Page 103 of Bought for Blood

“I’m complimenting you. I have very little else to offer, and I dislike being rude.”

“You’ve been perfectly civil.” She turns the page. “The other houses.”

Her face is impassive.

The man with the cigarettes comes back with another cup. I don’t bother fighting it. My arms go heavy again as the drug does its work. Ecaterina waits through it without comment, and when my mouth works, I use it.

“I have a great deal of money.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“More than this operation will see in ten years. I could put you somewhere with no extradition and no Court presence. You’d be on a plane before anyone here noticed you were gone.”

She writes for a while before she answers.

“That’s a serious offer,” she says.

“It is.”

“Thank you.” She underlines something. “My second question. Where is the woman you bought?”

“Sold on. A man in Lisbon. I didn’t ask his name.”

“You paid a very large sum for her.”

“I pay large sums for lots of things. Look at my account. I buy what interests me, and very little interests me for long.”

She writes it down. I watch the pen and keep my expression fixed. The arm helps with that.

“Who brokered the Lisbon sale?”

“A dealer. He approached me saying he’d heard what I had. Collectors talk to each other.”

“Which collectors introduced you?”

“None. He wrote to me. Rare blood gets discussed in certain circles, and I’d stopped being discreet.”

“When did she leave your house?”

“I don’t keep a diary of my purchases going out the door. Ask your own people; somebody logged an inquiry about her five nights before you took me. Perhaps they know something I don’t.”

That’s a risk, and I take it deliberately. Her pen slows for half a line, and then keeps going.

Then, without any change in her voice:

“The purchase. Did the Court tell you to buy her, or was that your own money?”

There it is. Either answer puts Serenity in danger. If the Court told me to buy her, then she matters to the Court, and this woman’s superiors will want to know why. If I bought her with my own money, then she matters to me, and she becomes the lever they use on me.

So I answer with neither.

“The Court doesn’t buy blood,” I say. “It polices the people who do. And I buy whatever interests me at the time. She interested me, the novelty wore off, and the Lisbon offer made it worthwhile to sell her. If you’re looking for meaning in my account, you’ll be looking a long time.”

Ecaterina studies me. Then she writes one line. I can’t read her face while she does it, and I can’t read the line.

“All right,” she says, and closes the notebook over her thumb. “Do you know what I think? I think you’ve been fed, rested, and sure of yourself for three hundred years, and tonight you have enough left in you to keep this act up. That will change. The stuff you’ve been drinking does more than take your strength. It’s brewed to sharpen the thirst.” She stands and picks up her chair. “By tomorrow night you’ll be ravenous. You’ll stop being a Seigneur and start being an animal, and animals answer questions. We’ll talk again after sunset. Think about Lisbon.”

The door shuts behind her. I’m locked in the dark cell.