Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,146

skin; inch-long fangs; and eyes of flaming, molten lava.

They weren’t lava right now. They weren’t even the glowing cinnamon amber that he usually let people see when his power was rising. They were their normal brown velvet, like his skin had its usual golden sheen and his hair—still down around his shoulders—was the characteristic rich mahogany.

Yet there was something different about him.

I’d no sooner had the thought than he abruptly got up and left the table, and then the room, still without a word.

I just sat there for a moment, nonplussed.

Then I followed him.

Mircea’s suite at the consul’s wasn’t anywhere near as large as his old rooms at MAGIC. Maybe because he had an apartment in New York and usually stayed there when he was on this coast—and considering what went on around here normally, I didn’t blame him. Or maybe because the consul’s sprawling court was seriously overcrowded these days, hosting a ton of senators and their retinues from around the world, all of whom thought they deserved a palace of their own.

So instead of a multi-roomed, self-contained mansion filled with servants and retainers, he had what amounted to a regular one-bedroom apartment, although it looked like he needed more space. Because the living room was full of . . . I had no idea. It looked like Augustine’s shop had exploded in here.

There were gorgeous bolts of material everywhere, gleaming or glittering in the ambient lighting. There were soft furs flung over couches and couture hanging from racks. There were boxes of every shape and size piled almost as tall as me in perilous towers, some with more expensive stuff spilling out of the sides.

But none of it said “Augustine.”

“Who’s Claude?” I asked, checking out a little label. It was on a jungle-print dress covered in elaborate embroidered birds, toucans and macaws, one of which flew off and perched on my shoulder. It had weight like a real bird, but was only two dimensional, which is probably why it kept cocking its head at me, trying to get a better view.

Until it flew off to perch on a lampshade instead and sat there preening its sequined feathers.

Mircea looked up from rummaging in a box. “A French designer. We raided his shop recently.”

I looked around. Augustine would be pleased to hear it, no doubt, but why did the senate need to steal their couture? I asked Mircea as much, and received a cocked eyebrow in return.

“We didn’t steal it. We confiscated it, with proper remuneration, of course. Claude now has the distinction of being the only designer in the world to sell out a collection before it was even shown.”

“That doesn’t explain why you wanted it,” I pointed out, although some of it was pretty impressive.

And pretty sneaky, I realized, as a beaded monkey leapt off a nearby coat and grabbed my bracelet—

And made off with it!

“Hey!” I said, staring. Because that wasn’t an ordinary bracelet. “Give that back!”

But the only response was some chittering from atop a curtain rod over some fake windows and a flash of scary-looking teeth.

“That is why,” Mircea told me. “Claude put too much magic into it—of the wrong kind.”

“The wrong kind?”

“That is what I want to show you,” he said, as I ran around, trying to catch the little thief. Which stayed just ahead of me, only occasionally pausing to look back over its shoulder with beady little eyes.

But it was paying too much attention to me, and not enough to Mircea. Who snatched it out of the air as it leapt past, going from side table to sofa. A moment later, I had my bracelet back, and Mr. Handsy had been dumped onto his jacket again, where he continued to watch me malevolently from underneath a banana leaf.

“Great for kleptomaniacs!” I said, scowling.

“It’s a bit more troublesome than that,” Mircea said, looking down at his desk.

He’d spread out a cloak on it, a pretty standard thing in black, with a high neck and a white satin lining. It looked like the sort of thing you’d wear to the opera, or to a costume party if you wanted to do a high-end version of Dracula. But I was guessing that it was more important than that, because Mircea was gazing at it like it was a sacred relic.

“Stay here and watch this,” he told me.

“Watch what?” I asked, as he took another cloak, a ladies’ one this time, and walked back into the bedroom with it.

He didn’t answer, and I wasn’t sure what