Wrath and Bones (29 page)

My eyes followed the direction of Batten’s gaze and fell on the banner of House Nazaire, where Malas immediately caught my eye; I went still, captured in the hypnotic lure of his cornflower blue eyes as they shot through with gold.
Oh, crap. You dumbass
, I told myself, swimming in the draw of his casual mindfuck. For a moment, the creepy, withered rotten creature faded away into a vision of Malas in his cavalry days, dangerously handsome, black hair a curly riot as he lifted his helmet and shook out his damp locks, laughing in the face of yet another screaming lecture from Napoleon.

I broke eye contact, but only because Malas got bored and released me.

“Clever vamp,” I cursed, barely above a breath, and then froze at my accidental use of the V-word. Batten actually nudged me, cutting shocked eyes at me. “Sorry. Sorry! It’s just…” I didn’t so much gesture at Malas as indicate him with a subtle tilt of my head. “Reminding me of the man he once was. I’m guessing he recognizes you and is trying to lull me to make sure I keep you in line.”

“Well, control yourself.”

I screwed up my face. “Hi, I’m Marnie. Have we met?”

“Can’t Harry do something about you?” Batten asked.

“You want Harry to cock-block other dudes?” I smirked. “That’s a riot, coming from you. If he could, do you think I’d be groping you at every opportunity?”

“You haven’t been,” he reminded me, sounding a tad rejected. I didn’t know what to say to that. He was right. We’d had plenty of opportunities, at least when we weren't cockblocking ourselves with awkward discussions of our feelings. Harry had even
created
opportunities for me to be alone with Batten. By removing the naughty secret nature of my lusting after Batten, Harry had, accidentally or on purpose, made some of the illicit pleasure go
poof!
The broad-shouldered hunk that stood beside me was still a yummy treat, but he was no longer off limits. Was that all it took to cool my loins? Or were the circumstances here just too weird and uncertain for me to relax enough to become aroused? I hadn’t exactly been chasing Harry’s taut ass, and I had left Mr. Buzz, my trusty purple vibrator, at home. The realization struck me as stunning.

“Maybe I’ve got reasons,” I said, exploring the other house banners without making eye contact with any revenants. “It’s unhealthy to be happy all the time. It burns itself out. I don’t wanna burn my happiness out.”

“Isn’t it unhealthy to be miserable all the time?”

You’d know, Kill-Notch
. “It’s an excellent fallback position from which to regroup. Misery never burns itself out. Misery is quiet and muddy. There's depth, so you can wallow in it. At your lowest, you have no risk of crashing to the ground. There’s no doom to worry about, you’re already there! Happiness is floating up high on wisps. Happiness is dangerous and fleeting. Misery is solid and unlimited; it’s self-sustaining, piling up on itself. It’s the best value for your money, when you think about it.”

“You’re a bright spark today.”

“I am. But you think I’m gloomy. That’s where you’re wrong.”

“Does this have anything to do with a rumor I might have overheard?”

I flicked my gaze at him. His face revealed nothing, and that worried me more than usual. “Rumor?”

“Harry’s other DaySitter?”

“She’s not. Anymore. It’s fine. Think I’m jealous?”
I’m so goddamn jealous.
I did a very good job of not glancing at the woman who sat at Wilhelm’s right hand, but my eyes did stray to Harry. He was trying not to look in Carole Jeanne’s direction either, but his control wasn’t nearly as good as mine. “It doesn’t matter. We’re cool, you know? I mean, I can…” I flapped a hand at him, trying to be all casual about it, indicating his zipper. “You know. With you. And he’s okay with it.”
Mostly. Maybe. If this how Harry feels about my wanting Batten, it’s awful. It’s terrible. Why did he say it was okay?
“So why should I care that one of his ex-DaySitters is serving Wilhelm, and is still alive and kickin’, and smart and powerful and everything? Who cares if she’s a fancy fifth and I’m a shitty seventh? Does it look like I care?” I snort-laughed. “Cuz I
so
don’t.”

“I can see that,” he said, not falling for it in the least. His eyes softened around the edges as if to invite further declarations.
Pass.
He allowed, “Maybe you’re worried about something else.”

Duh
. House Dreppenstedt had been abuzz with whispers all evening about who might be put on the throne. The stress was starting to rankle some. I sought out the reassuring sight of Declan’s curly back hair…

And a light bulb went on in my grey cells.

