasem’s American Top Forty. While Matchbox Twenty sang, “She says, baby, it’s 3 a.m. I must be lonely,” Teen Me said, Remember all that bitching she used to do? Teen Me launched into a great imitation of Stel a’s smoke-roughened voice. “Gawd, working at night sucks. You kids should try it sometime. Maybe then you’ll be a little more grateful for the food I put on this table.” She snorted. As if Albert didn’t always have his check sent to the house! Oh, do you remember this one? “What the hell, you mean I have to go to the Laundromat again?
Why can’t you kids wear a pair of jeans more than once?
What are we, the Rockefellers?”
I said, I sound nothing like her! Wait, that did have something of a whiny undertone.