I hesitated. “You did get the part about safecracking in Armageddon, right?”
He just looked at me.
Okay. His call. “There is one other thing.”
His look turned politely curious.
I bit my lip, trying to figure out how to phrase this without saying you’re a weird vampire.
But he was. He did dishes, which master vampires definitely Did. Not. Do. He liked guns, which a lot of vamps disdained as being unnecessary and too human. And he had given me the impression in the short time I’d known him that he didn’t care much for rules, even vampire sorts of rules.
Which was good, because I was about to ask him to break one—a big one.
“I’d just as soon Mircea didn’t know about this,” I finally said.
Rico frowned.
“You know, not right away,” I added quickly, because of course he’d tell the boss sooner or later. I just preferred it to be later.
A lot later.
Like after I had Pritkin back and had time to be yelled at.
Not that Mircea would yell; it wasn’t his style. But he would certainly make his displeasure known. Which was okay; I could deal with that. What I couldn’t deal with was his trying to stop me, because he was damned sneaky and he might well succeed and I didn’t have time for this!
Rico frowned some more. “We’re not his men,” he told me. “We’re your men. He sent us to help you.”
“And to report on me.”
“He hasn’t asked me to do that.”
“He doesn’t need to. There’s plenty of others—”
“—and I wouldn’t even if he did.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
He leaned one elbow on the counter, going into a graceful slouch. “I am a senior master, Cassie. I do as I like.”
“That’s not how the vamp world works.”
“Isn’t it? I am emancipated. The blood bond no longer holds me.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I like it here.”
“No one likes it here.” The guys called this place Australia. As in, they’d been exiled from the main court in Washington State and sent to a land down under, full of heat and craziness and frequent danger. It wasn’t anyone’s favorite posting.
But Rico didn’t seem to see it like that. “I do. I found court life to be very pleasant and very pretty. And very dull. Everything is too perfect there, too controlled.” He smiled. “I like things messy.”
“Then you came to the right place.”
He nodded. “The day I arrived, I was attacked by mages, almost blown up, and came very close to being eaten alive by a dragon.”
“And you liked that?”
“I wasn’t bored.”