“Glad to see you have made up. Wouldn’t do to be on the outs.” His eyes narrow as he watches me. “I do hope that you are enjoying your… room,” he says slyly, “Although, it may be considered rude to use it without inviting your host to join you.”
My skin feels like it is about to crawl off my body at his tone and insinuation. Although, as I glance at CK and Devon, who have moved in closer to us, I have the awful thought that by his words, he knows just exactly what went on in there.
“I didn’t peg you as one for sharing her, Father,” he continues at our silence. “I was under the impression she was yours to enjoy, alone.” He moves forward and hovers on the edge of the patch of sunlight. At two thousand, three hundred and sixty-one years old, it would take him standing in the sun for a good few minutes before it finished him off. Without the Faerie Silver protecting him, even being near it will affect him. It will be weakening him, standing there on the edge, and I wonder how long he will keep it up. Not leaving me waiting for very long, he steps back to the side table under the pretense of pouring himself a drink.
“The room is fine, thank you,” CK says curtly, also clearly aware that somehow Lance has been privy to the goings-on of the last couple of hours.
Lance nods graciously. “You are welcome to stay as long as you like, but I would ask you to respect my… affliction and leave the rooms as they were when you entered them.”
A polite way of asking us to close the curtains, I guess. I step back to pull them closed, throwing the room into the gloom.
He nods his thanks. “Well, I will leave you for now. I shall see you in the dining hall at nine o’clock.” And off he goes.
“Did anyone else get the impression that he’s been spying on us?” Devon asks bluntly.
“Yes,” CK and I say in unison, but then he adds, “If he has, he also knows about your…” He holds his hands out at his sides, palms facing outward in the universal sign for my virtual armory. I grimace. Not good news.
“We had better go check the room.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
C ole and I take a long leisurely shower when we get back to the room, while Devon and Constantine check the room for bugs.
Giggling, we exit the bathroom dressed in our robes and find the other two working. One on a laptop, one on an iPad.
“So, despite no lighting, I assume we have Wi-Fi then,” I roll my eyes at them and they both look up and smile.
“Well? Anything.”
CK indicates the small pile on the table in front of him.
I move closer and discover not only microphones, but also video cameras.
“Oh, fucking wonderful. He saw the entire thing,” I grouse.
“I’m afraid so. We should have been more vigilant and checked it beforehand.”
“But he didn’t know we were coming, why would he have this place rigged as a sex tape room?” Cole asks.
“Lance has certain… tastes. Watching is one of them. If I hadn’t been so worried about keeping Aefre safe from him, I would have remembered,” he says, more annoyed with himself for forgetting, than us having been peeped on, but, as ever, the abrupt change of subject comes and we all struggle to keep up. “I got an email from Louis Harlow.”
Blinking at him as I register his statement, I say, “Oh?”
“If you wanted it, why didn’t you just tell me, and I would have given it to you.”
“I only realized I wanted it after Versailles. But it was too late. Monsieur Du Pont had already sold it off to the L’orleau’s,” I remark with a pointed look at the said Monsieur.
“Wanted what?” Cole asks, lost as ever in our trip down memory lane. Yes, I understand why he gets so pissed off with this. I’m almost certain Constantine leaves out details on purpose to annoy him.
“Castel Gradile,” my sire responds as if that is going to make any difference.
“And that would be?” Cole snaps at my smug sire.
I answer instead with more detail. “After Constantine turned me, he took me to Normandy. The castle there that I woke up in is Castel Gradile.”
“Oh. Why do you want it?”
“Because it is the place where I woke up,” I repeat as if he is dense.