The Count was toying with her as if he were a cat and she a witless rodent. Emily elevated her umbrella and poked him in the chest. “I would prefer that you keep your hands — and your thoughts — to yourself, my lord.”
“Would you, indeed?” he asked softly. On the hearth, the wolf-dog stirred.
Emily took a firmer grip on her umbrella. She had no desire to skewer her host, but neither was she eager to make the intimate acquaintance of a vampire’s fangs. Rather, she didn’t think she was. At least, not yet. She
did
have a certain curiosity—
“What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” murmured the Count. And then, without the slightest hint of fangs, he smiled. It was a roguish captivating smile that said ‘you’re the most delicious thing I’ve seen in a long time and I’m going to gobble you up slowly and savor every nibble’ as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud.
Emily blinked. Ravensclaw must surely be the most irresistibly, wickedly beautiful being ever put on God’s green earth.
In whatever century that had been.
And she was staring at him like a smitten schoolgirl.
Oh, bloody hell.
Bees that have honey in their mouths
have stings in their tails.
(Romanian proverb)
Emily glowered at her host. “I know what you are, Count Revay-Czobar.”
“Ravensclaw,” the Count reminded her, then added: “Isidore?” The old man popped around a corner, as if he had been eavesdropping just out of sight. “Have tea brought to the Lady’s Chamber.”
“Tea. The Lady’s Chamber.” Isidore twitched his nose.
The last thing Emily had anticipated was taking tea with an aberration. “We have no time for this!”
“We have ample time to become properly acquainted. Your driver left without you. The locals are a superstitious lot.” Ravensclaw treated her, again, to that irresistible smile. “Wheesht, lassie, didna Kiuttlin’ Kate lepit off the castle wall into the loch after cuddlin’ with one lad too many and findin’ herself biggend? Doesna Gawkit Gordy haunt the stables, or what were once the stables, where he was murthered by a manservant under circumstances best not thought aboot?”
The Count’s Scots accent was uncannily accurate. Emily suspected he was again entertaining himself at her expense. In more normal tones, he added, “We also claim a woman in white who is most often seen on the stair, and the specter of a dog.”
Emily glanced at the wolf, which rose and padded toward her. She backed away.
Ravensclaw snapped his fingers. The animal dropped to its haunches. “Drogo is no specter. Touch him and see for yourself.”
Emily had no intention of doing anything so birdwitted as to pet a— A what?
Ravensclaw didn’t
look
like a fiend from hell. Emily was less certain about the wolf.
“Moreover, there is always time for tea. If I may?” The Count held out his hand.
Against her better judgment, Emily surrendered her umbrella. Ravensclaw hung it on the candlestick beside her damp cloak, then indicated that she should precede him up the winding stone staircase.
The Lady’s Chamber was a lofty, domed six-sided solar. Set into the walls were a fireplace, an arched cupboard and four windows, three of the latter wide with stone benches, the last a narrow slit with a stone sink in its sill. A carved screen partly hid a doorway leading off into a second, smaller room. False ribs, bearing faded red and black chevrons, sprang from corbelled colonnettes.
Here, decided Emily, was opulence enough to suit the most hedonistic Romanian boyar. Heavy oak furniture embellished with intricately carved animals and flowers; cabinets and bookcases inlaid with checkerboard parquetry and precious stones. She would have paid a pretty penny to possess that silver-embellished writing desk.
Multicolored woolen rugs were scattered on
the stone floor. More medieval tapestries graced the walls, of a less morbid nature than those below. The chamber was illuminated by oil lamps suspended in metal rings.
A tea tray rested on an inlaid chest. “If you will do the honors?” asked the Count. With a sense of unreality, Emily set about the familiar, soothing ritual. Ravensclaw preferred his tea with a chunk of crystallized ginger, or so he informed her. Emily took hers with milk.
Ravensclaw settled back with his teacup, as at ease as if he sat in any London drawing room. Not that Emily knew many — if any — gentlemen who took tea. Nor had she any great experience with London drawing rooms. She stole a glance at her host, alert for signs of blood lust, an elongation of the teeth, a reddening or glowing of the eye. He lowered his gaze to the pulse point at the base of her throat.
