He
shook his head. “You must understand, her vampire nature has not had the experience with our society that her human mind has. She is . . . something unique, a master vampire who has grown up, not only without a master, but also in almost complete isolation. Dory—the human side of her—dominated for centuries—”
“Why? If Dorina has your mental gifts, shouldn’t she have been the one in charge?”
“Yes,” he said patiently, “but that is what was causing the problem in the first place. I locked Dorina down to give Dory time to mature. I thought I was doing the right thing; otherwise, I would have lost both of them. But I . . . overdid it. Once the block was in place, Dorina was able to emerge only when Dory was under extreme duress, and her mental control was ragged. As a result, Dorina knows a great deal about combat, but very little about interpreting other types of human interaction.”
I tried to process that. It didn’t help much. “So she decided to kill me because I ticked her off?”
“No. She decided to kill you because she mistook your rescue of me for an assault.”
“How?” I spread my hands. “I was there to help you—”
“But she had no way of knowing that, Cassie. Her human half was in control at the time, and the block I put in place still exists in some areas, giving her only intermittent knowledge of what Dory sees. I am not sure how much Dorina understood of what happened that night.”
“Enough to be severely pissed!”
“So it would seem.” He met my eyes steadily. “My guess is that she was somewhat nearer to the surface than usual, owing to the recent collapse of my barrier. She knew that Dory was watching over me as I slept, knew I had been injured, knew that a powerful witch with a type of magic she had never seen suddenly appeared and removed her protection from me—”
“But she saw you later. She knew you were fine—”
“Which could have been due to fighting you off, could it not? Or from having someone else rescue me. She didn’t know you helped me; she wasn’t there to see. Only that you removed my protection and thus, in her eyes, left me vulnerable.”
“Making me an enemy.”
“Yes.”
He finally left the door and approached, but wisely didn’t attempt to touch me. Another man would have tried to hold me, to comfort or to control. Or to figuratively pat me on the head, telling me by his every action not to be such a drama queen.
Mircea was smarter than that.
He just stood there.
But it hurt nonetheless, staring up into that beautiful face, wondering if I knew what was going on behind those eyes at all. Sometimes it felt like there were two halves to Mircea’s personality, too. The human, who I loved and laughed with and trusted, because he’d always been there for me, for almost as long as I could remember. And the vampire—cold, calculating, and assessing—who told me only what he wanted me to hear and, I strongly suspected, manipulated the ever-loving shit out of me.
And whose real feelings I didn’t know at all.
If anybody had a split personality, it was Mircea.
“You’re upset; I understand,” he said, dark eyes grave. “But you can rest assured that Dorina is not a threat to you.”
“I must have missed that part!”
“I meant to say that tonight was . . . atypical. For one thing, Dory was seriously injured in the attack, and it made Dorina uneasy—”
“Injured how? Mircea, I sent her to Long Island. She shouldn’t even have been here.”
“She has a way of turning up whenever there’s trouble. You two share that ability.” He smiled slightly.
I didn’t.
“I went to see her after I left you,” he added. “And put her to sleep. She should have been out for the duration of the evening—”
“So what happened?”
“Someone interfered. Someone who knew she was on edge, and might be . . . impulsive. Someone who has surveillance over almost everything that goes on in this house, and therefore knew she might have a grudge against you. Someone who has the power to override my suggestion—”
“Someone?”