It was a bad light bulb, one that flickered and threatened to snuff out almost immediately; the idea stuck, though, stubbornly, and as much as I hated it, I clung to it.
The king.
Nine Talents.

“
Noooooooo
,” I whispered.

“No?” Batten’s tone shifted to worried.

“Oh, no,” I answered. “Fifty-eleventeen times no.”

“What?”

“I can’t,” I argued with myself aloud. “Can I? Should I? I should
not
.”

“Probably not,” Batten agreed.

“Harry would kill me, wouldn’t he? They’d all kill me. It would be a mass murder. Just an out-and-out Marnie-
kablooie
, right?”

“Dunno what the fuck you’re talking about, but ‘yes’ is a safe guess.”

“I can’t say it out loud,” I said.
The king. Nine Talents
. “If anyone even suspected…” I shook my head but my belly told me I was onto something, something big; it churned madly with excitement. “I think I have the solution. They’re not going to like it. Nobody. Not one bit.”

“Then it’s a bad idea, Snickerdoodle.” He gently bumped me with his elbow to make contact. “Better let it go.”

“On a completely unrelated note: I am reveling in my misery,” I said. “No one can take it from me. It’s mine.”

Batten’s lips almost gratefully curled into a slippery smile, happy to be on familiar ground. “Fairly sure I could steal your misery away.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Never.”

Batten said, “Instant glee button.”

I tried not to smile. “How can you think of sex at a time like this?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Espresso. Cookies. Monsters.”
Rings. Blood. Death
. I tried not to look at Malas again, and succeeded by glancing at the Sarokhanian banner, and then Prost’s banner, and away quickly. Too many scary dead guys. “You know, the usual.”

Together, we watched Aston Sarokhanian enter the room; I could tell it was him by the instant stiffening to my left, and Batten’s tight inhale, which he tried to disguise as a sniffle after the fact. He didn’t look as scary as I’d expected, not gnarly and wizened like Malas. Nevertheless, catching a glimpse of Sarokhanian was like spotting a venomous spider skittering up the wall of a special tank at the zoo; the horror was real, and the safety was illusionary, because the only thing keeping us safe was as breakable. 

“Sorry you came?” I asked Batten.

He took a long moment to think about that before answering, and I could see the consideration in his deep blue eyes; of course, there was some influence from his being raised by his grandfather, Colonel Jack Batten, but did the colonel’s disappearance keep him motivated to continue the work? Was there something else? There had been a time when I was sure Batten was a closed book, sure that he’d never choose to confide in me. One morning, in the Starlight Dreams motel, after an aborted drunk seduction attempt on my part, he’d taken the first step to sharing; he’d shown me the knotted scar atop the femoral artery in the crook of his groin. It was an ugly reminder of a forced feed after the attempt to stake Sarokhanian had gone terribly wrong; Sarokhanian was a precognitive, had known the team was coming ahead of time, had prepared for them. Now, Colonel Jack was missing in action, presumed dead, just like the rest of the team had died. I'd never found out how Batten escaped. I wondered if Sarokhanian would recognize him; once a revenant had the taste of someone, he never quite forgot. I knew that Harry still craved the taste of Chapel’s blood from some illicit feeding they had done behind my back years ago. Would Aston’s taste buds alert him to the scent of Batten in the hall? Was Aston just playing coy in ignoring Mark?

For a moment, I didn’t think Batten was going to answer. Then the corner of his lips turned down as he dropped his gaze from the Sarokhanian banner.

I repeated, “Sorry you came with me?”

That made Batten nod. “Very.”

I THOUGHT IT ODD THAT
the vaulted ceiling was hung with silver chains and a hundred thousand rowan wood stakes; fat ones, needle-shaped ones, some carved into the shape of the cross so that they looked more like daggers, some tipped with silver for extra killing power. They made a sky of death looming high above the guttering gas lanterns scattered along the pillars. Golden’s overheard comment about the “rowan wood sky” made a whole lot more sense to me, now. When the orchestra dropped, people began to scatter into their places, houses collecting bodies. Watching the colors fall into their corners, settle behind their masters, reminded me of an old candy commercial where the candies swirled into patterns.

