Tangled Webs (8 page)

Let it go. He wasn’t the right man for you anyway.

“What I’m trying to say is, I will stand as an official escort for you whenever you need one—or whenever it is required that you have one,” Rainier said. “But I’m not here for the sake of ambition. I’m here because I like you. All right?”

She nodded, then puffed out a breath. “I guess I’m just being moody. Or bitchy.”

A warm smile now. “I hadn’t noticed.”

He was teasing her, poking fun of her usual sharp tongue. Something a friend would do. Something a man
wouldn’t
do unless he was sure the teasing would be taken as intended.

Cheered by the thought, she moved toward the back shelves. The dapper-looking man who had come in while she and Rainier were talking saw her coming toward him, flushed as if he’d been caught doing something dirty, and ducked out of sight.

Her cheerful mood vanished as she stared at the spot where the man had been. Something about him. Something not quite right. Like he’d dressed very carefully for an afternoon out, but it was a laboriously constructed costume, and he had missed some small detail that skewed everything else just enough to scratch her temper. Added to that was the suspicion that he’d been trying to eavesdrop on a conversation and hadn’t been happy when she’d caught him at it.

She considered sending Rainier down another aisle and boxing the man between the two of them, but she had seen no Jewel, didn’t get any sense of threat or power. In fact, she got so little sense of him, she wasn’t even sure he
was
Blood. Was she going to scare the shit out of a man and spoil his pleasant afternoon of browsing in the bookshop just because she didn’t like something about the way he dressed?

Since she couldn’t say with certainty that her reaction wasn’t the result of an edginess caused by talking about Falonar, she turned to Rainier and said, “Help me find the first Jarvis Jenkell story about the Blood. And while we’re doing that, you can tell me again about this spooky house.”

Late that evening, Daemon sprawled across the big bed, naked, sated, and blissfully content, his head pillowed in Jaenelle’s lap. They had bathed after a hungry session of lovemaking, but he still caught a light whiff of their mingled scents beneath the clean smell of soap.

So tempting to turn his head and press a kiss on that triangle between her thighs. But a kiss through her nightgown would make him want to push up the fabric in order to taste skin, and that kind of kiss would lead to other kinds of kisses.

He’d already indulged himself with those other kinds of kisses.

Besides, she was reading a book and petting him, her fingers drifting through his hair, over his shoulders and back. He could float on that sensation, and he did, beginning to settle into sleep when…
tap. tap tap. tap. tap tap.
Her finger against his shoulder.

He knew that rhythm. It seldom boded well.

“Are you asleep?” Jaenelle asked.

“Mmmm.” Noncommittal response. Could mean anything.
tap. tap tap.

“Daemon?”

He opened his eyes halfway.

“When we have sex, does your penis weep with gratitude?”

A handful of answers flashed through his mind. If he said any of them, he would end up sleeping in the Consort’s room. Alone.

“In what context?” he asked.

She lowered the book. Since he’d acknowledged being awake, he raised his head and read the passage. Then he read it again.

“Sweetheart, if my penis ever does that, you will be the first to know. Not as my wife, but as a Healer.”

“That’s what I thought, but I wanted to be sure.”

Hearing the frown in her voice, he shifted, reluctantly, and propped himself up on one elbow. “What are you reading?”

She flashed him a guilty look. “A book by Jarvis Jenkell.”

At least you didn’t kick me this time.
“That book doesn’t start with a body in a closet, does it?”

“Yes, it does.”

Hell’s fire. Well, Rainier would get to deal with Surreal when they reached that part of the story. And wouldn’t that be fun?

“Do you think there’s something wrong with his brain?”

He studied her expression. Not a flippant question.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with his sanity?”

Definitely not a flippant question when asked by a witch who was a Black Widow as well as a Healer.

“Are we talking about the writer or the character?” Daemon asked.

“I’m not sure,” she replied, looking troubled.

