"I don't make it a habit of mentally hooking up with people. The only person I talk to that way is Cara." Seamus rolled up on his side. His arse was going numb. "When we get out of here, I'm going to apologize to Cara. I'm going to make this right. I love her, man. I want to marry her and move back to Ireland. She can be a country vet."
"You really want to leave politics?"
"You know I have to. People will demand that I resign. I'm okay with that. I just want you in office for another term. I don't have to be there." Though it made him feel a little solemn to imagine Ethan working without him, getting another advisor. They had worked together for a long time, and Seamus had tried to have a positive impact on the Vampire Nation. But he had broken the law and it was time to step back.
"We'll see, Fox. It might blow over. It might be nothing. And I'm going to apologize to Alexis, too. I should have told her the Frenchman was back. I didn't because I thought she'd give him hell for sleeping with her sister. I just didn't want to deal with the drama, but that wasn't fair of me."
Seamus glanced over at Ethan in amazement. "Brittany slept with the Frenchman?"
"Oops," Ethan said. "Probably wasn't supposed to tell you that."
They both laughed, then fell silent. Seamus studied the sky. Brittany and Corbin. Hell. Everyone had been having sex but him. And given the morning's events, he wouldn't be having sex again anytime soon either.
"What about Kelsey?" Ethan asked.
"What about her?"
"You've spent a lot of time with her. She has your blood now. Maybe you could contact her."
Seamus hadn't thought about Kelsey. "It's worth a try. You never know what you're getting with Kelsey, but maybe she would tell someone where we are."
He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, visualize Kelsey, pick through time and space and reach her.
Kelsey
? he called.
Can you hear me
?
Seamus
? Her voice came back to him just a few seconds later, suspicious and hesitant.
Why are you in my head
?
Ethan and I need your help. We're trapped at the Venetian hotel. Send the security team
. Seamus was about to elaborate when Kelsey slammed her thoughts shut.
"Shit. She just closed me out. I told her we were trapped and needed help and she shut me out."
"She's the worst goddamn secretary," Ethan complained. "She names computer files shit like 'Things I don't know what to do with' and she puts rainbow-colored sticky notes all over my desk. I hate that."
"Cara ordered me Betty Boop checks."
That set Ethan off all over again.
"And she bought these pink fluffy towels so that after I showered I had pink lint on my balls."
"Stop," he said, laughing so hard he was doubled over wheezing. "I can't take it."
It felt better to get it all out there, to make Ethan laugh. If it was someone else, he'd laugh himself, and it was better than sobbing into more alcoholic blood. That had only gotten him tied onto Donatelli's roof.
"Then today, after she left and got a new room, she sent the bellman to get her stuff. Including the towels."
Ethan made a choking sound. "No fucking way." His laughter sent him rolling over to the left.
It took Seamus a second to realize that Ethan had rolled right off the side of the building. "Carrick?" He tried to sit up, to see what had happened. He could see the shackle attached to the wall, and snaking off the roof where Ethan had disappeared. "Carrick, you okay?"
Great. Now Ethan was dangling over the side of the building drunk. Very presidential.
"I'm fine," Ethan called. "And I broke the chain. I should have done that an hour ago." He leaped up onto the roof, hands still locked behind his back in steel cuffs.
Seamus nodded, suddenly feeling very prosaic. "Cool. Now get me out, too, and we can be on our way."
By sunset, Cara was sobbing again. She had taken a break from wailing to let the bellman in with her belongings earlier and had caught a few hours' sleep. But now she was awake and she was right back to balling her eyes out, clinging to Seamus's T-shirt.
It smelled like him, musky and masculine.
And she had reached a new low, cuddling up on the bed with the cotton shirt cradled in her arms. Knowing it was pathetic didn't make her stop. She was actually dragging it across her face for another whiff when there was a knock on the door.
Maybe it was Seamus. She didn't think her instructions to keep her room number from him would be an obstacle to a man like Seamus. He could probably hunt her down like a bloodhound, for all she knew. Obviously there was a lot about being a vampire he had failed to mention in the weeks she had lived with him.
