Reluctant Partnerships (21 page)

“I’m fine,” Adèle said, trying to pull away.

“I’ll believe that when you can say it like you mean it,” Pascale retorted. “I don’t know you as well as the others do, but they’re all nodding like they agree with me. Rest for an hour or two and then you can solve all the world’s problems again.”

“We had a cancellation at this week’s seminar,” Raymond interjected. “There’s an empty room right down the hall. You can rest there for as long as you need.”

“I’m not an invalid,” Adèle complained as Raymond led her and Pascale to the indicated room.

“No, you’re not,” Pascale agreed, following Adèle into the room. “You’re a strong, stubborn woman who obviously needs someone to look out for her because you’re too strong and too stubborn to admit weakness when it strikes. Now lie down before I make you lie down.”

Adèle almost asked how Pascale thought she would make Adèle do anything, but as weak as she was, she doubted she could even summon enough magic to cast a displacement spell. Deciding not to argue, Adèle subsided onto the bed, plumping the pillow up so it supported her back. Dressed as she was, she refused to lie down with Pascale present. She did lean back against the pillow and close her eyes, though, something she never would have done in Jude’s presence.

“I don’t know what he did to you,” Pascale said, breaking the silence, “but I’m not him.”

“I know you aren’t,” Adèle agreed, not opening her eyes, “but you have to understand that I won’t go back to the way I had to live while he was alive.”

“How did you have to live?” Pascale asked, hackles rising at the thought of anyone hurting Adèle.

“Always looking over my shoulder,” Adèle said. “Always worried about when he’d grab me again. He might not have turned me, because he had a reason to want me alive, and besides, wizards can’t be turned, but he didn’t give me any more choice than your maker gave you.”

“And you think I would do that after all I’ve been through?” Pascale demanded, beginning to get angry.

“No,” Adèle said, finally opening her eyes. “I don’t think you would intend to do anything of the sort, but you have no idea the kind of power a partnership can bring to bear. If we do this, it won’t be a matter of choosing. We’ll end up in this relationship with no way out. I’m a bitch on a good day, Pascale. Jude was a bastard, but I wasn’t any angel either.”

“Do I get a choice in this?” Pascale asked. “You just decide you don’t want this and that’s it? How is that fair?”

“You don’t even know what
this
is,” Adèle replied tiredly. “You’ve been a vampire for a week. You’ve never been around wizards. You’ve met Angelique and maybe David, Jean and Raymond, a couple of the others, but you have no concept of what a partnership entails. I’ve watched it take over people’s lives. I’ve watched them change in front of my eyes, it felt like. Maybe most of those changes were for the better, but they weren’t for me, because I changed too. When I think about how I acted with Jude… I won’t go back to that.”

Hearing Adèle admit to the kind of fear Pascale could not even imagine the confident detective feeling gave her the strength to close her fingers over Adèle’s. “Maybe I don’t know what it entails, but I know how to find out, and maybe this time around, the changes will be right. For both of us.”

Adèle looked down at the slender fingers closing over hers. “I don’t know if I can give you what you need.”

Pascale shrugged. “Let me go through the seminar first, and then we can discuss giving each other what we want. I’m not asking for a commitment, just a chance.”

“I don’t have any experience with women.”

“I don’t have any experience with being a vampire. We’ll figure it out together. I may not know much, but I’m not blind. I’ve seen the way the vampires and wizards around here lean on each other. You can’t tell me they all had it easy. They’ve made it work. Surely we can too.”

“Not tonight,” Adèle said, pulling her hand back slowly. “After you’ve finished the seminar, we can talk about it again.”

Pascale nodded and retreated from the room, leaving Adèle alone with her tumultuous thoughts. She must have dozed, because when she opened her eyes again, Magali sat next to her bed, a book in hand. A tray full of steaming food rested on the bedside table.

“You should eat something,” Magali said, not looking up from her book.

“How do you do that?” Adèle demanded irritably even as she reached for the tray. “You didn’t look up and I didn’t move except to open my eyes.”

“Your breathing changed,” Magali replied, looking up. “You’re in an even fouler mood than usual. What’s bothering you?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Adèle said with a frown as she started to eat.

