"Big of you."
"God damn it, Vicki!" Celluci catapulted off his chair so fast he lost his balance and slammed down on his knees, denim-covered bone cracking against the polished hardwood floor. "Do you have to sneak up on people like that?" He heaved himself onto his feet. "First him, now you?"
Her hands on the back of the chair he'd so recently vacated, Vicki forced herself to smile down at him, forced herself to take her eyes off Henry Fitzroy. "Maybe you ought to cut back on the caffeine."
"Maybe you lot ought to whistle when you come into a room," he snarled.
You lot.
Her and Henry.
Impossible now to ignore the heated connection be?tween them. He was standing by the window, his face expressionless, eyes shadowed. She couldn't tell what he was thinking, nor was she entirely certain she wanted to know. His heart beat slower than the mor?tals they fed from; hers matched it. His blood sang not an invitation but a warning; hers echoed it. His scent lifted the hair on the back of her neck.
"So... " If only to prove that she could, she kept the challenge out of her voice and, if the words weren't exactly neutral, at least the tone was purely human. "I hear you owe me an apology."
"Yes." He inclined his head. "But I've spent over four-and-a-half centuries believing vampires are inca?pable of sharing a territory, Vicki. Don't expect me to change my mind overnight."
Her tone grew distinctly sarcastic. "Apologies usu?ally begin with 'I'm sorry.''
"I'm sorry. You were right. I was wrong. I didn't give us a fair chance. I will this time."
"Because you have to."
He shrugged. "Granted."
"You try that Prince of Darkness bullshit on me again, Henry, and I'm out of here."
"So you've said in the past." All at once he smiled, and she saw not competition but one of two men she'd learned to love in spite of herself. "You haven't changed, you know, not beyond the obvious-you continue to be so definitely you. After I surrendered the day, I became an entirely different person."
Celluci, still standing between them, measuring gaze flicking constantly back and forth, snorted. "Yeah. Right. You were a royal bastard before, you were a royal bastard after-with all the baggage that carries. Since you were barely seventeen when it happened, I'd say if you changed, you grew up, and that change comes to everyone."
Henry opened his mouth and then closed it again, the protest dying behind his teeth. Even Vicki looked slightly stunned.
Pleased with the effect, Celluci moved out into the room until he formed the third point of the triangle and said, "Now that's settled, we have a few other problems to deal with. The first, where's Vicki spend?ing the day? Not in your bed ..."
"I assume you're implying, not in my bed with me. That isn't actually possible."
"You bet your ass it isn't."
Henry ignored him. "There's an empty condo across the hall with an identical layout to this one. It wouldn't take long to secure the small bedroom. The woman who owns it recently died. I called her com?panion on the way in... "
"You have a cell phone?"
"Try to keep up, Detective; these are the 90s. Any?way, Mrs. Munro is leaving to spend the next week with her son in Kamloops and has graciously allowed us the use of her late employer's condo."
"Nice of her."
"Isn't it; but I assure you my persuasions were, for the most part, monetary. While Mrs. Munro is likely to receive the lion's share of the estate, she's just lost her job and will have no income until after the will clears probate. I swung around and picked up the keys and I think it should suit our purposes." He drew a key chain out of his pocket and threw it to Vicki who snatched it one-handed out of the air.
And threw it back. "It never occurred to you to ask me what I thought?"
"You can always spend the day locked in your van," he reminded her.
"The hell you can, it's already been ripped off once." It gave Celluci great pleasure to ignore Henry's startled exclamation. "Take the keys, Vicki. He asked you to come here, it only makes sense he finds you accommodation.''
Reluctantly, Vicki held out her hand. "If you put it that way ..."
"That's exactly how I put it." He waited until the keys had changed hands once again, then he contin?ued. "My second point concerns territory and keeping the two of you from each other's throats. This is a big city. Why can't Vicki hunt an area you don't use? You seemed to have implied that was possible back when that other vampire moved into Toronto."