Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 (26 page)

The uncertainty of the moment hung like a blanket of tension around my shoulders. Was this where we made up, or finally broke up?

Nathan's gaze held mine as he spoke. "And I would feel it even if you weren't my fledgling."

I moved as if to go to him, but Cyrus's mind invaded mine.
Please, stay with me
. Understanding my reluctance, Nathan nodded. "He has you today. I've got you every day."

The gnawing guilt in my chest wouldn't let me turn my back on Nathan now. "All those things I said—"

"Don't apologize." He shook his head as if he could dissipate the hurt I'd caused him.

"Nathan, I—"

"Don't apologize," he repeated. "Because you meant everything you said."

"You know that's not true."

He held up a hand, "Don't. Carrie, you wanted to hurt me. If you hadn't meant those things, they wouldn't have hurt so much. So don't apologize." Tears spilled from my eyes and a sob welled in my chest, blocking my words. I couldn't have spoken if he'd wanted me to.

Nathan straightened in the doorway and put his hands in his pockets. "I'll see you after sunset."

He turned to go and I found my voice. "Don't you want to know what happened with

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Clarence?"

I saw the muscles beneath Nathan's T-shirt bunch. I knew he felt my hope and, admittedly, pride at how well things had gone at the mansion. In other words, he knew that I was about to tell him exactly how I would proceed to put myself into danger in phase two of my plan. "Fine. How did it go?"

"It was okay. He agreed to help us." I wished I had some details to give him, now that I'd brought it up.

"Help doing what?" There was a note of amusement in Nathan's voice now. An easy, friendly tone that warmed me from the inside.

"Don't know. I have to go back tonight."

He took a deep breath, to stem the tide of warnings that would come flowing from his mouth if he let them. "We'll talk about it tonight." I watched as he turned to the corner toward his bedroom. "I'm going, you know," I called after him.

He echoed back, "We'll talk about it tonight."

Chapter Fourteen: Clarence

In the end, Nathan agreed that it should be me meeting Clarence, because I'd made the arrangement and because the butler would likely try to kill Cyrus if he set foot on the grounds.

"Or you, for that matter," I'd tacked on. "Clarence doesn't like vampires." Nathan had smiled at that. "Funny how his line of work always seems to lead him to them, huh?"

It had felt much too easy, his acceptance of my "I'm going and you're not" decree, and I'd wondered if he was actually still mad at me and hoping Dahlia would finish me off. Then I'd wondered if he was still mad at Cyrus, and what he would do to him when I left. He'd felt my doubt and it had clearly hurt him. "You're my fledgling. Do you think I would cause you that sort of pain?"

Without waiting to think about it, I'd snapped, "You were going to this morning." We'd parted on less than warm terms, with Nathan trying to act as though he wasn't angry with me and me pretending the whole exchange had never happened. Still, before I'd left, he'd reassured me again that he wouldn't harm Cyrus, and it was all I had to comfort me on the walk to the mansion.

I refused to think of the place as Dahlia's house. When I'd first entered the grounds it had been Cyrus's home, and he had been my sire. He'd wanted me to consider it my home, as well, though I'd never been truly comfortable in the palatial rooms full of armed bodyguards. So I must admit it was a shock when, upon meeting Clarence at the back gate, I found no watchful, black-clad men with walkie-talkies and grim faces. Clarence looked behind him, to where my gaze sought any sign of a trap, and he shook his head.

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"She ate them. Or fired them. Mostly ate them. I got to keep their building, though. More room than I had in the house, and I can get away from her for a few minutes if I want."

"Is she treating you well?" I asked as I followed him up the path toward the house. He stopped and gave me that "stupid vampire" look. "Of course she is. Didn't I just say she gave me a house? And she's been giving me days off. Not just one a year like you." My old man. I snickered at the thought of Cyrus being in any way fatherly to me. Then I remembered my grim purpose for being there, and sobered. "If she's so great why are you helping me break into her house?"

Clarence stiffened at that, pulling his noble dignity around him like a suit of armor against my scurrilous accusations.

"What you're doing tonight isn't going to hurt her. It's going to hurt the big man. I've got no love for him."

"So, what's going on? Did you send her out so I could snoop, or what?" He shushed me urgently. "I drugged her, but I don't know if it took yet. She's got a resistance to most things."

"Try to poison her often?" Clarence had definitely had no love for Cyrus, but as far as I know, he'd never tried to kill him. And if he was so damn fond of Dahlia, he wouldn't have tried to kill her.

He shook his head, a look of sadness on his creased face. "No. She's tried to kill herself, though. It's a shame, she wasn't a bad girl. She wasn't a nice girl, but nobody should want to take their own life."