Uneasy now, he pulled the sheet up to his waist, a defensive gesture. “Why are you asking? Because Jenkell wrote a bad sex scene?” Appalling was a more accurate description.

“No, I’m asking because he seems to think this is normal behavior for the Blood.”

He hesitated a moment, then said softly, “It’s not that far off from what was done in some of the Terreillean courts.” Other places. Other beds. None where he served willingly. Those weren’t memories he wanted to stir up and bring to the surface. Not now. Not ever.

Jaenelle looked at him with those sapphire eyes. Looked through him. Saw him in ways no one else ever had—or could.

She vanished the book, then shifted so that she was propped up on an elbow, close enough to him that all she had to do was lean a little to kiss him.

Memories swam up to the surface. Ugly, hateful memories. As he looked at Jaenelle, his heart pounded, but it wasn’t from excitement or lust.

Submit. Serve. Play the whore.

He couldn’t do it. Not even as a game. Not with Jaenelle.

“Daemon?” Her lips touched his in a soft kiss.

He couldn’t do this, had to stop this before she became aroused. If he tried to oblige her while the memories churned inside him, it would damage the feelings between them.

“Do you want to sneak down to the kitchen and snitch whatever Mrs. Beale is hiding in the cold box?”

He blinked once. Twice. Waited for his heart to settle back down to a normal beat.

Love and mischief. That’s what he saw in her eyes. She, too, had emotional scars that had come from violence in the bed. She would recognize when something came too close to one of his scars.

As she looked at him, waiting for an answer, different memories washed through his mind. Memories of Jaenelle when she was twelve and he had been her grandmother’s pleasure slave. She had talked him into silly, mischievous adventures during those months, dragging him into the game like a well-loved toy that had half the stuffing hugged out of it. She’d given him a taste of innocent childhood.

She was making the same offer now.

“We do have our own kitchen and some food in the cold box.” Well,
he
had his own small kitchen where he could putter around when he felt like cooking. That recent renovation was a very large thorn in Mrs. Beale’s side, and he had the feeling that the negotiations required before she accepted that addition had just begun.

The fact that a Yellow-Jeweled witch, whom he paid very well to be the cook at the Hall, could make him uneasy about renovating his own home sparked a little, boyish flame of defiance in him.

“Do you think there’s anything worth snitching?” he asked.

“This afternoon, when I went to the kitchen doorway to ask for a plate of fruit and cheese, she seemed more territorial than usual.”

That was a terrifying thought.

He brushed a finger over Jaenelle’s shoulder. “We do own the Hall, and we do pay for all the food, so we are entitled to eat anything we want from either kitchen.”

“Uh-huh. If we’re caught, you should try that argument.”

A picture in his head: him with his hands full of pilfered food; Mrs. Beale and her meat cleaver, both wearing old-fashioned, frilly nightcaps, blocking the doorway and waiting for an explanation.

Mother Night.

Since they were partners in this late-night venture, he reached for Jaenelle’s mind and lightly brushed against her first inner barrier. When she opened the barrier, he showed her his imagined picture of Mrs. Beale.

“Oh.
Ick.
” Jaenelle scrunched up her face and made gagging noises. Then she stopped making noises and looked at him, her eyes owl wide. “Do you think she really wears one of those things? Does anyone wear those anymore?”

“I have no idea.”

“Beale sleeps with her,” Jaenelle whispered. “Do you think the meat cleaver has its own little bed?”

He shuddered. “If I were Beale, I wouldn’t share a bed with that meat cleaver.” Although Beale might think the same about him occasionally sharing a bed with an eight-hundred-pound cat.

“They have sex,” Jaenelle whispered.

“No. No no no.
That
is too scary to consider.” He swung out of bed. “Come on. Let’s do this before one of us remembers we’re supposed to be adults.”

She laughed, and that silvery, velvet-coated sound washed away the rest of the bad memories, leaving nothing but the anticipation of a mischievous adventure.

They were laughing at him.