She thought about opening the door. She really did want to see him. She missed him. The night before had been so intimate, so tender, so hot, those feelings of love couldn't have been her imagination. Maybe if she just gave Seamus a chance to explain. Plus she was hungry. She hadn't fed since the bagged blood that morning with Kelsey and Alexis. Seamus's blood tasted so much better…
Cara flung the shirt completely over her face, wiped her tears with it, and breathed in deeply. She was losing it. And she was not going to answer the door.
The pounding came harder. Her dogs lifted their snouts in disapproval.
"Cara, it's Alexis and Kelsey. Open up."
Damn. She supposed she couldn't ignore them.
Still holding the now soggy T-shirt, she got up and answered the door. "Hey."
Alexis's jaw dropped. "Whoa. Things didn't go well with Seamus, I take it."
"No."
"What happened to your hair?" Kelsey asked. Despite her early morning adventures in self-mutilation, Kelsey looked fresh and perky, dressed in sexy skinny jeans, a silk camisole, and a sparkly shrug.
Cara touched her head. "I don't know. What does it look like?" She hadn't really brushed it since her postsex shower some fifteen hours earlier. She had pulled shirts on and off over her hair, cried into it, slept on it, and chewed the ends at one point. Chances were it wasn't looking all that great, but she wasn't sure she cared.
"It looks like you've been electrocuted," Alexis said. "But that's irrelevant." She paced back and forth in front of the bed, while Kelsey sat down.
Cara flopped on the row of hotel pillows lining the headboard and wished more than anything she could still eat chocolate.
"We're here because Ethan and Seamus are missing."
"Missing? How could they be missing?"
"I don't know. But none of the guards know where they are, which is insane. They don't go anywhere without at least two bodyguards. I haven't seen Ethan since this morning when we had a little bit of an argument. He's not answering his cell phone. And when I try to call Ethan mentally all I get is this fuzzy sort of static."
"Maybe they're avoiding us. Maybe they're somewhere together bitching about us." It had only been twelve hours. They were grown vampires. Cara couldn't work up the energy to worry.
"But Seamus called Kelsey and said they were trapped at the Venetian and that they needed help."
"He called Kelsey?" Okay, that ticked her off. "Why would he call you instead of me?" Like Kelsey could possibly know the answer to that, but she was asking rhetorically.
"I don't know. Maybe he was afraid you wouldn't answer. But he sounded really urgent, Cara. They need our help. I think the Italian has them."
"Donatelli?" A shiver went through Cara. In her mind, he had been elevated to the status of a monster. "Why do you think that?"
"Because he lives at the Venetian," Alexis said. "I think they went there to confront him about everything that has been going on."
"Why would they do that without guards?" That didn't at all logical.
"Because they're stupid."
Cara wasn't going to argue with that. "So what do you think we should do?"
"I think we should go check out the poker play at the Venetian. You are the Ava's Texas Hold 'Em champ. Maybe you want to see what the play is like at the Venetian."
That reminded her that she'd never cashed in on her winnings, and she had left the chips in Seamus's room. They weren't going to do her any good there. "I'm not sure about this. What good is it going to do to go over there? We don't know that Ethan and Seamus are even there, and there is no way we're going to be able to search private rooms."
"But we can flush Donatelli out of his suite and have a little chat with him. If he's hurt my husband I will do unspeakably painful things to him."
The venom in Alexis's eyes was a little scary. "I thought you were mad at Ethan."
"I am. But he's still my husband. The only one who can slap him around is me. And after he apologizes for being an idiot, we're going to have really great makeup sex. The bottom line is, we all make mistakes, including me, and I love him."
That hit Cara hard. She loved Seamus. She knew she did. He was a good man, loyal and responsible and always, always willing to take care of others. He had made a mistake, because he had wanted her. Was that such a terrible thing?
She wasn't sure. It was really damn hard to trust. "Do you think I'm making a mistake leaving Seamus?"
Alexis shrugged. "I don't know, Cara. Only you can know that. It's possible to love someone and not be able to live with him." She pulled Kelsey off the bed by grabbing her hand. "But right now I have this urgent awful feeling something is wrong and I need to go after my husband and bring him home. You can come with us and or you can stay. It's totally up to you."