Emily set down her teacup. “Permit me to explain my presence. I believe you are not unfamiliar with the Dinwiddie Society for the Exploration of Matters Abstruse and Supersensible.”
Ravensclaw surveyed a plate of finger sandwiches, pastries and scones. “For my sins.”
And what did
that
mean? “I am Emily Dinwiddie. My father was—”
“Professor Bartholomew Dinwiddie, creator of several strange inventions, most memorable among them a portable engine, in the way of a tobacco-tongs, by means of which a man may climb over a wall; an amphibious horse-drawn vehicle; and a gravestone sundial that celebrated the anniversary of the deceased’s birth and death. Known to his detractors, unkindly, as Professor Dimwit.” Ravensclaw reached for the teapot and refilled his cup.
Fortunately, her papa’s critics hadn’t learned of the little ladder that enabled spiders to climb out of a hipbath. The automaton that could play a flute. The mechanical quacking duck which appeared to digest and excrete its food. Emily said, “You are well informed
,
my lord.”
“I suffer from insomnia.” Ravensclaw gestured toward the bookshelves laden with reading material that ranged from early studies of anatomy, and treatises on fungi and pharmacology, to, unless Emily’s eyes deceived her,
The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
“Perusing scholarly treatises such as those written by your father helps me fall asleep. Did you know that the ancient Egyptians were in the habit of annually burning alive an unfortunate individual whose only crime was to have hair the color of yours?”
Emily refused to be distracted. “Since you are so well-informed, you will also be aware that my father died in
a laboratory mishap a little over a year past. I am now overseer of the Dinwiddie Society.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t you
dare
point out that I’m a female.”
The Count arched an eyebrow. “You malign me, Miss Dinwiddie. I was merely going to remark that you are very young to assume such responsibility.”
“I am four-and-twenty. That is not so very young. Nor am I altogether ignorant, my lord. In addition to my extensive formal education, I worked with my papa, and consequently know about vampires and ghouls, shape-changers and werewolves.” Emily glanced pointedly at Drogo, snoozing on the hearth.
Ravensclaw selected a cucumber sandwich. “I see.”
For all her experiences with the Society — or the experiences she had read about in her role as her papa’s amanuensis, he having been reluctant to let her
do
anything — Emily had never before met a supersensible being in the flesh. If ‘flesh’ was the proper term. She watched Ravensclaw bite into his sandwich with every evidence of enjoyment. A plump, black long-haired feline oozed through the doorway. At sight of Emily, it hissed.
“Machka,” explained the Count, as he brushed crumbs off his breeches. “Romany for cat.” The feline jumped, purring, into his lap.
Emily fingered her necklace and its assorted charms. According to the literature, animals fled in terror of the preterhuman, yet here Ravensclaw sat like any ordinary man, with a cat on his lap and a dog sprawled on his hearth.
No
, she told herself;
this is more mind magic.
There was nothing ordinary about the Count, or the dog that could well be
a lycanthrope, or the cat that was probably someone’s familiar. “You will be wondering about the purpose of my visit. In short, I need your help.”
Ravensclaw smoothed his hand along Machka’s spine. “What has given you the impression that I’m a man who rescues damsels in distress?”
Emily hadn’t the impression that he was a man at all. “How many times must I tell you that I know what you are? Need I remind you of Mercea the Wise, Vlad Tepes, Michael the Brave? You have lived in palaces and huts alike, foraged for food in the mountainous regions of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania; have seen Greeks fight Romans, Romanians fight Hungarians and Tatars, Turks fight Russians and Austrians, all because mankind must disagree with its neighbor’s religion, covet its neighbor’s land and goods. Some decades past, you withdrew to observe the human tragicomedy from a less volatile vantage point than Romania.”
She paused, awaiting his reaction. Ravensclaw said merely, “You are well informed about my ancestors.”
“I’m well informed about
you!”
Emily sprang up from her chair and began to pace. “I do not presume to judge you. The Society has a live-and-let-live-except-in-isolated-instances philosophy. Evil is in the eye of the beholder, and morality is a point of view.”
“How remarkably open-minded,” murmured the Count.