“You’re a lot of things, but you’ve never been one to exaggerate,” Magali replied. “Tell me. I’ll believe you.”

Adèle considered refusing, but she had a lot of respect for Magali, and perhaps it would help to have the perspective of another female wizard. “I found a new partner.”

“You don’t sound like that’s good news.”

“You know what Jude was like,” Adèle reminded her.

“Yes, I do. I also know what Luc and Jean and Orlando and a whole lot of others are like,” Magali replied. “Most of them aren’t like Jude.”

“I know that, but it’s more than that. It’s the way the partnerships seem to take over everyone’s lives,” Adèle explained. “You uprooted your life and moved to Amiens. Thierry went from being married, even if they were separated, to having a male lover. That makes me incredibly uncomfortable.”

“I didn’t peg you as being homophobic.”

“I’m not uncomfortable that he has a male lover,” Adèle retorted. “I’m uncomfortable that the partnership changed him that fundamentally. I don’t want some external force driving me. It’s like there’s nothing left now but the partnership.”

“That may be true for some partnerships,” Magali allowed. “Alain and Orlando, for example, but you’re judging all partnerships by a few. Yes, I moved to Amiens, but I’m a wizard. It doesn’t matter where I live. I can be anywhere I want in a matter of a few waves of my wand. Luc feeds from me when he’s hungry and fucks me when one of us is horny, but I’m not in love with him nor he with me. We have a partnership, not a love match.”

“Does he feed elsewhere?” Adèle asked.

“I haven’t asked him and he hasn’t said,” Magali replied. “Furthermore, I’m not going to ask him. And he doesn’t ask what I do on the nights he doesn’t come to my room.”

“What about on the nights he comes and you aren’t there?” Adèle asked.

“I try to tell him ahead of time when I’ll be out, like tonight,” Magali explained, “and he tries to tell me ahead of time when to expect him, like last night. Occasionally that doesn’t work, but it hasn’t been a problem for the most part. We’re both adults and we act like it.”

“So you think I should give it another try?” Adèle asked.

“I think that’s entirely between you and your new partner,” Magali replied, “but whatever you decide, don’t go into it expecting it to be a repeat of what happened with Jude. Go into it with an idea of what you’re willing to have it be—both of you, not just you—and make that plan work. There’s no wild magic from a Rite d’équilibrage gone wrong to force your hand this time. It’s possible for a vampire to feed without having sex. It’s possible to have sex with a vampire without feeding. It’s possible to do both without it taking over your life. You simply have to decide what you want.”

Chapter 13

“
W
HAT
’
S
this about a vampire attacking Adèle?” Martin asked, coming into Raymond and Jean’s office.

“A rabid vampire,” Jean said with a sigh, “or the equivalent thereof, since vampires don’t get rabies. From what Adèle told us about the man, I’m sure the same vampire who turned Pascale also turned Pierre, the one who attacked Adèle, because any responsible vampire wouldn’t have offered the choice to be turned to someone as delusional as Pierre appears to be, and yet Pierre was turned. My guess would be the
extorris
gave Pierre no more choice than he gave Pascale.”

“Delusional?”

“He’s a vagrant on pretty serious anti-psychotic drugs,” Raymond explained. “Without those, he’s completely out of his mind.”

“And the drugs won’t work on a vampire,” Martin postulated.

“Not directly,” Raymond agreed. “We’re working on getting some donor blood and some of the drugs so we can try mixing the drugs in the blood to see if that works.”

“Has anyone contacted Denis Langlois?” Martin asked, his pulse picking up at the thought of his potential partner. “He should probably be involved in this too, shouldn’t he?”

“Thierry has gone to get him,” Raymond replied. “He should be here any moment.”

“Another one?” Denis demanded, striding into the room with far more authority than a man of his apparent youth could ever have managed. Martin could not squelch the instinctive appreciation of the fine figure Denis cut in his slim suit, his hair slicked back from his forehead as always.

“Another one,” Jean confirmed, “except that we have even less to go on with this one than we did with the first. The man was mostly mad before he was turned, and his turning has apparently unhinged what little of his mind remained.”