There were two choices. One, she could stay in the hotel room and cry over the loss of a relationship that had just barely gotten started. Or two, she could brush her hair and go after Seamus, hoping they could work their issues out.
It took her less than two seconds to decide. She loved Seamus.
"Let me grab my hairbrush. I'll use it in the car on the way over."
"Cool. Can I do your hair?" Kelsey asked.
"We could have walked faster," Alexis complained when they finally had snarled their way through traffic, parked the car, and went into the casino at the Venetian.
"But then how would we make a quick getaway if Ethan and Seamus are hurt?" Kelsey asked, giving a flirtatious smile to a man who gawked at her in naked interest.
"Good point. How reassuring to think they won't be able to walk home on their own."
Not to mention that with traffic as brutal as it had been, an anemic vampire with cataracts would be able to catch up with them.
Cara crossed her arms over her chest and swallowed nervously. Maybe this hadn't been such a good plan. Like it was much of a plan. They were just going to hang around the Venetian and hoped Donatelli sensed them? This wasn't his hotel—he didn't have cameras and guards like Ethan did at the Ava.
"Let's go sit at one of the tables," Alexis said, hands in the back pockets of her jeans. Her eyes were scanning the room.
"Okay," Cara said because she wasn't sure what else they were going to do. They found an open seat at a craps table, and Alexis fronted her some cash.
It wasn't her game. Cara lost two hundred bucks in ten minutes and turned to Alexis. "This isn't working."
"The plan or the craps playing?"
"Both."
Alexis bit her fingernail. "Okay, I have an idea. If Donatelli is involved, and Ethan and Seamus are in trouble here at the Venetian like Seamus told Kelsey, it stands to reason they're in his suite, right?"
"I guess so." But Cara wasn't sure they could make that leap in logic, or how they could get into Donatelli's suite.
"It makes total sense." Alexis marched up to the front desk, told them she forgot her room number. "It's in my husband's name, Roberto Donatelli," she said.
Cara thought the clerk would tell her no go, but he just looked it up and gave her a new key card with a smile.
"Whoa," Alexis said as they walked away. "I used vampire mind control and it actually worked. I feel guilty." But it didn't stop Alexis from hitting the up button on the elevator and pocketing the key card.
While they were waiting, Cara tried to ignore the tugging at the back of her brain that something was off. The Venetian had a less fluorescent decor compared to some of the other casinos. It was full of wood, creamy textured walls, and elaborate frescos on the ceiling.
"Who is that?" she asked, gesturing with a slight tilt of her head. There was a man sitting in the lobby lounge with two women, his posture relaxed and arrogant. He wasn't even looking at them, but Cara felt… an awareness. There was a scent lingering over him, different from mortals. "He's a vampire, isn't he?"
"You're good," Alexis said, expression grim. "You just found Donatelli."
He didn't look powerful. He did look smarmy and self-absorbed.
"And now we know he's not up in his room," Cara said.
"Which is why it's the perfect time to head up there and check it out."
Damn. She had thought Alexis might say that. She'd bet her stripper heels—which were damn expensive—that she was going to regret this.
Once in Donatelli's room, she was convinced of it. The suite, lush in gold and burgundy fabrics with a king-size bed on a platform behind an elaborate balustrade, looked and felt empty.
"No one here. Let's go." Cara grabbed Kelsey's arm and retreated for the door, heart pounding.
"We should at least look around."
"For clues? Give me a break, Alexis. There's nothing Nancy Drew about any of us."
"My name used to be Nancy," Kelsey announced.
"What?" Cara looked at her in confusion.
"When I was mortal, in the fifties. My name was Nancy. I hated it."
Oh, my God. Cara was breaking into a vampire's hotel suite with a sword-wielding fledgling and a name-changing assassin-loving secretary. Where had the calm life of a mild-mannered stripper gone?
"Kelsey is a nice name," Cara said, for lack of anything better to say.
"I tried out Summer for a while, in the sixties and seventies, but it was too blond for me."
Alexis gasped, having wandered over by the bed. "Oh, that is sick. I'm going to be sick."