"Not you," Ramirez replied, lowering the knife. His voice was rough. "It wasn't to dissuade you."
"Wise," she murmured, "for one so young. I advise you, young wizard, not to hesitate so long to act, should another approach you as I did. A virgin is... extremely attractive to our kind. One such as you is rare, these days. Give a less restrained member of the court an opportunity as you did me, and they'll throw themselves on you in dozens - which would reflect poorly on me."
She turned back to me and said, "Wizards, you have my pledge of safe conduct."
I inclined my head to her and said, "Thank you."
"Then I will await your company in the car."
I nodded my head to her, and Lara walked back to her bodyguard, who looked like he was fighting off a fit of apoplexy.
I turned and eyed Ramirez.
He turned bright red.
"Virgin?" I asked him.
He turned more red.
"Carlos?" I asked.
"She's lying," he snapped. "She's evil. She's really evil. And lying."
I rubbed at my mouth to keep anyone from seeing me grin.
Hey. On nights like this, you take your laughs where you can get them.
"Okay," I said. "Not important."
"The hell it isn't!" he spat. "She's lying! I mean, I'm not... I'm..."
I nudged him with an elbow. "Focus, Galahad. We've got a job to do."
He exhaled with a growl. "Right."
"You saw what was inside her?" I asked.
He shuddered. "That pale thing. Her eyes... she was getting more turned on, and they kept looking more like its eyes."
"Yep," I said. "It's a tip-off to how close they are to starting to take a bite of you. You handled it right."
"You think so?"
I couldn't resist jibing him, just a little. "Just think. If you'd messed it up," I said, as Lara slid into the car one long, perfect leg at a time, "you'd be in the limo with Lara ripping your clothes off right now."
Ramirez looked at the car and swallowed. "Um. Yeah. Close one."
"I've met several of the White Court," I said. "Lara's probably the smartest. She's the most civilized, progressive, adaptable. She's definitely the most dangerous."
"She didn't look that tough," Ramirez said, but he was frowning in thought as he said it.
"She's dangerous in a different way than most," I said. "But I think her word is good."
"It is," Ramirez said firmly. "I saw that much."
"It's one of the things that makes her dangerous," I said, and headed for the limo. "Stay cool."
We walked over and I leaned down to see Lara in the back of the limo, seated on one of the dogcart-style seats, all poise and beauty and gorgeous grey eyes. She smiled at me as I looked in, and crooked a finger.
"Step into my limo," said the spider to the fly.
And we did.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The limo rolled right past the enormous stone house that was the chateau proper. It was bigger than a parking garage, and covered with cornices and turrets and gargoyles, like some kind of neo-Medieval castle.
"We're, uh," I noted, "not stopping at the house."
"No," Lara said from the seat facing us. Even in the dark, you could see the glow of her luminous skin. "The conclave is being held in the Deeps." Her eyes glittered at me. "Less walking for everyone, that way."
I gave her a small smile and said, "I like the house. The whole castle-look thing. It's always nice to know you're living somewhere that could withstand a besieging army of Bohemian mercenaries if it had to."
"Or American wizards," she replied smoothly.
I gave her what I hoped was a wolfish smile, folded my arms, and watched the house go by. We turned down a little gravel lane and drove another mile or so before the car slowed and came to a stop. Bodyguard George got out and opened the door for Lara, whose thigh brushed against mine as she got out, and whose perfume smelled good enough to scramble my brain for a good two or three seconds.
Both I and Ramirez sat still for a second.
"That," I said, "is an awfully lovely woman. I thought I should let you know, kid, in case your inexperience had blinded you to the fact."
"Lying," Ramirez stated, blushing. "Evil."
I snickered and slid out of the car to follow Lara - and the three more bodyguards waiting for her - into the woods beside the gravel lane.
The last time I'd found the entrance to the Deeps, I'd been stumbling through the woods, focused on a tracking spell and tripping over roots and hummocks in the old-growth forest.
This time, there was a lighted path, with a red carpet, no less, leading down between the trees. The lights were all of soft blues and greens, small lamps that, upon a closer glance, proved to be elegant little crystal cages containing tiny, humanoid forms with wings. Faeries, tiny pixies, each surrounded by its own sphere of light, trapped and miserable, crouched in the cages.
Between each cage knelt more prisoners - humans, bound by nothing more than a single strand of white silk about their throats tied to a peg driven into the earth in front of them. They weren't naked. Lara wouldn't have gone in for anything that overt. Instead, they each wore a white silk kimono, accented with strands of silver thread.
Men and women, arrayed in a variety of ages, body types, hair colors, every single one of them beautiful, their eyes lowered as they knelt quietly. One of the young men sat shivering and was seemingly barely able to stay upright. His long, dark hair was marred with streaks of brittle white. His eyes were unfocused and he seemed totally unaware of anyone around him. His kimono was torn near the neck, leaving a broad swath of muscled chest exposed. There were raking nail marks, deep enough to draw tiny trickles of blood, all the way across one pectoral. There were repeated teeth marks deep in the slope of muscle between neck and shoulder, half a dozen sets of messy bruises and ugly little gashes. There were more nail marks, four side-by-side punctures, rather than rakes, on the other side of his neck.
He was also obviously, even painfully, aroused beneath the kimono.
Lara paused beside him and rolled her eyes in irritation. "Madeline?"
"Yes, ma'am," said one of the bodyguards.
"Oh, for hunger's sake." She sighed. "Get him indoors before the conclave is over or she'll finish him off on her way out."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, turned aside, and began speaking to nobody. I spotted a wire running to an earpiece.