Page 63 of Bought for Blood

“So, no change,” says Rouvel, who smirks at me.

Théo laughs at that harder than the joke earns, already onto his fourth glass, and Julian tells Serenity a long, cheerful story about a road trip that ended with Odile buying a pony.

“In the middle of the night,” he says, waving a hand. “Do you know how hard it is to get a pony into a truck in the middle of the night?”

I sit at the head of my own table and watch the room decide it likes her.

Then the venison comes up, and I watch what it costs the four of us who can taste her from here.

God help me.

I should have thought this through. But I seem to have lost the ability to do that since she came into my world.

It’s the heat. Two fires, seven bodies, her skin flushed with the wine. The warmth lifts the smell of her off her skin and carries it the length of the table. Théo and Julian are warm too, ordinary and pleasant and uninteresting; mortal blood I could take orleave on any given night. Hers is the only scent in the room that means anything at all, and every one of us who isn’t human can taste it on the air.

“Is it hot in here?” Odile says, echoing my thoughts.

Tavora sets her glass down and doesn’t pick it up again. Rouvel stops in the middle of a story about a duel and starts again a beat late. He flicks a look over to Serenity, his eyes on the left side of her throat where the diamonds don’t reach.

My own mouth is wet. I don’t fight it.

Odile catches my eye across the table, reads my face well enough, and turns to her boys.

“Théo. Julian. Go find the billiards room. There’s one somewhere in this mausoleum, I promise you.”

“Is there?” Théo looks delighted at the prospect of a mausoleum with a billiards room in it.

“There’s a game room off the gallery,” I say. “Third door.”

They go, taking a bottle with them. The room settles once they’re gone.

Tavora stands as they leave. “Forgive me. Bastien. Mademoiselle. It’s a lovely evening, and I’m going to leave in the middle of it.”

“Is something wrong?” Serenity asks.

“Nothing at all.” She looks at me. “And everything.”

She kisses Odile’s cheek and goes.

Rouvel watches the door. Then he turns back and stretches his arm along the back of his chair.

“Does the livestock dine with us now?”

Odile’s face empties.

I move my glass a half inch to the left, which is what I do instead of the other thing, which would ruin the evening. I don’t get to say anything at all, because Serenity does.

“It does.” She folds her napkin and looks straight at him. “It also holds its wine better than you.”

Rouvel’s mouth opens. A snort of laughter gets away from Odile, not even close to disguised. The color comes up on Rouvel’s face. Then he decides to recover.

“Sébastien.” He’s smiling again. “Name a price. An evening. Any price you like. I’m not a poor man.”

Nobody at the table moves.

Then I’m at his chair. There’s the head of the table, and then there’s my hand on the back of his chair beside his shoulder, and nobody saw me cross the floor.

“She dines with me. You dine at my invitation, which I can withdraw.”