Louis-Cesare looked conflicted. He clearly didn’t want to talk about this now, which was too bad, because I did. “What is it?” I demanded. “You think that, with Dorina gone, I can’t handle myself? You leave the little dhampir to drink tea and look at pyramids because she’ll be a drag on you?”
“That’s not—”
“Then what was it? I mean, you didn’t even talk to me—”
“He didn’t talk to you?” the healer repeated, sounding appalled.
“Stay out of this!” Louis-Cesare snapped.
“No,” I said. “No note, no anything—”
“I gave Hassani a note,” Louis-Cesare said defensively.
“Yes. Hassani. Not me.”
“I wanted to make sure that it reached you—”
Okay, now I was pissed off, because that was a lie. “You wanted to make sure you didn’t have to face me. You left Hassani to do your dirty work and ran off—”
“I did not run! I was following a lead—”
“Yes, without me! And without telling me what it was so I couldn’t follow you.” I sat up and, this time, the room stayed mostly steady. “Do you know what I was doing down here in the first place? Hassani was taking me to the morgue so I could try to figure out—”
“Dory—”
“—what you’d seen and where you’d gone. Because somebody hadn’t bothered to tell me anything in that damned note that wasn’t left with me in the first place. Despite the fact that this is about my sister!”
“Okay, this is getting good,” the big, bearded vamp said.
“Bahram,” Zakarriyyah reproached.
Louis-Cesare ignored them. “You’re being unfair,” he told me.
“Unfair?” I stared at him. “What about that was unfair?”
“All of it!”
“Then give me a reason—a better reason—”
“I don’t have to give you a reason!”
The healer gasped.
“Oh, son,” Bahram said, wincing and shaking his head. “How long have you been married?”
“At least not here,” Louis-Cesare amended.
I narrowed my eyes at him, and got unsteadily to my feet.
“Here.”
“Dory—”
“Now.”
“You can’t ask me—”
“I damned well can.”
“You shouldn’t need to!” The blue eyes, pained a moment ago, suddenly blazed. “Look at you.” He grasped my shoulder, the one that still had clothes covering it, but carefully, as if he was afraid that I might break. “Look at you! Mon Dieu, have you seen yourself?”
“No, and that’s not the point—”
“It is exactly the point!” I found myself crushed to a chest that was breathing hard, despite the fact that he didn’t have to. His hand started to cradle my head, and then jerked away. “Your hair,” he whispered. “Half of your hair is gone.”
Was it? Shit. “It’ll grow back—”
He did not seem to find that very reassuring. “I could have lost you.”
“Then I was right. You think I’m not strong enough—”
“No—”
“That I can’t do my job without her—”
“You’re taking this the wrong way—”
“How else am I supposed to take it? You think I’m weak!”
“This isn’t . . . you’re taking this the wrong way—”
“Then how should I take it? You said—”
“I know what I said!”
“Then what else could you have meant?”
“That I’m weak!” He pulled away suddenly and turned his back on me. “I’m the weak one! Is that what you want to hear?”
I stood there, feeling seriously unwell but also nonplussed. “What?” I finally said.
There was silence for a moment, and when his voice finally came, it was rough. “When I was with Jonathan, I thought that he had done his worst, that there was nothing else he could take from me. I was sure of it—and I was right. Until I met you.” He turned around, and one look at his face and I understood why he hadn’t wanted to talk about this here. “Now, I am afraid all the time, and it is affecting my judgment. I left, thinking I was protecting you, and then I realized: what if he came back?”
And, finally, I got it. Louis-Cesare hadn’t told me everything that had happened with Jonathan, but I’d gotten the gist. But despite that, his worst nightmare wasn’t falling back into that monster’s hands. It was having me do so, and him be unable to stop it.
“He isn’t coming back,” I said softly, walking over. “He has what he wants. He left me lying in the street—”
“He didn’t. The fey did. Their interest may be in Dorina, for whatever reason, but his—”
“You think he might try to get at you through me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what he might do. I just—” he looked