Perilous Partnership (6 page)

Like the soil, the water in the pond was slow to respond to the touch of Raymond‟s magic. Here, with the element of his own affinity, he could diagnose the cause in a way he had not been able to with the earth. In the heart of a sleepy backwater, an area with deep history but little activity, the elements knew as little about magic as about modernity. In Paris, the Seine responded to Raymond‟s magic like a welcoming lover, but here the elements were more hesitant. Patiently, wooing the strength of the pond like he would woo a reluctant lover, Raymond stretched his magic over the surface of the basin, exploring its depths as he offered himself for inspection as well. Slowly the lake awoke, sharing with him its secrets and its inherent power. It was no locus,

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but it would provide a well of energy for him to plumb when his own resources grew thin. As he started to draw back, he felt Jean‟s hand on his shoulder. That brought a smile to his face, a subtle reminder that his resources would never be stretched as thin as they were before the alliance that united him with his partner. Jean‟s fangs would see to that.

Lifting his fingers from the water and blowing on them to warm them, Raymond turned to Jean. “I still want Thierry at least to come test the earth, but I managed to get a minimal response even from that, and I have the least affinity there. Unless he finds something I missed, I see nothing to hold us back.”

“I don‟t like the open lakefront,” Jean confided. “It seems like an unprotected front.”

“Were you not the one, a few weeks ago, telling me the war was over?”

Raymond teased.

Jean shrugged. “And you pointed out, quite rightly, that while the war was over, we remain political targets because of everything l‟ANS stands for and because some people will never see vampires as anything other than evil.”

“Don‟t say never,” Raymond insisted. “It may take time for us to make the equality legislation a reality for everyone, but we‟ll keep working until it is. As for the lakefront, Adèle should be able to secure that for us. It will take a group of wizards working in concert to secure the perimeter of the property, but it can be done. You remember the wards Marcel had in place on Milice headquarters.”

Jean nodded. “I didn‟t know if that kind of magic could be applied on open spaces.”

Raymond smiled. “We‟ll have to provide anchor points, but yes, it can be applied across an open space as long as it has something concrete to act as a limit.”

“Do you want to call Thierry now or come back later?”

Raymond considered the question. “Let‟s do it now. Do you mind telling the realtor we‟ll be a few more minutes? Now that we‟ve decided to do this, I want it underway as swiftly as possible.” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Thierry‟s office number as Jean walked away to talk to madame Prost.

“Noyer.”

“Bonjour, Sebastien. It‟s Raymond. Is Thierry around?”

“Hold on a moment. Let me get him.”

Raymond waited for a moment until Thierry answered. “Bonjour, Raymond. What can I do for you?”

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Raymond smiled at the question, thinking how far they had come in the past year. Before the alliance, Thierry had not trusted Raymond at all, and now he greeted him like an old friend. “I need your magical expertise, if you can spare me fifteen minutes of your time,” he said. “Jean and I are at a potential site for l‟Institut, and I need you to check on the elemental power. It felt a little off to me, but I had the same reaction at first from the water, only to find it was disuse rather than absence. I don‟t have the skill to check the earth the same way.”

“Do you have your repère?” Thierry asked.

“Yes.”

“I‟ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Wear your coat,” Raymond warned. “It‟s considerably colder here than in the capital. The air smells like snow, although the sky is clear.”

“Do you need Alain to come too?”

“Only if he wants to,” Raymond replied. “The wind came immediately to my call.”

“He‟s right here. I‟ll ask.” Raymond could hear Thierry‟s voice followed by Alain‟s muffled reply. “He says he‟d like to see it. We‟ll be there in a moment.”

Before Raymond could end the call and pocket his phone, four figures appeared a short distance away. He chuckled, thinking he should have known Orlando and Sebastien would not be left out of the adventure.

“It‟s beautiful!” Orlando said before the others could speak. “So peaceful!”

“It was a monastery,” Jean replied with a chuckle, returning from speaking with the realtor in time to hear Orlando‟s comment. He answered Raymond‟s silent question with a quick nod. “They built with the idea of natural beauty and silence drawing the monks‟ thoughts and lives to God.”

“I can see why they chose this spot.”

“Do you want me to check up closer to the buildings or is here good enough?” Thierry asked Raymond.

“Does it matter?” Raymond replied. “If you get one response here, is there a chance it will be significantly different a few hundred meters away?” Water did not work that way, any point in a given body of water as powerful as any other, but earth was trickier, the combination of minerals, the depth of the bedrock, even the kind of stone all combining to make a difference not always apparent to the naked eye. The vintners of the region were quick to point out how little it took to make a difference in their wines. Perhaps the same was true for the earth‟s magical properties.

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“Not usually,” Thierry replied. “And even if it is, the shore is hardly too far to walk if someone needs that stronger boost.” He knelt where he was, spreading his palms flat against the stones that formed the beach, closing his eyes as he let his power stretch. He felt the initial lethargy Raymond had described, but as he delved deeper, he sensed a solidity that would support any magical endeavor. Opening his eyes, he stood, dusting his hands together.

“There‟s nothing exceptional about the place, but it‟s solid. The power of the earth probably won‟t add strength to our endeavors, but it will support anything we do here.”

“The same is true of the air,” Alain added. “Perhaps even a little more so.

In the country like this, with none of the pollution from cars and factories, its purity could be a source of energy.”

Raymond smiled. He had suspected as much from his own explorations, but just as Thierry was aligned with the earth, Alain‟s affinity for air gave him even greater insight. “Then unless anyone has a concern I haven‟t addressed, I think the time has come to negotiate.”

Jean rubbed his hands together. “And that is where I come in.”

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RAYMOND was still shaking his head hours later when he and Jean returned home after the visit to the abbey and the subsequent negotiations. “I can‟t believe you convinced the bank‟s representative to come that far down on the price.”

