Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,22

was his.

“Who did we lose this time?” I asked, because the new guy had to be a replacement for someone.

“Paulie,” Marco said, his eyes still on Hildegarde. “Mircea pulled him back two days ago.”

Damn.

I’d liked Paulie.

“This has to stop,” I told Marco.

“That it does,” he said, looking pointedly at me. Because this wasn’t a problem he could fix. I sighed and went indoors, snagging a low-hanging package on the way in.

“Get Mircea on the phone,” I told one of the boys, who was so new that I didn’t even know his name yet. But he looked slightly more with-it than the maraca outside. He nodded and pulled out a phone, while I dealt with problem number two.

“It’s okay,” I said, grabbing a friend’s arm as she headed past.

A hundred tiny beads on a hundred tiny braids clacked together as her head spun to look at me. “One rule,” she said, her voice trembling. “I have one rule—”

“I know. It won’t happen again.”

“That’s what you said the last time! Why are there idiots running around—”

“Tami—”

“—with guns where there are children playing?”

She gestured across the living room to where a bunch of kids were gathered around a tall, exquisite creature, whose long arms were holding them protectively against his body. I blinked, because I’d never seen Augustine, couturier to the stars, give a damn about anybody but himself. It was almost . . . wholesome.

“It’s okay,” I told them. “There was just an, uh, accident.”

“The last one,” Tami said flatly. “I’ve had enough. I’m taking their guns.”

On the surface, it seemed like a ridiculous statement. My bodyguards were mostly massive vamps, master-level rank for the most part, and armed to the teeth, not that they needed to be, considering the teeth in question. They sent most people into cardiac arrest with barely a glance.

Tami wasn’t most people.

On the surface, she was a delicate beauty with café au lait skin, bright hazel eyes, and, currently, a head of Cleopatra braids. She looked like she should be walking a runway somewhere instead of trying to corral the crazy I lived with. But she was fully capable of taking on the job, and of enforcing exactly what she said.

Because Tami was a null witch.

It was a relatively rare ability that allowed her to pull magic off of anybody who had it, meaning pretty much anyone within these walls. That would include my new witch bodyguards, courtesy of the covens, and the lone Circle mage, who we’d all agreed to tolerate because he was mostly okay and it kept Jonas off my back. Even the vampires, who didn’t do magic, were nonetheless magical creatures.

I didn’t know what would happen if Tami decided to try her talents on one of them, but I doubted he’d enjoy the experience.

The new vamp handed me a phone, which didn’t help, because Augustine had gotten his voice back and was using it to scream. That started some of the kids crying, because they had no idea what was going on, and they were somewhat sensitive at the moment. And that brought Rhea running from somewhere inside the sprawling suite, which took up an entire floor in one of the towers at Dante’s, the casino I currently called home.

I put a finger in my ear, and tried to hear what Mircea was saying, only he wasn’t saying anything. It was someone else’s voice, but I couldn’t tell whose. “—until four o’clock. I can pencil you . . . a call . . . if you’d like.”

“What?” I said.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, which was probably space for a silent sigh, because Mircea’s people would never utter such a thing out loud. They were far too polite. Well, except for the ones he’d sent me, probably because they were less diplomatic and therefore less useful in his former profession.

But Mircea was no longer the chief diplomat of the North American Vampire Senate. He was the Enforcer now, of the newly combined übersenate that had recently been made from select members of the world’s six vampire governments. They’d come together to fight the war and had appointed him their general, something that had entirely changed his view of his family members’ usefulness.

After all, we didn’t intend to negotiate with the gods.

“Tell him he can’t keep taking my guards,” I yelled, because the noise level in here had just gone up again, thanks to everybody pouring back in from the foyer. “I need the people I have. They’re trained