Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,149

the subject, counterargument after counterargument for anything you might say. And now . . .”

“Now?”

“I don’t want to discuss it at all.” He looked tired, stressed, and completely believable. But then, that was the problem. He always did. I thought back to how perfectly he’d lied to the consul, without a tick or a tell. He could be lying to me now, and I’d never know—

“I’m not!” He stared at me, and the dark eyes were haunted and pained and utterly, utterly sincere. “I know how badly I fucked up; I’ve thought of little else. How I should have trusted you, how I could have told you at any time and at least received a hearing, how my cowardice almost got you killed, all of it! How all I want, all I think about anymore, is a way to get you back.”

“You’re not getting me back,” I said, and, for the most part, managed to keep my voice steady. It wasn’t easy. Mircea rarely swore, and when he did, it was usually in some long-dead language, leaving me to guess from his tone what he meant. He also never looked like this—tired, desperate, almost . . . frightened? It was insane! Nothing frightened Mircea.

It was also really, really effective.

It made me want to go to him, to comfort, to console. It made me want to drop my guard, which was the last thing I could afford. Mircea the bastard I could handle. Mircea the tired, overworked, and vulnerable?

Not so much.

“Cut it out!” I said again, to myself as much as to him. “You want to talk about your wife, let’s talk.”

“I want to talk about us—”

“Well, I don’t! And there is no us—”

“That has to be your decision, of course,” he said, but his eyes said something else. His eyes said, “You are mine and you always will be.” His eyes said, “This isn’t over.” His eyes—

Could go to hell, along with the rest of him!

“Damn it, Mircea!”

“But perhaps I can at least regain some of your trust.”

“What?” The sudden course correction caught me off guard. “How?”

“By telling you about this.” His hand clenched in the soft fabric of the cape, causing the picture of the bedroom ceiling to scrunch up and wobble around.

I frowned at it. “And that is?”

“The reason we raided Claude’s Paris showroom. And his factory floor. And everything in between, including tracking down samples of his new line that he gave to friends.”

I looked at the cloak some more. I didn’t get it. “Why? There’s plenty of spells that can do that, or something like it. If you’re talking about espionage—”

“That was the original idea, yes. Anthony feared that certain members of his senate were conspiring against him, and wanted to find out if it was true. But the usual surveillance spells can be counteracted, which people planning to overthrow their consul would certainly take care to do. He needed something new.”

“This?” It still looked like a wearable TV to me.

But Mircea nodded. “Claude is Anthony’s couturier, and he is known for using old—in some cases very old—spells as inspiration for his collections. In this case, he came across one not seen in five centuries: Nodo D’Amore.”

“Lover’s Knot,” I translated.

Another nod. “It was used during the Renaissance, in the wars that took place between vampire factions following the consul’s accession. Some masters did not like the new laws and tighter oversight that she was putting in place, and wanted to overthrow her, or at least to carve out independent fiefdoms for themselves. She . . . demurred.”

I bet. The consul didn’t share power. Some things never changed.

“Claude came across an old spell book from that time,” Mircea continued. “One we missed when Lover’s Knot was outlawed, and fell in love with its complexity—”

“Outlawed? But why was it—”

“I’m getting there,” he promised. “Claude broke the spell into its component parts, using one strand in his fashion. It caused an item of clothing—the receiver—to reflect an image of whatever another item—the sender—had in front of it. Claude was even planning to add sound, giving Anthony eyes and ears that looked like nothing more than a handkerchief or a forgotten jacket. Anthony intended to leave pieces of the spelled clothing at the homes of the suspected conspirators, in an attempt to discover their plans.”

“But wouldn’t the counterspells stop that?”

He shook his head. “The spell in question was so old, and so long forgotten, that the newer counterspells had no defense against it. Anthony thought he had found his perfect