Great—the psychic was worried. Did that mean I should be?
I looked at Dorian, the fabulous specimen of manhood sitting on the armchair across from Gemma and Anastasia. He hadn’t said a word yet, but we could change that. “What about you, Dorian? Are you enjoying yourself?”
He didn’t answer. Smiling, he looked at Anastasia, who said, “I think he’s enjoying himself just fine.”
Maybe this was going to be a little more of a challenge than I thought. I moved around the room, closer to him, and leaned on the back of the sofa. Not too close. Close enough to look him in the eye. He watched me calmly, a smile playing on his lips. Not bothered, not threatened. Just unworried. I studied him obviously, peering one way or another.
“So. You guys take the master-and-servant thing pretty seriously.”
“Dorian’s under my protection. It’s a duty I take seriously,” Anastasia said.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, moving around to the front of the sofa and taking a seat among them all. “My whole career is based on getting people to talk. Talk radio, that’s how it works. So Dorian here may be under orders not to talk, or maybe has decided not to talk, but I see that as a challenge. Because if there was some real reason for him not to talk to anyone, you wouldn’t risk him interacting with anyone and leave him in the basement instead. But I’m betting Provost and Valenti and the rest wanted to get this little relationship on camera. So at some point, when you all least expect it, I’m going to get him to talk.” I glared the challenge at them all.
“I like her,” Dorian said, with a faint precise accent that might have been English.
Pouting, I sat back. Well. So much for that little speech. “Dang. Steal my thunder, why don’t you.”
His smile was wry, and his eyes gleamed. Damn, he was hot. I said, “So now that you’re talking can I ask you a question, Dorian? You have a portrait in the attic or what?”
Dorian groaned and shook his head. Anastasia actually threw the pillow from her sofa at me. Throw pillow. Ha.
Gemma stared blankly. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, I forget how young you are,” Anastasia said to her. “Never mind, I’ll have a book for you to read later.”
I took note of that bit of information.
We talked for a while longer, mostly Anastasia asking questions about my show and how I’d gotten my start. She didn’t dig too deeply—I didn’t tell her anything I hadn’t mentioned on the air at one point or another. I expected her to ask how I’d become a werewolf—a traumatic episode on several fronts that I didn’t like talking about. But she didn’t. Almost like she knew, or suspected that I didn’t want to talk about it.
Then I really was too tired to keep my eyes open much longer. As a kid I’d been to sleepovers where if you were the first one to fall asleep you’d wake up with stuff written on your face in lipstick. I didn’t want to know what happened when you fell asleep in front of a couple of vampires. So I said good night and trundled upstairs to my room.
My room was on the second floor, in a corner, with a lovely view. I was looking forward to shutting the door and getting to sleep. Not looking forward to being in bed alone.
Odysseus Grant didn’t startle me and make me jump the way he might have. I smelled him first: the clean and quiet smell of a man who didn’t like to leave a trace. He stood at the end of the hallway, by the door to my room. “Kitty. Could I speak to you a moment?”
“What is it?”
“I only wanted to ask you to keep your eyes open. Have you heard of something vampires call the Long Game?”
My heart did a double-beat. My smile fell as my whole face went slack.
“Then you have heard of it,” Grant said, a wry curl to his lips.
I shook my bemusement away. Tried to clear my head. “Why are you asking? Cleaned up all of Vegas’s supernatural problems and need a new challenge?”
“What do you know about it?” he said.
“It’s a political thing, I think. It’s hard getting a straight answer out of them, but from what I gather there are some vampires trying to consolidate power. Trying to form some kind of monolithic vampire organization. Now, I’m not sure if this means they’re trying to take over the world—or if this is just something they play around with because after two thousand years of hanging out a guy gets bored. To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure I want to know. I just want to stay out of it.”
He raised a brow. I recognized the expression: wry disbelief. When was I ever able to stay out of anything?
“Will that be possible?” he asked.
“Not i
f I keep sticking my nose in it. So… you’re here because you think this has something to do with the Long Game? You think Anastasia—”
He put a finger over his lips, then said, “Just keep your eyes and ears open for me.”