Demon Blood

shirt and settled deeper into the seat. “Most vampires aren’t you. And it’s ‘Rosalia.’ ”
    “What?”
    “My name.” Until he’d called her “Rosie” the night before, she’d thought he didn’t remember her name. He’d certainly never used it. “I’m not ‘sister.’ Not anymore.”
    His gaze ran up her legs. “Don’t I know it.”
    A few minutes earlier when he’d held the car door open for her, she hadn’t been certain if he did know it, but now his dark mood seemed to have lightened. She tried to watch him through the curtain of hair streaming forward past her face—not quite like flying, after all—before giving up and braiding it. He glanced at her, and though he didn’t say, “I told you so,” his eyes glinted with humor, and his fangs flashed in a grin.
    Not abrasive, not angry—and reminded her of how Deacon had once made it so easy to like him. Even when doubt had driven him out of the clergy and into the boxing ring, when he’d been battered both body and soul, he’d been quick to take his enjoyment where he found it. Quick to smile and to laugh, even with his eyes swollen to slits and his nose bleeding.
    She’d thought that Caym had broken that in him. Or, like so many who blamed themselves for their loved ones’ deaths, he wouldn’t let himself take pleasure in anything. Perhaps he made an exception when he controlled a ridiculous amount of horsepower.
    But even as she watched, his expression closed, leaving no trace of his grin. With a sigh, Rosalia pulled in her makeup out of her cache, applying a heavy line around her eyes and black lipstick.
    Though he glanced over at her, Deacon didn’t say anything until she changed her clothes, exchanging the sundress for a black miniskirt, thigh-high stiletto boots, and a top so small she was thankful she didn’t really have to breathe.
    “What the hell are you wearing?”
    “I’m giving them what they expect.” Vampires and demons too often trusted appearances; Guardians never did. “A whore looking for a dangerous thrill. Someone you paid and who doesn’t know any better. Who else would deign to be with you after what Caym did?”
    His jaw clenched so hard that his skin paled beneath the shadow of his beard. “You don’t care if they think you’re a whore?”
    “Why should I? I am what I am; how someone treats me doesn’t change that.”
    He cursed. Rosalia stared at him. He seemed more bothered by it than she was—and she hadn’t thought he’d care at all. There’d been every possibility that she’d be treated like a whore in Budapest, miniskirt or not, and he hadn’t been concerned about the vampires’ response then.
    And he knew what sort of vampire Sardis was. Surely he hadn’t expected different? “If I go in as myself, both he and Valeotes will take time to figure me out, so that they can put me in my place. Especially Sardis, because he likes to put women in their place. But if I go in like this, they don’t have to think about it. They’ll assume that they know.”
    “Right.” Though he agreed, it clearly frustrated him. As if trying to get a grip on that emotion, he pushed his hand through his hair with fingers so rigid she was surprised he didn’t scalp himself. “Just . . . stay close. We both know exactly where Sardis thinks a woman’s place is.”
    “Yes.” On her back, legs open and mouth shut. And most of the women in the community complied. That deserved the hair-pulling kind of frustration. “I keep hoping they’ll kill him.”
    “The females?”
    “The males, too. Any of them. They must recognize that he isn’t the right kind of leader.”
    His eyebrows shot up. “The right kind?”
    “One who understands that he serves the people he leads, and who enforces the community’s rules to protect his people. Not to crush them.”
    The kind of leader that Deacon had been.
    He smiled grimly. “You mean, anyone who isn’t like your brother.”
    That, too. “Yes. But Lorenzo . . . I understood why no one rose up and killed him.”
    “Because no one can go up against the nosferatu-born,” Deacon said.
    Despite his words, his contemplative tone and the way his hands flexed on the steering wheel told Rosalia that he was wondering if, with his new strength, he could have defeated her brother. He’d beaten demons, after all—and even a nosferatu-born vampire like Lorenzo didn’t possess a demon’s strength and speed. So Deacon very well could have won.
    The realization came