Jean chuckled. “They aren‟t earning any money on a piece of property sitting empty and falling into disrepair, a fact the bank officer was well aware of. Since we agreed to take the loan through his bank, he had a choice between making a sale and earning interest on a sizeable sum or letting the offer pass and going back to earning nothing on a piece of property that decreases in value with each passing month.”

“Are you sure taking the loan was a good idea?” Raymond asked. “We can afford the price you negotiated without it.”

Jean shook his head. “And here I thought I‟d taught you something this year. There are no penalties for paying off the loan early. I‟m sure you heard me verify that before we signed.”

Raymond nodded.

“Then it‟s really quite simple. When we get the mortgage book, we send the full amount of the loan in the first month. Yes, we‟ll have to pay one month‟s interest, but that‟s still substantially less than the original asking price, and there‟s nothing the bank can do about it. We‟ll have the property. They‟ll have the principal back, and we‟ll be free and clear of the loan.”

“You are something else,” Raymond marveled. “I think I‟m glad you decided to side with us.”

Jean laughed. “As if there was another side to consider. Orlando didn‟t know when he met Alain in the cemetery that I‟d already decided to accept the alliance almost regardless of the terms because I could see the way the wind was blowing with Serrier, so he negotiated a fair bargain. He still has no real sense of le Jeu des Cours despite being my protégé for over a century, and now that he has Alain, he‟s outside of that. His Aveu de Sang puts him in a class by himself as far as vampire society is concerned.”

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“So is Sebastien in that same class?” Raymond asked, curious about the bond that united Alain and Orlando so that Orlando could only feed from his partner without being physically ill. Sebastien had made the same vow to a man long since dead.

“Yes and no,” Jean replied, not at all comfortable with the subject. The past year had changed many things, but even knowing the truth of those long-ago events did not lessen Jean‟s feelings of betrayal. “It should have then, but Sebastien‟s Aveu de Sang came about under rather odd circumstances. He made his Aveu de Sang with a man most of the other vampires considered already pledged to someone else. Not magically and not truly even verbally, but everyone except the man himself considered it understood. When Sebastien arrived and within a matter of weeks had seemingly stolen the man from another vampire, a high-ranking vampire, the Cour shunned him despite the Aveu de Sang. He didn‟t truly rejoin the Cour until the day the alliance formed in the gare de Lyon. I don‟t know how much you remember of that morning or whether you would have noticed the details, not knowing the whole story, but Sebastien wasn‟t actually invited. I was very careful to invite only my „friends‟

to the gathering, and Sebastien definitely didn‟t number among them. Monsieur Lombard told him about it and insisted he make an appearance. In hindsight I‟m glad he did. His help with Orlando as the Aveu de Sang grew and strengthened was invaluable, not to mention the rest of his help in the war effort.”

Raymond remembered the incident not because of Jean‟s reaction to it—he had still been fighting their partnership then, convinced the alliance would fail and the vampires would be the death of them all—but because Sebastien‟s arrival had coincided with Thierry‟s explosion of temper, and the resulting collision of magic and vampire had revealed a much simpler and faster way of finding paired vampires and wizards than the trial and error tasting they had done before. Thierry‟s magic should have knocked Sebastien to the floor if it did no more serious damage, but Sebastien had shaken it off like it was nothing, their first inkling that a wizard‟s magic would not work on his partner. Far more telling now was the expression on Jean‟s face. “So if Sebastien didn‟t steal your lover from you, what actually happened?”

“I never said he was my lover,” Jean said, eyes widening as he looked at his partner in surprise.

Raymond smiled and pulled Jean into a tender embrace. “I may not have your skills at le Jeu des Cours, but je ne suis pas né de la dernière pluie. The fact that you chose not to mention a single name except Sebastien‟s in your recounting gave you away. And don‟t tell me you‟ve forgotten the names of the people involved. I‟ve lived with you for a year now. I know how sharp your memory is.”

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Caught, Jean gave in. “To hear Sebastien tell it, he met Thibaut soon after he arrived in Paris. Thibaut offered his neck and his body and pushed for an Aveu de Sang within days. Sebastien had no reason to refuse, not realizing until much later that Thibaut had been my lover for over a year and had not broken things off with me before making the Aveu de Sang with him. I thought he had stolen Thibaut when in fact Thibaut betrayed me.”

And you have not let anyone close since
, Raymond thought, knowing not to speak the words of pity aloud. Jean would never accept them. He considered urging his partner to feed, but Jean would read his emotions in his blood as clearly as if he had spoken aloud. Deciding another course of action was in order, he nuzzled along the line of Jean‟s jaw, pleased beyond words when his lover‟s head fell back. Whether he topped or bottomed, Jean usually took control of their lovemaking, a situation Raymond found perfectly acceptable most of the time. Tonight, however, Jean needed to be loved instead.

Raymond nipped softly at the smooth skin of Jean‟s neck, knowing the hint of teeth would titillate his lover as little else. Perhaps it was because feeding was such a part of sex for the vampires, and even more for him and Jean because of their partnership bond. It might not be an Aveu de Sang, but Raymond did not think his life could be any more fully entwined with that of the man in his arms. Backing Jean toward the bedroom, he continued his amorous assault, not sure how long Jean would continue to let him lead.

They waltzed through the door into the inner sanctum of the apartment, the one room Jean would allow no one but the two of them to enter. Even the woman who came once a week to clean did not venture over the sill of this door. The windows and volets were shut against the cold night, enclosing them in a sumptuous cocoon. The plush rug was thick beneath their feet as they stepped from the bare tiles of the rest of the house into their haven. Raymond toed off his shoes and socks, his feet sinking into the deep pile of the Persian rug. Against him, he could feel Jean doing the same.