At equal intervals along the walls there hung the banners of each immortal house, and I craned up to admire the white-on-silver banner of House Dreppenstedt, a mystic eye of Horus-type shape flanked by spreading black wings, the falling bird of the
chasseur inepuisable
, going in for the kill, the inexhaustible hunter. Beneath it sat Crowned Prince Wilhelm, no mere phantasm now; in the flesh he was knee-cappingly magnificent, sweeping into his wide, velvet-padded seat with a grace and poise that made Harry look like a fumbling klutz. I felt the weight of Wilhelm’s mind settle on me, and tried to dodge him.
Nope, out of my head, please. I have ideas. They’re all mine
.

Wilhelm cocked his head in a move that reminded me of a raven examining something shiny, flicked his flashing chrome eyes at me, and bore down only slightly harder. My resistance slipped away as if I’d been holding back the tide with a tissue, and in a clumsy attempt to distract him, I mentally confessed a modest adoration for him, like I was bashful about this new worship I felt. Satisfied enough not to probe further, he settled into his throne and closed those terribly ancient eyes, eyes that judged me against eons of humans that had come before me, eyes that made me feel entirely worthless and warmly craved at once. I wasn’t good enough, those eyes said, but he wanted me, and his Younger wanted me, and so I was his, and he was mine, and under his roof was where I belonged. That’s where I kept my focus, and would do so as long as I had his attention, just in case. I had secrets to guard, now. My nervous tummy did a little quivering tap dance. Or maybe it was trying to Moonwalk; I wouldn't have blamed it for backing out of this whole deal, either.

His voice purred into my skull.
Good girl.
That praise was conditional on my not screwing up the meeting, and I hated that I hungered for Wilhelm's praise.

I watched Malas struggle to rise from his seat while Declan stared at his shoes, frowning. Something had them stirred up, something the pair of them didn’t understand.
They smell subterfuge but they can’t place it
. They would, in time; they were both too familiar with me. Sooner or later, they’d know I was up to something.

I shifted my attention to the elder revenant sitting under the banner of House Duchoslav; his brow was furrowed deeply as well, and his grey tongue lashed at his lips repetitively. He sensed artifice, too, and didn’t like it. Would he track it to me? His face turned slightly toward Malas’s restless shifting, and the gaslight caught the immortal gleam in his eye like a cat in headlights. One peek at Aston Sarokhanian confirmed my fears; they all felt mischief, and it was only a matter of time before they sniffed me out. Sarokhanian’s left hand cupped his abdomen, high on his belly where the gastrosanguinem is located, a well-documented revenant protective gesture, though by the look on his face, he didn’t yet know the source of danger, just felt it in his bones. With so many warm bodies in the room, the undead, even the eldest ones, were having trouble sorting us; our hot and ready hearts were a cacophony that teased their fangs out from hiding, our mortal heat a seduction that stirred their thirsts, and that was my only hope now… that so many willing, eager warm bodies crowding in this court would hide my skittering pulse, my trembling hands, my certainty that I was about to throw a wrench into their primeval gears.

If you believe you’re innocent, you’re above suspicion
. Feigning ignorance, I nudged Mark and whispered, knowing I’d be heard by every ear that wished to, “Problem.”

“What?”

“Look at them.” I jerked my chin subtly at the eldest ones, and Batten’s careful gaze caught what I’d seen. “Something’s not right.”

“There’s a lot of ‘not right’ here,” he said, as if he couldn’t resist digging at them, but his tone agreed with my observation. The revenants were restless, and if Kill- Notch wasn’t already on high alert, he was now. The skyrocketing of his anxiety was smelled by every revenant in Skulesdottir, and they all swung their faces in his direction like spotlights aimed at the glaring problem in the room: the vampire hunter. Batten’s jaw clenched and unclenched, but he returned to staring at the empty throne before Harry could whisper an admonishment at us. I did, too. Through the Bond, I felt Harry relax a touch.

A late group of people entered in matching hooded robes of rough brown wool. Trailing behind came a thin, square-shouldered man with a narrow head topped with a tangle of windblown, platinum blond hair. The blond man wore white cotton surgical scrub pants and a heavy white straight jacket with fat silver buckles that held his arms tightly around his back. His canine teeth gnawed anxiously at his bottom lip, over and over, back and forth, wearing one spot of skin until it was open, red, and raw. His right eye twitched a couple times and he ducked his head as if to hide this, coming to stand under the banner of House Sarokhanian.