Page 6 of Time's Fool

It didn’t matter, as most vamps put on a show, especially when trying to overawe some sweet young thing. Fortunately, I was neither sweet nor young, and while most people did treat me like a thing, I begged to differ. And I was experienced enough to know a glamour when I saw one.

I wondered what he looked like without it.

And then I wondered why I cared.

The guard vamp proceeded to carry out his wounded companion, and I turned my attention back to the revenants.

Technically, they were vamps, too, although they were too crazy to know it. But the level of crazy differed somewhat. Like with human birth defects, there were degrees, and the laughing one seemed to have some mind left, although how much was debatable. But the other was drooling on himself and had had his throat slashed in the melee, making getting anything out of him unlikely.

I opted for his companion, and grabbed his hair to turn his face up to me.

The hair was mostly white, which already told me something. Most of the corpses outside were younger than forty, with the vast majority being in their twenties or below. And those who did make it to his possibly three score years didn’t do so with soft hands and fat bellies.

This man was important, or had been at one time. His clothes were currently tattered, filthy rags, because revenants often went from kill to kill, like mad, starving beasts, and slept in burrows during the day that they dug out in the ground. They were where the human concept of vampires digging themselves out of their own graves had come from; properly made vamps were cared for by their masters and rarely ended up in such a predicament.

But revenants had no masters. Made wrong, they answered to no one, which was why they were so deadly. Well, that and being completely mad.

Yes, this one had been wealthy at one point, with a single, fine silver button clinging by a few threads to his coat. He also had half rotten teeth, a problem for the privileged classes who were fond of sugared desserts and sweetened wine. He should be easy enough to trace.

The vamp’s sharp dark eyes had taken in the signs as well, and narrowed thoughtfully. “Odd. To turn a well-heeled servant, but leave him to run with the animals.”

“Revenant,” I reminded him. “Someone messed up.”

“Yes, but a revenant, especially one as lucid as this one, can still sign over his estates and then be quietly removed. Letting him roam the countryside in direct violation of the Senate’s orders seems . . . unwise.”

“Assuming it was a vamp who did this.”

A dark eyebrow quirked. “You think otherwise?”

“I don’t know what to think,” I said honestly. “Revenants are solitary creatures. They live alone; they hunt alone. Yet a dozen of them attacked this place?”

“Thirteen, to be exact. The Senate’s men killed the others before I arrived. I managed to save these two.”

And then traveled hundreds of miles looking for me, which was beyond strange. If he worked with the powerful Vampire Senate, surely they had operatives here? Or in Paris, where they were based? Or anywhere closer than a run-down tavern in a distant Italian port?

The revenant in question grinned at me. His lips were mostly shredded where he’d been chewing on them, and stretched into a horrible rictus. But he seemed genuinely amused by something.

“Clever, clever,” he crooned. “This one is clever, unlike the rest. Look at her thinking.”

“Who did this to you?” I asked, hoping for a momentary glimpse of lucidity, even though it wasn’t likely. But he surprised me.

“She was clever, too. Pretty lady, all in blue . . .”

“A woman turned you?”

“Pretty lady,” he sang, to the tune of some country ditty I didn’t know, because I didn’t know this place. “Young and fair. Young and fair . . .”

“Fair of hair?” I asked. “Blue of eye?”

“Aye, blue like the cornflowers that nod by the road. But hair . . . hair like yours—”

“A woman with dark hair and blue eyes?”

But he wasn’t listening. He was singing, in a surprisingly strong tenor.

“Hath any loved you well, down there,

Summer or winter through?

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