Page 66 of Time's Fool

I shook my head to clear it, spraying Mircea with water droplets in the process, and had him shoot me a glance. That was unnerving, too, because his power was up, allowing him to hitch a ride with Marlowe’s thoughts, something I hadn’t realized was possible for those not in the same family. But apparently it was, and his eyes were glowing brightly under the eaves of the house where we’d taken refuge, like twin flames in the night.

They shed an unearthly, amber light over those aristocratic features, gilding the eyelashes and deepening the hollows, leaving his face looking spare and sparce—and so like mine. As mentally off-balance as I currently was, I almost said as much, but caught myself just in time. That could have gone very badly if I was wrong, and possibly even worse if I was right.

“I’m taking a look up top,” I said abruptly, and shoved off the half-timbered wall behind us.

“Up top?” Mircea didn’t look like he understood what I meant. Which was rich since he’d been tripping around rooftops all day. Someday. Somewhen—

Stop it!

“I want a better view.”

I turned around before he could ask anything else, grasped hold of the dripping eaves, and pulled myself up. And up and up, because we’d taken shelter under a four-story beast of a building. It was a less-than-easy climb with the shutters closed even on the upper floors, leaving me scant footholds and those slick with mold and water. It didn’t help that the latter had started bucketing down, cascading off the roof and running down channels in the wood to slap me in the face in unexpected places.

Nonetheless, I finally reached the top only to realize that I’d had a better vantage point from below.

The houses that lined the street that the little alehouse was on created the usual tunnel-like effect over the narrow road, with some of their rooflines almost meeting over top. It wasn’t quite as bad as on London Bridge, where the street-spanning bolsters and galleries had added to the feel of a wooden roof above the road. But it was close, cutting down on sunlight when there was any, and making the gloom around here more or less permanent.

On nights like this, it was as dark as pitch except where the dim radiance of a fireplace or candle glimmered around the outline of a shutter, or spilled out of a quickly opened and shut door. But there were few of those, as no one walked these streets lightly even on a good night, which this was not. Meaning that there was almost nothing to light the scene, and the alehouse’s dim radiance was gobbled up by darkness almost as soon as it left the tiny, horn-covered windows.

This was a waste of time. But I didn’t want to return to the vampire yet, having not decided what to do about my suspicions, if anything. I decided that my big mouth was safer up here, and started looking around for a perch.

I didn’t find one. The roof was old and the tiles were slippery with muck and ash from the surrounding forest of chimneys, which the rain was turning into a slick sludge. Even my reflexes found it a challenge just to stay put.

But the roofline above this one had a slightly gentler pitch and was taller to boot, so I climbed up there and found a perch above a dormer window. That gave me a better grip as well as an improved view. Poking its head above the surrounding gloom, the house, easily the tallest on the street, provided a vista of mostly red, clay-tiled roofs, which were mandated by law here to cut down on the threat of fire. They spread out around us for a good distance in all directions, silvered by moonlight.

The latter was sporadic, however, with the pale eye riding low on the horizon and only occasionally peeking out at the angry sky. But distant flashes of lightning helped with visibility, and the air was surprisingly clear. The rain that was cleaning the cobblestones down below was doing to the same to the skies up here, washing away the haze from the fires of the city’s brewers, dyers, salt-boilers, and lime-burners, and leaving everything temporarily fresh.

I turned my face upward and let the water cascade over it. I was already drenched so it didn’t matter, and it soothed my temper somewhat. I could breathe.

That turned out to be a mixed blessing, because a cooler head wanted to think, and that was not something I was ready for. Only my brain didn’t seem to care. I scowled at the sky, but it didn’t care, either.

But at least I was likely alone in my head, with the vampire too busy riding Marlowe’s thoughts to worry about mine. It was the first time all day that I had been reasonably sure of that, including in the tavern near the Senate in Paris, where Hilde and I had kicked our heels while the important people talked. Mircea hadn’t thought that bringing a dhampir into the midst of a bunch of vampires was a good idea, or a wild-eyed witch with a crazy story, either, so we had drunk good wine, eaten bad soup, and waited.

But he hadn’t left us completely in the dark. He’d kept sending me mental updates on the proceedings, which I’d passed on to Hilde. She had been interested in the information he had obtained from the witch Gillian, while I was more preoccupied with the way it was conveyed.

I scowled at myself. He was obviously highly skilled, if he could track someone all the way into Faerie! So what if he’d been underground and streets away from us in Paris? That was simple by comparison.

But my brain didn’t like that explanation. My brain had fixed on the idea that my vampire sire had finally come to claim me, that he could track me so easily because I was family, which was absurd! If so, why not just tell me? And if he had stayed silent out of fear, that I wouldn’t work for him if I knew, that I would resent and blame him—he was damned right!

I got up in my agitation, only to crouch back down again after a moment, as there was nowhere to go.

I watched a leaf that had been somehow blown up this high by the wind. It was now playing boat, riding a current of water down a seam in the roof, and easily visible since it was bright gold and didn’t look like it belonged here. And by here I meant in this world as it almost seemed to glow, fighting the moonlight with its own radiance.

Faerie, I thought, staring at it. The people who lived here had fey leaves flying about and thought no one would notice? And yet, they were right: no one had. It was easier to see what you wanted in any situation, I supposed, than what was really there.

Like me with Mircea.

The thought made me uncomfortable, more so than the damned rain. I had spent years waiting for exactly this, for the day when I would have proved myself worthy, when he would return, when his eyes would light up at the sight of me. And grant me a place in his world, a family to belong to, a . . .

A what? I thought angrily. A loving embrace? Do you really expect that from one of them? Or acceptance? Or dignity, position, the right to hold your head up as a valuable member of a society that doesn’t want you, that never has and never will, that has laws insisting that you be killed on sight?

The fact that those laws were winked at when convenient didn’t mean that they had been rescinded, or that some bright young sprite wanting to curry favor at court wouldn’t apply them the first chance he got. I’d had vampires hire me in the past, but plenty more had tried to end my existence, and some had come very close. Where had my sire been then? Assuming that that was him at all, and I wasn’t losing what was left of my mind!

None of it meant a damned thing. He had come to Italy to fetch me? Of course, he had; he needed a dhampir to hunt those revenants and we weren’t exactly thick on the ground. He paid for me to have a single room at a lousy inn? He was obviously wealthy, and the price of a room in rural Lancashire proved nothing. He gave up the ring for me . . .

He gave up the ring for me.

I stared at the savage night, but try as I would, I couldn’t come up with a reason for that. Or for him staying on that flooded bridge when he could have easily gotten away. And then there were his looks, so much like mine that once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it; and the fact that we had the same accent, faint though it was now; and the hardness of those arms as he’d clutched me to him on that mad little broom, after pulling me away from the looming cascade.

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