He smiled. And I swear, it was the evilest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Everything.”
Oh boy.
But then Billy saved me.
Hurk, hnggg, hnggg, hnggg! Yak yak yak yak.
And then Billy coughed up Rosier.
Conclusion
Rian and I were heading downstairs, both because Caleb had shown up to relieve her, and because she had a demon lord to escort back to hell. A very wrung out, very tired, very subdued demon lord. Who was getting told.
“Your father kept everyone in line through power,” she said severely. “Power you helped him acquire, but which he never thanked you for. You have done equally well through diplomacy, shrewd dealing, and sheer audacity. How are you not his equal when you did more with less?”
Rosier didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure he could. But Rian didn’t seem to care.
“For centuries, all I’ve heard was ‘I need a son,’ ‘I have to have more power,’ ‘I need a son to help me.’ But all that while, you were handling things perfectly well without one! And speaking as one of your subjects, may I say that I quite prefer the life we have now to the stories I’ve heard about your father’s era?”
Rosier managed to look meek.
“And may I assume, after everything you’ve been through, that you’ve learned something? And that Pritkin is no longer to be required to live under the sword of Damocles? May I tell him that he is free and able to choose his own path from now on?”
Rosier appeared to stiffen slightly at that, and to grow a backbone—or whatever the wispy steam version was. Until those dark eyes flashed, and she shot him a look of utter scorn. And he gave what sounded like the faintest of sighs.
And folded.
“I’m going to pick up Casanova for lunch,
and afterward take Lord Rosier home,” Rian told me, shifting her pale blue Birkin bag to her other arm so she could punch the elevator button. “If you need me, Carlos can get you in touch.”
She air-kissed me, and stepped onto the elevator.
“I think I am going to enjoy the next few weeks,” she told Rosier. “There are any number of things I’ve intended to say to you.”
Rosier somehow managed to give off the appearance of alarm, despite being basically a whiff of smoke. One Billy had enveloped as he had me once, before he utterly dissipated. And had sustained him with his own life force until Rosier could accumulate enough sticking power to keep from fading.
He was going to owe him big-time, after this. I briefly wondered what kind of gift you got a ghost. And then I thought of Billy and Rosier, and the sheer amount of mayhem the two of them could cause together, and decided I didn’t want to know.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Rian said, placing a delicate Jimmy Choo in the elevator doors. And digging around in her purse. “Lord Mircea sent this for you.” And she pulled out a flat, rectangular package. “But strangely, it was delivered to John’s room.”
“To . . . Pritkin’s?” I asked, getting a bad feeling about this.
Rian nodded distractedly, wrestling with the air conditioner currents for her lord and master. “I was asked to pass it along.”
“Thanks,” I said, my mouth dry. And watched her leave.
The package was expensively wrapped, of course, in gold and white stripes. There was also a card. No salutation, just a single line in a beautiful, flowing script.
Perhaps the lady would like to reconsider?
I looked at it for a long moment. And then tore the paper off all at once. Like a Band-Aid, I thought grimly, wondering why Mircea had sent me a book.
Until I saw the title. I stood there in Dante’s hallway, holding a beautifully illustrated copy of Le Morte d’Arthur. The most famous book ever written about King Arthur . . . and his court.
Mircea, I thought furiously, looking back at Pritkin’s room and crumpling the note in my hand.