“They even folded the fitted sheets,” she said. And then she let me go in order to knock back the aspirin.

“That’s impossible.”

“That’s what I always thought, but it can be done. And the old copper cookware—you know, the ones that had that lovely patina?”

“I guess,” I said, because I cooked about once a decade.

“Well, they’re bright and shiny now,” she said sourly. “At least they were the last time I was allowed into my own kitchen, which was about an hour ago, so God knows what’s been done in—”

“Who are they?’”

“You said it,” she grimaced. “Vampires.”

“But whose?”

“Whose do you think?”

Damn.

“I’ll talk to Ray,” I told her. “I know his people probably need somewhere to crash until I get this mess sorted out, but I never told him they could—”

“They aren’t Ray’s,” Claire said, looking at me funny.

“Whose then?”

She put her hands, both of which were back to normal, I was relieved to see, on her hips. “Did you or did you not tell Louis-Cesare that I needed domestic help?”

“I…Not in so many words, no.”

“Well, he interpreted it that way. They showed up a couple hours ago and took over. So far, they’ve done the laundry, mowed the yard, cleaned the house to within an inch of its life—despite my telling them that the spell would just return everything to the way it was, anyway—shampooed the cats and replanted my marigolds!”

“Your marigolds?”

“They said the lines weren’t straight enough!” She looked pissed. No one gets points for telling a Virgo that she doesn’t know how to keep house.

“Why didn’t you just dismiss them?” I asked.

“Oh, now why didn’t I think of that? Because they wouldn’t let me! That vampire sent them to you and you’re the only one who can tell them to go. And that’s exactly what you’re going to do! And then you’re going to march yourself back up here and get a bath—”

“I’m doing nothing of the—”

“—and then you’re going to get dressed and unpack that ridiculous bag and come downstairs again and we’re all going to have a nice meal, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay. It’s not safe—”

“Bullshit.” Claire swearing was odd enough to shut me up. “We lived together for almost two years, didn’t we?”

“Yes, but—”

“And how many times did something like last night happen?”

“Once is enough! And it also happened a month ago—”

“And what else happened a month ago?”

“What are you—”

“Damn it, Dory!” Her eyes had focused on my bag, which was still on the floor, and she leaned over and jerked something out. “You’ve got it on you!”

“Of course I’ve got it on me,” I said, wrestling her for my little blue bottle. “What did you expect after—”

“I expected you to take a moment and wonder if this wasn’t the problem!” Claire said, and threw it viciously at the wall.

It didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces, but only because the glass was so thick. It did, however, stick halfway into the wall and stay there. I turned my eyes from the new hallway decoration and back to Claire, who was practically incandescent.

“My abilities draw out your power, release it, destroy it!” she told me angrily. “That’s what a null is. But the wine isn’t a null.”

“Well, it’s doing something.”

“Yes! Yes, it is! It stops your fits, but it doesn’t remove the cause. It’s like closing the valve on a steam engine. It might keep the steam from escaping, but it doesn’t do anything about the pressure.”

I’d been about to say something, but at that I stopped. And just stared at her for a moment. “That’s what you think is happening?”

“I don’t know,” she said, exasperated. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Nobody knows what that stuff does when ingested by a dhampir. All we know is that it brings out latent magical abilities in humans. But you’re not human.”

“But you believe it’s been putting a kind of stopper in my fits.”

She shoved frazzled red hair off her forehead. “Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? You drink it, and it stops your fits, because it shuts off any escape valve for that part of you. But it doesn’t do anything to let off the pressure. So it just keeps building and building. And sooner or later—”

“Pow.”

“Very much pow.”

I nodded. “Thank you,” I told her, and meant it. I pried the bottle out of the wall.

“What are you doing?”

“Even if you’re right, it can still be useful in emergencies,” I told her, shoving it back in my pack.

“But…where are you going?” she demanded, as I started for the stairs again.

“The same place I was going before. Away.”

