Ride the Storm (Cassandra Palmer 8)

“Just as long as you don’t step on hers.”

Marco’s smile grew. “Wouldn’t dream of touching your little charge—”

“She isn’t my charge, but I will defend her,” Rico said, watching to see that Rhea settled back down again. And then he glanced at me. “As I would any of your court.”

“That’s . . . good,” I said, looking between the two of them, wondering what I’d missed. And then deciding I had enough to worry about already. “So one of the covens called Rhea?”

“No, one of the covens did not,” Marco said flatly. “Some woman working with the Black Circle did, and the damn Silver let Rhea walk right out of here, on her own, to meet with them and take charge of the handful of little girls they were supposedly sending.”

“And they grabbed her,” I said, my jaw tightening.

“And they grabbed her,” Marco agreed. “But luckily, she’d realized that she was going to be a little late—a couple of the kids have a cold, and she wanted to stop and get some medicine—and she called a friend of hers to tell her that.”

“A friend?”

“In the same coven,” Rico explained. “The one that had supposedly called her.”

“The original call went through the hotel switchboard,” Marco added. “So she didn’t have a number to use to call ’em back. But she thinks, no problem, I’ll just call my friend and she can let ’em know.”

“But her friend didn’t know anything about it,” I guessed.

“Her friend wasn’t even awake,” Rico said. “But when she did get up a short time later, and received the message, she realized that Rhea might be in trouble.”

Marco nodded. “She hadn’t heard anything about any coven girls joining the court, and she made a few calls. Found out that nobody else knew anything about it, either. So she called Rhea back, but nobody answered, so she tried to call us, but the switchboard wouldn’t let her through—”

“Then how did the Black Circle get through?”

The two vamps exchanged a look.

“How did they get through?” I asked again, a little more forcefully.

“We had the switchboard put a pass code on all your calls,” Marco told me.

“And?”

“And only a couple people had it,” Rico said softly. “They found one of them in his car this afternoon.”

“In his . . .” I trailed off, but Rico didn’t elaborate.

“Don’t soft-pedal it,” Marco said. “She’s not one of the kids.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? Then tell her what happened.” He looked at me. “They found him in his trunk. He’d been tortured, presumably until he gave them the code, and then locked in his car and left to bake to death in the heat.”

“That was unnecessary,” Rico said, frowning.

“No, it wasn’t. This is war; Cassie needs to know the truth.”

“And when she wakes up, will you tell her the truth?” Rico asked, glancing at Rhea.

“She already knows,” I said, looking at the small lump in the bed. And then up to meet Rico’s dark eyes. “That mage didn’t slit Rhea’s throat. She did it herself, so he would have nothing left to trade. She knows, Rico.” I turned and went back to my room.

Chapter Thirteen

I ended up in the bathroom because I needed to be alone and it was the one place the vamps wouldn’t follow me. I loved them like family—hell, they were my family, or as much of one as I’d ever had—but they weren’t human. Not anymore. And sometimes they showed that in odd ways, like failing to understand the need for solitude.

Vamps didn’t have solitude. From the moment they were Changed, they never had it again. I often wondered why they didn’t go insane—more of them, that is. The constant buzzing in their heads, all those voices, all those thoughts, all the time—