Broken Soul

My cheeks heated and I couldn’t control the speed of my heart rate. I sure as heck couldn’t control the scent of my pheromones, which were suddenly all over the place. The vamps in the room looked from Bruiser to Leo and then to me, picking up cues from each of us that we might rather have wished kept private. What did this public announcement mean to and for Bruiser? In the odd silence of the room, he let his smile drop and turned to Leo, who was still leaning over the desk, maybe frozen there in shock.

Leo held Bruiser’s gaze for a long moment before turning that predatory stare to me, his nostrils widening as he scented the air. I could feel the ice of Leo’s gaze as he spoke, but I kept my eyes on Bruiser. “Are you certain, primo quondam meus?”

“I am certain, dominantem civitati, magister quondam meus.”

“You give up much,” Leo said, his tone slightly hoarse. As if the words were pulled from him, as if they hurt as they left his mouth. I didn’t know what was going on, but it sounded important. Life-or-death important. And everyone in the room seemed to think so too. There were a lot of wide eyes and very little breathing, even from the humans.

Del, her face white with shock, mouthed a translation. Master of this City. My former master.

Holy crap. Bruiser was really . . . quitting?

Bruiser smiled and looked at me, his eyes heated. It was as though some closed, dark place inside me opened, revealing a painful, raw wound in an oddly empty space. “I gain much more, dominantem civitati,” he said. And the lesion in the dark, empty place within me seemed less painful somehow.

“It is done,” Leo said. “Factum est. Consummatum.”

Which sounded like a death sentence. Or the end of the world. Or something equally awful. But Bruiser’s smile widened, and it didn’t droop when Leo leaned forward and added carefully, “All of my regulations and proscriptions shall stand. And you will remove the last of your belongings from the council home tonight, before the sun seeks to rise.”

Bruiser hesitated only an instant, as if measuring what the words meant before saying, “Yes, Master of this City. I shall abide by all regulations and proscriptions that pertain to me.”

Leo looked like that was less capitulation than he wanted, but he went on. “I require that Jane Yellowrock remain in the position of Enforcer, along with Derek Lee, for the duration of the Europeans’ visit. Derek and I have reached a settlement on remuneration for his services. Do you agree, Jane?”

I looked back and forth between Derek and Leo and held out my hand to Del. “You got a pen? A piece of paper?”

Without speaking, Del leaned forward and took both from a small drawer in the front of Leo’s desk, passing them to me. I half folded the paper so no one could see what I was writing and penned a number on the paper. $1,000,000.00. I folded it and passed it to Leo. He opened the paper and burst out laughing, the laughter again making him seem so human and so dang gorgeous. Monsters are supposed to be ugly; Leo simply wasn’t. His eyes glistened with amusement. The black hair he usually tied in a little queue came forward and brushed his pale olive cheeks. Still laughing, he passed the note to Grégoire, whose blond eyebrows went up in surprise that quickly translated into amusement. “Vous avez été correct, mon seigneur,” Grégoire said, his tone formal.

I didn’t know what that meant, but did catch the correct part, and when Grégoire pulled a ring from his finger and passed it to Leo, I realized that they had bet on my reply, and Leo had won. I narrowed my eyes at them, as Leo slid the ring onto his pinkie. The ring was gold, the band smooth and worn, centered by a ruby cabochon. It looked old and valuable, and a lot like the ring the much younger Grégoire had worn in the painting downstairs. I sat back in my chair, irritated for reasons I didn’t understand.

“Half that,” Leo said. “No more. However, I will also pay expenses for you and salary for your crew. Take or leave it, mon petit chat.”

I thought about it, remembering the room full of books and papers in the basement, and decided to up the ante. “Leave it,” I said. Leo looked up from admiring his winnings, surprise on his face. Yeah, he hadn’t expected me to refuse. I adored surprising a vamp. It happened so seldom with the old ones and their expressions were priceless. “This is a negotiation, so you don’t get to demand. Half, plus expenses, Younger’s salary, and also access to everything in every vamp database, library, and storage available to you, no matter the language, about the history of witches and Mithrans, and the existence of other magical beings. I want access to anything and everything that you and any of your people have.”

Leo murmured, “Witches again. Are your loyalties divided, my Enforcer?”

I thought about what he might be asking me to claim and I said, very carefully, “My loyalties are perfectly aligned according to who I am, what I am, and according to my word and to my contracts.”

Leo watched me, sniffing slowly, smelling for a lie. “This bargain is acceptable to me.”

“Done,” I said.

Leo nodded. Still watching me, he said, “We have an infiltrator.”

I dragged my gaze from Leo’s to Bruiser’s. “Reach?” I’d shared my suspicions about the mysterious researcher and electronic security genius with Bruiser previously, and had since proven them. Reach wasn’t quite a traitor, more an entrepreneur, gathering and selling information to the highest bidder, instead of keeping proprietary info secret. I still hadn’t decided what to do about him. For that matter, I didn’t know what we could do about him. He’d made no secret of working for the customer who offered him the most money; he had no blood-bond with Leo to keep him loyal; and Reach had ways of finding out things that bordered on the mystical. Once he had his electronic claws into a system, it was nearly impossible to remove them. I more than halfway believed that he had his claws in my own system and in Leo’s, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

“No, we have not been infiltrated.” Leo waved a lazy hand as if wiping away the thought of Reach. “I have a well-placed and well-paid infiltrator on the European Council of Mithrans.”

Every eye in the place settled on Leo, and he gave a languid smile, enjoying the astounded stares and olfactory responses. “You have a spy in Europe?” I half asked, half stated. “Dang.”

Leo’s smile widened and he did that eyebrow-lift thing. “Yes. This person has been in place for many years.”