“But I’ve just explained—”

“That the wine doesn’t work, not over the long haul.”

“Dory!” She grabbed for my arm again, but this time I was ready, and spun out of her reach. “Damn it, get back here!”

“I can’t.”

She reached for me again, but I grabbed her this time, pushing her into the wall face-first. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, but she didn’t look too happy. Of course, neither was I.

“It’s getting worse, all right,” I told her harshly. “Let’s face it. You can’t control me anymore. And the wine is a stopgap at best. Meaning I’m not—”

I broke off because my back suddenly hit the wall. On the other side of the corridor. Which was a surprise, since I didn’t recall moving.

“You know what’s not safe?” Claire demanded furiously, stalking toward me. “I am not safe. You’re not the only one dealing with pressure right now. I’m under it all day, every day, with no end in sight! And no matter what I try to tell anyone, they never—”

She cut off abruptly, and looked away. “What is it?” I demanded.

She didn’t say anything.

“Claire—”

“No,” she said, looking back at me, her eyes shuttered. “You have enough problems of your own. I can’t solve them for you, but I can keep from piling any more on.”

“But I can help—”

Red hair tossed. “How? I thought you were leaving.”

I just looked at her, because Claire never stayed mad for long. And this proved to be no exception. She deflated suddenly, looking miserable. “You won’t like it.”

“If it has you looking like that, I already don’t like it.”

“No, I mean—” She stopped, and licked her lips. And then she stiffened her shoulders and met my eyes squarely. And dropped the bombshell.

“Æsubrand hasn’t been seen in almost a week.”

I blinked. Okay, if anything could distract me from my own private hell, that was it. Æsubrand was a little bit of hell all on his own.

And, as irony would have it, he was also soon to be Claire’s cousin by marriage. It seemed that the fey family she was about to marry into was almost as messed up as mine. In fact, it might just take the prize, since none of my relatives were actively trying to kill each other.

Well, not at the moment.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t true for Claire. Her father-in-law was Caedmon, king of the Blarestri, one of the three main divisions of the Light Fey. He had a sister, Efridís, who had been married off to the Svarestri king, the leader of one of the other great houses, to seal a treaty or something. I wasn’t real clear on the details. What I was clear on was that she’d had a son, who had turned out to be a homicidal son of a bitch.

He was also ambitious as hell, to the point that merely inheriting one throne wasn’t good enough for him. Oh, no. Æsubrand wanted two. Specifically, he wanted Caedmon’s, which he’d had a claim to—right up until Heidar, aka Caedmon Jr., met a certain redheaded half dragon. And they had a son.

Heidar hadn’t been a problem for Æsubrand, because Blarestri law required its kings to have a majority of fey blood and his mother had been plain old human. But Claire, who was more than fifty percent fey, had tipped their son straight into the line of succession. And the line of fire.

Aiden’s existence had seriously messed up his cousin’s fey-unifying, dynasty-building, Æsubrand-glorifying plans, and he hadn’t taken it well. As in, he’d tried to kill Claire while she was still pregnant, and when that didn’t work, he’d gone after baby Aiden. But—lucky me—I’d managed to get in his way not once, but twice. Not that I’d been the only reason he failed, or even the main one, but for some reason, he seemed to blame me.

One of these days, I was going to have to work on my people skills.

“You think he’s here?” I asked, because that was just all we needed.

“Caedmon doesn’t know,” Claire said distractedly, running a hand through already messy curls. “But he didn’t seem…He said he’d be more inclined to think that Æsubrand was back here if it didn’t look like he was.”

I tried to parse that, and failed utterly. “Come again?”

“You know his mother’s ability with glamourie?”

I nodded. Most fey could change their appearance to some degree, even without the potions they sometimes sold to us. But Efridís was said to be especially gifted, to the point of even being able to fool her fellow fey. She’d used her skills to impersonate her darling boy, helping him break out of the fey version of jail, last time I’d heard.

And then I finally realized what Claire was saying. “You think she’d be covering for him.”