Page 28 of Bought for Blood

I turn my head then and let him have my full attention, and whatever he finds in it takes the smile off his face. “We aren’t. Age isn’t the difference. Everything you know, someone sold you. Go sit with the people who fund your existence. And if a rumor about my appetites reaches me again wearing your voice, I’ll take it up with your sponsors. You won’t enjoy how.”

He manages a nod. He leaves without managing anything else.

Odile watches him all the way back to the table he arrived with.

“Meridian,” she snorts. “That goddamn organization will turn anyone who can afford the fee these days. Five new feeders in the past five years alone. There are wagers on which of their clients survives the decade.”

“Not many of them, I imagine.” I have little time for the elders who sell their signatures for turnings. There are reasons we have rules about who can make one of our kind. Sterling is one of them.

“None of them, if you ask me.” She studies me over her glass. “He wasn’t entirely wrong about one thing, though. Peoplearesaying you’ve been slumming it. Where’s that coming from?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Mm-hmm.” Not a question this time. Just an answer. She doesn’t push, which isn’t like her.

Vasile is cleverer than the bowing suggests. A house like that has one asset worth more than anything on its shelves—its client list—and a Seigneur who visits regularly is proof of quality, murmured into the right rooms at a markup. He’s selling my name to sell what’s behind it, and every rumor he plants makesme more the thing I’m pretending to be. When the Court finally burns that house down, they’ll take his whole ledger of buyers with it.

I turn the empty glass once in my hand and don’t remember picking it up.

I go over the terms of my own arrangement instead. First call. I drink before anyone else does, on the days I’m there. It says nothing about the days I’m not. I built it that way on purpose, so I wouldn’t price my own curiosity into the deal and hand Vasile a number he could work with. It felt clever, signing it.

She’s alone in that building. My cleverness is the only thing standing between her and whoever else decides they want a taste.

“You’ve gone quiet,” Odile says.

“I’m thinking.”

“About a woman.”

I don’t correct that.

“You’re leaving,” she says, certain of it. I’m already standing. I don’t know when that happened.

“I have an early evening tomorrow.”

“Yes.” She nods, rising too. “Yes, I’m sure you do.”

“There will be a time when I tell you more, Odile,” I say. “Now is not that time.”

She smiles. “Take the bird, Bastien.”

The young man reappears at her shoulder with her coat. She doesn’t look at him, just extends her arm back for the sleeve, already done with both of us for the evening.

I take the cage from the settlement table on my way out, my fingers finding the cold bars before I’ve decided to touch them. The silent wren rocks on its perch. The street is cold and empty down to the car. I should be thinking about Vasile, and the Court, and the uses of a rumor.

Instead I think about who else that rumor might reach, and what it will cost her if it does.

Chapter 11

Serenity

The guard turns right at the draw station, and my feet carry on left without me.

“Hey.” His hand closes on my arm and pulls me around. “This way.”

“The room’s the other way.”

“Not tonight.”