Midnight's Daughter(7)

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“To see if my dry cleaner can get out whatever it is Varos demons secrete when they spit at you. Pinkish purple ooze, smells like a family of skunks and eats into fabric like acid.”

I headed for the door, but before I could get there, Daddy was in the way, reclining against the doorjamb. “Sit down.”

I sighed. I hadn’t really expected it to be that easy. “There’s no point.” Mircea just stood there, so I elaborated, more for the benefit of the idiot who’d gotten roped into this mess than for dear old Dad. Maybe the poor bastard could still weasel out of it. For his sake, I hoped so, since he was certainly doomed otherwise.

“London, 1889. Dark and stormy night. Ring any bells? I think the exact quote was, ‘If you do not finish this tonight, if you leave him any avenue by which to return, I wash my hands of the whole affair. Next time, you will hunt him alone.’ ” I glanced at the French guy, who’d turned around to stare at us. “I was a lot more pretentious back then,” I explained, “but you get the drift. Barely survived the last go-round, not doing it again, especially when all you’re planning is to put him in another of those oh-so-secure traps and wait for him to find another way out. And that’s assuming he doesn’t eviscerate you and anybody dumb enough to follow you first. Now get out of the way, Daddy dear; I have a real job to do.”

“This is your job, until I say otherwise.”

I smiled. I was feeling fairly mellow for a change. I wasn’t sure if that was because of all the violence earlier or the laughing fit, but either way, I actually didn’t feel like tearing his head off. “And you used to have such good hearing.”

“You will not defy me on this.”

I waited for a minute, but he just stood there, looking all grim and macho. It was the face that usually caused other vamps to sink to their knees, babbling apologies and trying to kiss his expensive, leather-covered toes. It had never worked on me. “Um, I’m assuming there’s another half to that sentence. Because I’m really not seeing—”

“Claire.” That one word stopped me in midrant.

“I had better be misunderstanding you,” I said softly.

“You are fond of the human, aren’t you?”

“If you had anything to do—”

“I did not take her,” he said calmly, “but I could arrange to get her back for you. I can call on the Senate’s resources, which you must admit are far greater than your own.”

“I’ll find her myself.”

He arched a dark, expressive brow and gave me his patented condescending smile. “In time?”

I didn’t answer for a moment, my brain being busy with a replay of that night in London. All I could hear was the faint sound of bootheels on cobblestones, far away but getting closer. That even, measured tread had echoed in my head for years. I didn’t think about what had happened after the steps stopped, right in front of where I was concealed. No. I never thought about that at all.

“Uncle Drac,” as I flippantly referred to him to keep myself from gibbering, was the only thing on earth that truly scared me. I think my laughter earlier had been less about Daddy finally admitting I was good for something, and more hysterics from the thought of going up against Drac again. I had lobbied hard for the final solution to the problem more than a century ago, since trapping him had been as much about luck as skill. With nothing else to do to while away the decades, he must have dissected that night a thousand times, analyzing it in that brilliant, broken mind of his, figuring out exactly where he went wrong. Dracula deserved his legend, however mixed-up much of it was due to that Victorian hack writer. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes twice; in fact, I doubted he would make any at all.

A mental picture of Claire’s face wavered in front of my eyes. She was one of the few friends I’d ever been able to hold on to for more than a few months. It wasn’t that the rages didn’t scare her, but rather that she had never been exposed to them. I had never thought of myself as a magical being before I met her, but there was no doubt that she had the same calming effect on me as on a spell or ward. Living and working alongside her had given me the closest thing to peace and a normal life I’d ever known. I still had occasional fits, but only when outside her orbit, and even then, they were rarer. The idea of never seeing her face screw up in thought as she surveyed my latest painting, trying to figure out what the hell it was supposed to be, was brutal.

But Claire was more than my friend; she was also the only chance for me to master my rage once and for all. She’s from one of the oldest magical families on earth, House Lachesis, who specialize in healing. They have access to ancient lore that even the Circle itself doesn’t know. Claire once told me that there is a branch of the family that does nothing but scavenge, in areas so out of the way as to make Antarctica look like Forty-second and Broadway, for unusual cures, potions and amulets. Another branch researches new treatments, and yet another comes up with debilitating spells to sell to malevolent types to ensure a steady supply of wealthy afflicted.

Despite the fact that she had worked in the business side of things rather than in research and development, she’d been using her contacts to try to find something that would decrease my fits. Because of my metabolism, human drugs don’t stay in my system long enough to register. I was hoping a magical solution would have more effect, but no one had ever thought to develop anything for dhampirs. There are so few of us as to make it impractical, and we’re not exactly top of the popularity chart. There was a good possibility that Claire’s work was the first of its kind ever done. And if I didn’t find her soon, it might also be the last.