Raphael lifted her wet hair off her neck and trailed his fingers over her already-healing bruises. “Not tonight,” he said regretfully. “We need to know what’s in that letter.”
“Maybe it’s a wedding invitation.”
Raphael laughed, knowing that was what she’d intended with her comment. “Then we’ll need to know where they’re registered.”
It was Cyn’s turn to laugh. “Look at you, Mr. Modern Guy, knowing what a registry is.”
“There’s no need to be insulting,” he responded, slapping her ass.
Cyn smiled softly and rested her forehead against his shoulder. She raised her head and met his eyes. “Okay, let’s go find out what the damn thing says.”
JURO SHOWED UP in Raphael’s office just a few minutes after they were settled, with Raphael in his big chair behind the desk, and Cyn pacing around the room restlessly. She couldn’t help it, couldn’t stand still. This was too big; it was what they’d all been waiting for. The doors opened, and she stared as Juro strode in, with Jared only a few steps behind him.
Cyn stopped pacing and glanced at the envelope in Juro’s hand. Knowing it was from a powerful vampire, maybe more than one, she half-expected it to morph into something else. A shrieking, flying lizard maybe, one that would spit poison to blind them while it tore Raphael’s heart out. Vamps were magic, after all. What was a little morphing between enemies?
She was letting her imagination, and her fear, run away with her. But she couldn’t seem to stop it. Ever since Mexico, she’d had this lingering sense of doom, as if, despite all of their precautions, some insidious enemy was about to slip inside the barriers they’d erected and destroy everything that mattered to her. And the only thing, the only person, who mattered to her that much was Raphael. She’d never survive it if something happened to him. She wouldn’t want to.
Her fears were an ache in her chest as she walked over to stand protectively next to him, inching over until her leg touched his. Seeming to sense her unease, Raphael ran his fingers along the back of her thigh before scooting closer to his desk and reaching for the envelope which Juro had placed there.
“Wait!” Cyn said, stopping him, “How do we know there isn’t something inside, something other than a letter, or in addition to the letter?”
Juro gave her an understanding look. “You’re familiar with our security protocols, Cynthia,” he said patiently. “It arrived via Federal Express, and the package was carefully examined before it was opened. When the separate letter envelope was discovered inside, it, too, was tested for all manner of threats, both physical and biological.”
“What about magic?” she asked, feeling her cheeks flush with embarrassment.
“If it was magic,” Raphael told her, his deep voice easy and unhurried, “I would know.”
Cyn let out the breath she’d been holding. “Okay,” she said reluctantly. What she wanted to do was toss the damn envelope in the industrial incinerator downstairs where they disposed of empty blood bags and, Cyn suspected, the occasional body. But she knew Raphael would never go along with that.
He gave her thigh another light caress, then reached for the letter once more.
It was a heavy linen envelope. The kind one rarely saw anymore, especially in this day of electronic communication. Raphael’s name was written on the front with lots of extra pen strokes and curlicues—the sort of writing that, these days, one found on wedding invitations and little else. The flap didn’t have adhesive, but was closed with a wax seal.
“Pretentious fuckers, aren’t they?” she muttered.
“They’re very old,” Raphael replied.
“So are you, but I don’t see you sending people letters written in blood and secured with a fucking royal seal.”
“The seal isn’t royal, only personal.”
“Raphael.”
He smiled without taking his gaze off the letter. “Are you ready, my Cyn?”
“No, but go ahead.”
Raphael slipped a finger beneath the flap and broke the wax, then turned the envelope upside down and let the letter fall to his desk. Cyn watched as Raphael used an elegant opener in the shape of a sword to flatten the letter to his desk.
She could see the writing. The reddish brown “ink” bled slightly into the heavy linen paper with every character, and she couldn’t help but think that was appropriate, since it wasn’t ink at all, according to the vampires, but blood. She wondered if they watered it down to make it easier to work with or if the vampire writing the letter simply ordered a minion to open a vein so he could use him as a living inkpot. She frowned at her own gruesome imaginings, then leaned forward to get a closer look at the text.
“French,” she said.
“It is,” Raphael confirmed. “Can you read it?”
“I spent two years in a French boarding school.”
“But did you learn anything?” he murmured teasingly.