He’d gone to the bookshop in Amdarh that afternoon to spend some time among his own kind, to give them a chance to recognize who he was—and to listen to their praise of his latest book.

The Blood hadn’t recognized him, hadn’t recognized the significance of his being in that store. As for praising his latest book…

Oh, they had liked him well enough when they had thought he was a clever landen who could spin a good tale, but when he had tried to show them who he really was, the truth about
what
he was,
they had laughed at him.

Landry Langston wasn’t just a character in a story. Landry Langston was
him.
A half-Blood raised by a landen mother. A half-Blood who had matured into a man strong enough to
be
Blood.

He didn’t know their customs, didn’t know their Protocol, didn’t know what it meant to be Blood.
How could he?
He hadn’t grown up in one of their precious villages, hadn’t grown up surrounded by this dance, as they called the constant ebb and flow of dominance that depended on who was in the room. Instead of being trained all through his childhood and youth, as he should have been, he had to
pay
for information about his heritage. His “consultants” had been quick enough to take the gold marks he offered in exchange for “research,” but he now wondered about the accuracy of their information—and wondered if they’d given him just enough to make him look foolish.

As for his other “consultant”…Well, he couldn’t trust much of
anything
that came from
that
mind.

At the bookshop, they had laughed at his portrayal of the Blood, had laughed at him. But they had done much worse here at the hotel. Here, they
pitied
him.

Thank the Dark he hadn’t used his real name when he checked in. After that humiliation in the bookshop, he didn’t want anyone to know he was in this thrice-cursed city. He almost changed his mind about revealing who he was when the clerks at the desk
did
acknowledge him as Blood. Then he looked into their eyes and listened to their carefully phrased words…and realized they thought he was a
broken
male, someone who had been stripped of so much of his power, he was barely one of them anymore.

Didn’t stop them from taking the gold marks. No, his lack of power didn’t stop
any
of them from taking a hefty fee for the pittance they were willing to share.

Like this room. If he’d gone to a landen establishment in a nearby city, he could have had a better room for half the price. But he’d wanted to stay at a hotel that catered to the Blood. For what? The room he’d been given wasn’t any different from rooms he’d had in landen cities—was, in fact, stripped of almost everything that required Craft. On purpose. Because they didn’t believe he was capable of being like them.

And he wasn’t capable. Not yet anyway.

They thought they were so special, so powerful, so superior.

Daemon Sadi, for example. He’d personally sent
Prince
Sadi a copy of his new book. The bastard hadn’t even had the courtesy to write a sentence acknowledging the gift. And
certainly
hadn’t sent the desired dinner invitation.

And then there was
Lady
Surreal. He’d heard of her. Who
hadn’t
heard of her? Nothing but a whore, but she could stand in a shop and publicly laugh at an
educated
man for no other reason than because she wore a
Jewel.

There was more than one kind of power. The Blood made the rules and ruled the Realm, but they weren’t all-powerful, weren’t invincible. A clever man could defeat them and prove he was worthy of notice, of respect.

Pitting one kind of skill against another, a clever man could defeat them. Even the most powerful among them.

Of course, it might not be prudent to admit being the author of such a scheme, but he’d know, for himself, that he could stand among them.

And Lady Jaenelle Angelline herself had provided him with a way of covering his tracks. He’d been a little upset when he’d thought she had stolen his idea and spoiled the setting for his next novel, but now that only meant that people could confirm he’d begun the new Landry Langston story
before
the tragic events took place.

Yes, there was more than one kind of power, and he had the means of weaving a wonderful plot.

He would give the Blood a story the SaDiablo family would never forget.

At least, the ones who were still alive.

SIX

“N
o, witch-child. I will
not
say
bwaa ha ha.
”

“But it’s for—”

“No!”
Saetan slammed the books down on the blackwood table in the Keep’s library. “If you choose to insult what we are, that is your decision. But I will
not
participate.”

Jaenelle stared at him, stunned. “It’s just a little fun.”