This one-sided-conversation thing was becoming a pain in the ass. I wanted to tell her that I'd never asked for her to rent out this guy for me. In fact, I suddenly had images of the queen calling me in for another meeting to yell at me for having a nonexistent affair with Ambrose too. Wouldn't that be perfect?
Ambrose continued smiling as he rubbed the soles of one foot with his thumbs. It hurt - but in a good way. I hadn't realized how sore that spot was. "They go to such trouble to make sure you wear the right black and white clothes, but no one ever thinks about your feet," he mused. "How are you supposed to stand around all day and still manage roundhouse kicks and cat stances in bad shoes?"
I was about to tell them that he really didn't need to keep worrying about my feet, but something odd suddenly struck me. "Roundhouse kicks" and "cat stances" weren't top-secret guardian terms. Anyone could Google "martial arts" and find out about those kinds of things. Still, it wasn't the kind of topic I'd expect a Moroi to casually throw around, let alone a feeder. I studied Ambrose closer, noting the way his dark eyes so carefully darted around and observed everything. I recalled his fast reflexes in stopping my kick.
I felt my jaw start to drop, and I shut it before I looked like an idiot.
"You're a dhampir," I breathed.
Sixteen
"SO ARE YOU," HE TEASED.
"Yeah, but I just thought - "
"That I was human? Because of the bite marks?"
"Yeah," I admitted. No point in lying.
"We all have to survive," he said. "And dhampirs are good at figuring out ways to."
"Yeah, but most of us become guardians," I pointed out. "Especially men." I still couldn't believe he was a dhampir - or that I hadn't spotted it right away.
Long ago, dhampirs had been born from humans and Moroi getting together. We were half-vampire, half-human. Over time, Moroi started keeping themselves separate from humans. Humans grew too plentiful and no longer needed Moroi for magic. Moroi now feared they'd become human experiments if ever discovered. So no more dhampirs were being made that way, and in a bizarre genetic twist, dhampirs getting together with dhampirs couldn't make more dhampirs.
The only way my race kept reproducing was through Moroi mixing with dhampirs. Normal logic would make you think that a dhampir and a Moroi would make children who were ? Moroi. Nope. We came out with perfect dhampir genes, half and half, mixing some of the best traits of both races. Most dhampirs came from dhampir women and Moroi men. For centuries, these women had sent their kids off to be raised somewhere else, so that the mothers could go back to being guardians. That's what mine had done.
Over time, though, some dhampir women had decided they wanted to raise their children themselves. They refused to be guardians and instead banded together in communities. That's what Dimitri's mother had done. Lots of ugly rumors surrounded these women because Moroi men often visited in the hopes of getting cheap sex. Dimitri had told me that a lot of these stories were exaggerated and that most dhampir women weren't that easy. The rumors came from the fact that these women were almost always single mothers who had no contact with their kids' fathers - and because some dhampirs would let Moroi drink blood during sex. It was a kinky, dirty thing in our culture and was where the nickname for these non-guardian dhampirs had come from: blood whores.
But I'd never even thought about a male blood whore.
My mind was reeling. "Most guys who don't want to be guardians just run off," I said. It was rare, but it happened. Guys bailed on guardian school and disappeared to hide out among humans. It was another disgraceful thing.
"I didn't want to run off," said Ambrose, seeming very cheerful about all this. "But I didn't want to fight Strigoi either. So I did this."
Beside me, Lissa was stunned. Blood whores stayed on the fringes of our world. Having one right in front of her - a guy, no less - was incredible.
"This is better than being a guardian?" I asked in disbelief.
"Well, let's see. Guardians spend all their time watching out for others, risking their lives, and wearing bad shoes. Me? I have great shoes, am currently massaging a pretty girl, and sleep in an awesome bed."
I made a face. "Let's not talk about where you sleep, okay?"
"And giving blood isn't as bad as you think. I don't give as much as a feeder, but the high's pretty neat."
"Let's not talk about that either," I said. No way would I admit that I knew Moroi bites were indeed "pretty neat."
"Fine. But say what you want, my life's good." He gave me a lopsided smile.
"But aren't people, like...well, aren't they mean to you? They must say things..."
"Oh yes," he agreed. "Horrible things. I get called a lot of ugly names. But you know where I get the most grief from? Other dhampirs. Moroi tend to leave me alone."
"That's because they don't understand what it's like to be a guardian, how important it is." It occurred to me, with some unease, that I sounded exactly like my mother. "It's what dhampirs are meant to do."
Ambrose rose, unkinking his legs and giving me a face full of muscled chest. "You sure? How would you like to find out what you're really meant to do? I know someone who might be able to tell you."
"Ambrose, don't do it," groaned Lissa's manicurist. "That woman's crazy."
"She's psychic, Eve."
"She's not psychic, and you cannot take the Dragomir princess to go see her."
"The queen herself goes to her for advice," he argued back.
"That's a mistake too," grumbled Eve.
Lissa and I exchanged looks. She'd latched onto the word psychic. Psychics and fortune-tellers were generally regarded with the same disbelief as ghosts - except that Lissa and I had recently learned that psychic abilities we'd previously believed to be fantasy were actually part of spirit. Hope that she might have stumbled onto another spirit user shot through Lissa.
"We'd love to see a psychic. Can we go? Please?" Lissa glanced at a nearby clock. "And soon? We have a flight to catch."
Eve clearly thought it was a waste of our time, but Ambrose could hardly wait to show us. We put our shoes back on and were led out of the massage area. The spa rooms had been in a maze of halls behind the front salon, and we soon found ourselves in another maze that was farther back still.
"There's no directory here," I said as we walked past closed doors. "What are these rooms for?"
"Everything and anything people will pay money for," he said.