“Do you have insurance?”
A shake of the woman’s head. “Premiums were too high, given my location and clientele.” Trembling, she bit down on her lower lip and swallowed in a clear effort to hold back tears. “I made a profit for the first time last week.”
Elena thought of the heartrending unfairness of so much of what had happened over the past three days, culminating in the broken dreams of this vampire who’d put in her time, done her hundred, and she made a decision. “I’ll stake you for a percentage of future profits,” she said, knowing she couldn’t simply give Marcia the money.
Harsh as it might seem, that would make the Tower appear far too generous, the association between it and Elena automatic. And the Tower couldn’t afford to be anything but ruthless . . . as Raphael couldn’t afford to let her humanity alter the balance of power that kept the city stable.
Marcia’s eyes went wide. “You?”
“Yes, I need to start investing my money, and I like your idea. But,” she added when Marcia would’ve spoken, “you understand I’ll have to go over your long-term business plan to make sure it’s a sound investment?” That seemed like the kind of thing an investor would say.
“Of course.” A shaky smile, Marcia’s heart in her eyes. “I’ll send it to the Tower at once.” Bowing again, the other woman looked up, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You won’t be sorry. I swear it.”
Uncomfortable, Elena turned the conversation back to the hunt. “In the meantime, we’ll advance you some clean blood—and you’ll start operations again tomorrow at your normal time. Accept donors as usual but don’t sell any of their blood. Sell only the blood you receive from us. Understood?”
A quick nod.
About to continue, Elena had a thought. “Did you put up a sign explaining tonight’s closure?” If the carrier had returned during that time and become suspicious, he or she might not come back.
It was Illium who answered. “Front and donor door. Just said, Family emergency, back tomorrow.”
Since vampires often considered other vampires with whom they’d served, family, that was an excuse no one would question. “Do you have surveillance?” she asked Marcia.
“No. There was no money for that.”
A quick glance at Illium, a nod in return, and she knew the cameras would be in place before the doors opened the next day. “I need you to keep strict data on who donates what blood,” she said to Marcia. “Tag and label everything.”
The vampire nodded, eyes shrewd. “Someone is selling tainted blood, and the taint’s dangerous.” Carrying on before Elena could interrupt, she said, “I won’t speak a word of this, and I’ll ensure none of the donated blood leaves the café.”
“I hope so,” Elena said softly. “Anything else would cost you.”
Sweat broke out over the vampire’s face once more, a slick sheen. “I do not lie, Consort.”
Stomach tight at the renewed fear pulsing in the woman’s eyes, Elena told the vampire to leave them the keys and return the following day an hour before she typically opened up.
“I just scared her on purpose,” she told Illium. The act had been instinctive, the realization of what she’d done horrifying.
Illium shrugged. “The fear will keep her alive.”
“Maybe, but I don’t want to become that, become someone who controls others through fear.” It sickened her to think she was being corrupted by the power now at her disposal. “What if a hundred years from now, I look into the mirror and see Michaela?” Cruel and capricious and nasty.
“Do you think we’d permit that?” Lips curving, he tapped a finger to her nose. “Raphael would be the first to warn you were you in danger of losing yourself.”
Elena wasn’t so certain. The man who owned her heart saw nothing wrong with acts that deeply troubled her. She was the human one in their relationship. Raphael had said more than once that she’d brought him back from the abyss of age and power—what would happen to the balance between them if she survived war only to break under the relentless pressure of an immortality textured by the power of being consort to an archangel?
Rubbing a fisted hand over her heart, she said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Ellie.” His fingers brushing lightly over the back of her wing, careful to avoid the sensitive zones, but an intimacy nonetheless. “When have we ever been so formal? Ask.”
“Why have you never resented me?” It was a question for which she’d needed an answer since the day she’d learned about his past. “Resented Raphael?”
Illium had been punished with the loss of his own mortal lover centuries ago, after he broke the greatest taboo of his race and spoke angelic secrets in her ear. Erasing the woman’s memories of the blue-winged angel and all he’d told her, Raphael had also stripped Illium of his feathers, grounding him until the wounds healed. Even when he could fly again, there was no surcease; he’d had to keep his distance, eventually watch his former lover fall for someone else, live her life without him.
Golden eyes shadowed with old sorrow, Illium withdrew a small metal pendant from the pocket of his jeans, the surface worn smooth by centuries of handling. “When did Raphael tell you our secrets?” he said, not having to explain to her that his lover had given him the pendant.
Her heart ached at the sadness he ordinarily hid beneath a stunning joie de vivre. “As we fell,” she whispered. “Raphael told me as we fell.” Everything within her rebelled against the agony linked to that fragment of time—not of the flesh, for her broken body had been beyond that, but of the soul, because Raphael was dying with her.