“Putain,” Denis cursed under his breath. “Just what we need. Another vampire incapable of controlling himself.”

“There might be hope for this one if we can figure out how to get his meds into him,” Martin offered. The idea was not his, but he could not resist the need to have those laser-sharp eyes focused on him, if only for a moment.

“And you have an idea how this might work?”

“Raymond had the idea, actually,” honesty compelled Martin to reply, “but I’m a researcher. I could conduct the trials to get the balance right. It would be one less thing for Raymond to have to worry about.”

“You can’t do it alone,” Jean insisted. “He’s too dangerous for you to be alone with him. You need another vampire, preferably two, with you any time you’re with him. If he breaks free, he could kill you before you knew even what happened.”

“Can you do wandless magic?” Raymond interjected.

Martin shook his head. “That isn’t a skill I’ve mastered.”

“Then you need two vampires or a vampire and a wizard at all times,” Raymond insisted. “He fought my magic so hard earlier I had to reinforce the spell. If he were to break free and knock your wand away, you would be completely at his mercy.”

Martin had observed Raymond over the week he had been at l’Institut. He had seen the way the other wizard used magic, seen the casual acceptance among the other faculty wizards of the magnitude of Raymond’s strength, but he had also seen the surprise on the faces of some of the wizards there for the seminar. If the vampire had tested the limits of Raymond’s magic, Martin had no illusions how his own spells would fare. “I will take your advice. Do you have any suggestions for who I should ask?”

“I should be there,” Denis broke in. “If he’s from this area, that would make him part of my Cour if he can be helped. If nothing else, I should know what to do for him so I can help him again if it becomes necessary.”

“According to Adèle’s account of his ability to monitor his own condition before he was turned, I’d say that will very likely become necessary,” Jean said, “so it makes sense for you to know how to help him. I’m sure we can find someone else, vampire or wizard, to complete the team.”

“It wouldn’t even need to be the same person every time,” Martin said. “If Denis and I are doing the experiments, the third person is just a safety net. Not that I don’t think it’s a good precaution, but that person wouldn’t have to follow the logic of the changes we make in how we try to get the drugs into the vampire’s system.”

“I take it you’ve found your research question,” Raymond said with a chuckle. “You sound like me when I get excited about something. Fortunately I have an understanding partner. I think that was the hardest thing for Jean to get used to: the way I get lost in my research and forget everything else.”

“No, the hardest part was the way you refuse to take care of yourself,” Jean retorted, but his smile was teasing. “Remember that if you end up partnered with Martin,” he added, turning to Denis. “They get so caught up in what they’re doing they forget to eat, and then you go to feed from them and make them sick because of it.”

“That hasn’t happened in months,” Raymond protested.

Jean arched an eyebrow at him. “There’s a reason for that.”

There was, of course, even if it was not the reason everyone else in the room would guess. Raymond swore he could feel the mark on his back tingle as a wave of love surged through the link between them. Bound as they were, Jean could feed as much as he wanted without hurting Raymond in any way.

“I drag him out of his office for three meals a day,” Jean added for Martin’s and Denis’s benefit.

“To answer your question, Raymond,” Martin said, laughing at the interplay between the two men, “I think it would be both interesting and useful to work on this as my project, at least in the short term. I don’t know that it would fill an entire year, but it obviously needs to be done, and I’m in a position to do it.”

“Your help will be greatly appreciated,” Raymond said. “We can take you both upstairs to where we left Pierre after we tried letting him feed to see if that would help. He did calm down a little, but certainly not enough for us to consider him rational or in control. I’ll stay with you tonight. We’ll find someone else starting tomorrow.”

Raymond led them upstairs to a room very similar to the one Adèle occupied, two former monks’ cells that had been opened up to form temporary lodging for seminar participants. The room was not fancy, but the bed and armoire were nicely refinished antiques, and the mattress was new and comfortable. Not that the current occupant of the room had tested it from what Raymond could tell. The covers were still smooth on the bed from where madame Naizot and her daughters had prepared it for guests. Pierre huddled in the corner farthest from the windows, as if the glass itself were a threat to him.