Dahlia had tried to commit suicide? Color me surprised. "Well, how will we know if she's drugged or not?"

"You'll know if she doesn't kill you when you go in there." We'd come to the terrace, and I found myself looking guiltily over the flagstones, wondering if there would still be a stain from the night Ziggy had been killed. I'd been back to this house once after he'd died, but I'd been too preoccupied with my status as noble human sacrifice to think of looking. To my relief—and oddly enough, disappointment—the stone was clean, and I waited patiently for Clarence to unlock the French doors to the foyer.

I'd wondered if Dahlia would have redecorated when Cyrus was gone. She hadn't changed much, except to add potted plants and a simple wrought-iron cafe table and chairs to the foyer. The doors to the study were closed, but for the strangest instant I wanted to rush to them and throw them open, to find Cyrus there, the old Cyrus, waking for me.

"She's upstairs," Clarence said, correcting what he thought was my presumption that I would find Dahlia in the study. He pointed to the curving staircase. From the foyer I could see that the second level was dark. "You know the way." I started up the steps. Clarence made no move to follow me. My heart leaped farther up in my throat with each step I took. I'd never been back to the rooms where I'd lived with Cyrus, where I'd made love to him—no, had sex with him; I had to keep
that
straight, at least. Where I'd bargained for Ziggy's life. I ached for those months. I don't know why. When I was living them, I'd been in hell. But things hadn't improved too much since, and I realized with a shock that maybe I had loved Cyrus then more than I loved Nathan now. There wasn't time to mull over my relationship problems, though. The huge double doors to Cyrus's room loomed ahead. As I passed my former quarters, my fingers itched to touch the door handle, and I indulged myself. I had no doubt my things had probably all

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been thrown away, but I had to go back, just for a moment.

I hadn't changed the decor of the room when I'd inherited it from Dahlia, so it was no surprise to see it remained exactly as I had left it. In fact, a light film of dust on everything suggested it hadn't been inhabited for quite some time, either. I paced quietly around the furniture in the parlor. There was the sofa Ziggy had slept on. There was the chair Cyrus had thrown me into in a fit of rage.

And there was the secret door he'd used to spy on me and intrude into my space. The hutch in the corner remained as it had been, but a tiny latch was installed now. I wondered if that had been during Dahlia's post-Carrie return to power, brief though it had been. From the window I caught a glimpse of the rusty, unused gate where Nathan and I had met to plot Ziggy's freedom. A lump formed in my throat. I would have given anything then to be with him, away from Cyrus. Why was I so torn now?

Memories of my captivity—my willing captivity—crashed over me. The humiliation I'd faced at Cyrus's hands, the power he'd exerted over me to make me act against my nature. I'd forgiven him of all these things and effectively erased them from my consciousness. But they would never be gone from my heart. God, how I'd taken Nathan for granted since he'd freed me.

The door to my old bedroom was closed. I stalked to it, flung it open and crossed to the mammoth bed. With one hard shove, I managed to move the frame, and heard the unmistakable whisper of paper slipping. I felt in the gap blindly until I found what I was looking for. The drawing Nathan had made of me, the one I'd carried with me when I left him for Cyrus.

The paper was as crisp as the day I'd hid it. I unfolded it and looked down at the woman Nathan had seen standing in his shop. It was by no means accurate. For one, I rarely wore my hair down. And my eyes weren't quite as big and innocent-looking as he'd made them. And I was older now. Sure, I hadn't aged physically, but sometimes, like now, I wanted to get in a time machine and go back and give the younger me a good hard slap. Of course, this was presuming I'd learned anything at all. In another six months, would I want to come back to
this
moment and slap myself, too?

The clock on the mantel in the parlor chimed, and I remembered I wasn't here to sightsee. This wasn't my room anymore, this wasn't Cyrus's house. And I had a job to do. I went to the hutch and lifted the latch—how she thought something this flimsy would have kept Cyrus out, I had no clue—and ducked through the secret door. The anteroom was the only part of Cyrus's suite I'd been in, besides his bedroom. I'm sure there were more secret doors, but I'd never seen them or known where they led. My suspicions were raised solely by the seemingly effortless way the guards and Clarence could be summoned. The door to the bedroom was open, though, so I slipped through it. I was expecting a more visceral response to the sight of the bed where Cyrus and I had shared our intimate times. I didn't know it then, but he'd let his guard down with me. When he'd asked if I loved him, he'd opened himself up, despite his past hurts. No wonder my rejection had sent him over the edge.