found it almost cool to the touch, or maybe that was the liquid feel of the silk. If any fashion designers saw how he wore his plain gray tunic and leggings, the medieval look would be on every runway come fall. I tried to sit up, but still didn’t have the strength. Even the pain from the wound Louis-Cesare was currently picking at hardly registered. I couldn’t remember a single twenty-four-hour period in which I’d lost consciousness this often, but it felt like I was slipping away again.
“Here, allow me.” Caedmon laid a hand on my forehead. His power surrounded me, like sunlight on my skin. Despite the fact that we were underground, it threw a pattern of gently waving branches across my body and gilded the dusty air until everything glittered. The sounds of the cleanup became a distant background noise, overwritten by musical laughter and voices singing unknown songs. I breathed in a rich forest smell, and vague shadows swirled up around me in a storm of green and gold, like leaves caught in a high wind. For an instant I thought the cave would disappear altogether; then a phantom leaf brushed my cheek and I jerked away, scrambling to reinforce my shields. The sensations hadn’t been threatening, but neither is the sun until it burns you.
I didn’t know whether the images were deliberate sendings—an unobtrusive attempt to calm my nerves—or simply part of what he was. Either way, they passed quickly, and with them went much of my lethargy. Unfortunately, their passing also broke Louis-Cesare’s suggestion, and that meant a return of some serious pain.
I let out a string of Romanian curses I thought I’d forgotten and pushed the vamp away. Stinky hissed at him. “What are you trying to do, an amputation?”
I looked down at my legs, which a moment before had been peppered with seeping wounds, only to find that all but one had closed over—the one he’d been digging in. As I watched, a lump appeared under the skin and, instead of staying put, began roaming around in a very unpleasant way. Then out of the wound popped a squashed metal object that I distantly realized was the bullet Louis-Cesare had been trying to locate. A second after that, the wound closed.
I stared at it in amazement. No one healed like that except a first-level master. Or, it seemed, the Fey. My mind immediately began wondering how you’d go about killing someone who could repair major injuries that quickly, while Caedmon helped me to my feet.
“You’re a healer.”
He smiled, and it was breathtaking. “A minor talent.” “So tell me about Claire.”
His smile widened. “You’re a single-minded little thing, aren’t you?” Since he topped me by at least a foot and a half, I decided to ignore the “little” remark. From his perspective, it was accurate.
“Yeah. Besides, if we pool our information—”
“My thought exactly,” he agreed, perching on the overturned cage like he was posing.
Louis-Cesare stood with folded arms, his mouth a straight, hard line. Something about the Fey seemed to annoy him, or maybe he didn’t care for the turn of conversation. Finding Claire wasn’t his mission, but I was glad to see that he was smart enough to realize that there was no way to prize me out of there until I’d learned all I could. Radu was safe enough for the moment; Claire wasn’t.
“It is a long tale, suitable for a bard’s song,” Caedmon said, his voice taking on a lilt that was almost singing itself. He had no real accent that I could place, but I’d have known blindfolded that English wasn’t his mother tongue. “But perhaps it would simplify things if you could tell us what this says?” He pulled a piece of paper out from under the cloak he wore, and looked at it with vague irritation. “Humans are such restless creatures. Every time I visit this world, they have new tongues among them; I no longer attempt to keep up.” He handed over the folded scrap, which I saw with surprise had my name on the outside. “It appears that someone knew you were coming.”
I sat abruptly on the edge of the cage and opened the letter. It was in Romanian and came straight to the point; Uncle never had been much for small talk. Drac didn’t trust me to betray Mircea without an added incentive, so he’d provided one. He’d found out about the auction from his Dark Circle allies and recognized Claire’s name. It seemed he