Emily eyed the fireplace, over which hung a thirteenth-century sword, a sharpened rod of triangular cross-section steel drawn to an acute point at one end and hilted at the other; and envisioned whacking her host over his aggravating, albeit handsome, head. “You may be interested to learn that the Society has, or had, in its possession a double-bladed athame with a cabochon ruby and a double ouroborus set into its hilt.”
His blue gaze sharpened. “The d’Auvergne athame vanished centuries ago.”
“Not vanished, was stolen. In 1544, to be precise, by Isobella Dinwiddie, and thereafter kept in a lead-lined chest locked in the Society’s vault. A number of other items have also gone missing. You must help me get them back.”
His expression was unreadable. “Must I?”
Emily counted to one hundred. Her first supersensible being was giving her heartburn. “Since the athame was originally stolen from you, you will know its powers.”
“Stolen from my ancestor, you mean,” the Count corrected. He had ceased petting Machka. The cat leapt down from his lap.
“Now you will try to convince me it’s your ancestor whose name is on the Dinwiddie list! The Society has known about the Breasla for some time, my lord. I doubt it would be in your best interest were the world to become aware of its existence as well. Papa told me that if ever I found myself in need of assistance, I should seek you out and remind you of the matter of St. Cuthbert’s finger bone.” He had also said she should proceed with caution, Emily belatedly recalled. “Don’t just sit there looking inscrutable! We must retrieve the stolen items before the powers of darkness are unleashed.”
“Such melodrama, Miss Dinwiddie.” The Count reached for the teapot. “Tell me about your father’s mishap.”
The mishap that Emily was growing to suspect had been no mishap at all? “Papa was developing a pair of galvanic spectacles that applied electric current to the optic nerve by means of a small zinc and copper plate attached to the nosepiece. Instead of the nosepiece, the current was applied to himself.” She adjusted her own spectacles, which had again slid halfway down her nose.
Ravensclaw said politely, “My condolences.”
Emily reached into a pocket and pulled out a trinket of the sort that might have adorned a gentleman’s watch fob, provided said gentleman was of an esoteric bent: a silver disc engraved with a serpent, its body in the form of an upright ‘S’, an apple in its mouth and an arrow piercing its breast . “After Papa’s death, things were at sixes and sevens for a time. I only recently discovered that the athame had been removed from its chest. I found this on the floor.”
Ravensclaw studied the disc. “Apollo’s arrow piercing the green dragon of Hermetic philosophy. An image of the union between passive and active, spirit and life. Interesting, but your vraja is far from an unusual piece.”
Emily noted that the Count had called the charm by its proper name. And that he wisely hadn’t touched the thing. “Not unusual, but not common either. I believe this particular talisman belongs to a man named Michael Ross. Mr. Ross is — or
was
— a favorite of my father’s.” She tucked the vraja back into her pocket. “He left London for Edinburgh several months ago. I believe Michael took the athame with him.
You
have a home in Edinburgh. May we please leave now?”
Ravensclaw nudged the cat off his lap. “Humor me, Miss Dinwiddie. What do you expect to accomplish in Edinburgh?”
Count Revay-Czobar was not impressing Emily with his quickness of perception. “I expect to find a thief! Haven’t you been listening?”
“And after you have found Mr. Ross, what then?”
Emily had not decided. Currently she was inclined to weigh him down with stones and toss him into the River Forth to drown. “Demand that he return the stolen items? Steal the dratted things from him? Maybe
you
can make him give them back. Naturally, you will prefer to travel under cover of darkness. Unless you can sprout wings and fly like a bat?”
Ravensclaw studied her as if she was some hitherto-unencountered species. “If I was what you think me, Miss Dinwiddie, should you not be afraid?”
Emily
was
afraid, more than a little bit, but would bite off her own tongue before she told him so. “You admit it, then?”
Gracefully, he rose. “I admit nothing. You will be my guest tonight.”
His guest, or his dinner? Emily parted her lips to protest. Ravensclaw fixed his eyes on hers and the words died unspoken in her throat.
The Count moved toward her. Emily stepped back, hands raised to fend him off. Her fingers brushed his bare wrist.
…
A dizzying sense of mysterious dense forests, high craggy mountains, lush green upland pastures. A two-roomed cottage of solid well-hewn logs, roofed with laths. Wood floor covered with homemade woolen rugs. Similar rugs arranged neatly on the bed.