Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Thirty-Four: Not a Game. Not a Joke, Either

I ignored the crisp knock on the outer suite door. It came again. And again, the third time with the polite warning of, "Concierge! Coming into the parlor, Miss!"

By the time I had struggled from the heaven of Van's black velvet bed and thrown on his robe—also black and gold—it sounded as though the staff of Downtown Abbey had overtaken the sitting room. I could hear a bustle of activity being performed as quietly as possible. I smoothed my hair, yawned, and cracked open the ornately painted black door.

The concierge, Mr. Stanford Buchanan—Tommy's uncle, I believed—turned swiftly to greet me. He'd had his back to my bedroom door as if he'd been standing guard over my privacy.

"Sorry to disturb your rest, Miss Dunne. I'm afraid Mr. Livingstone was quite insistent we lay a luncheon for you."

"I see."

I did. There was a crew setting the small table with linen and plate, and transferring silver chafing dishes to the buffet that claimed the far wall of the sitting room. It didn't have the feel of lunch, however, because two more waiters were industriously waving fire punks around as they lit dozens of taper candles, arranged in artistic groups on the buffet and various ornamental tables.

"Oh he did, did he? Now he's dictating my days as well as my nights?" I murmured.

"Well, I think he's concerned that you haven't eaten anything of significance in days," Stan countered. "You've been missing at meals, and you aren't ordering any room service, either."

"Spying on me for him, are you?"

I walked to the buffet and attempted to pour my own coffee, but I was not allowed. Instead, it was prepared for me just as I ordered it in the dining room.

"No ma'am." Stan joined me at the buffet and dismissed the wait staff with a tilt of his head. He finished lighting the candles himself "Well, at least not until Van suspected you haven't been eating, and he asked us to research whether you'd come to table or ordered food in the last two days."

It wasn't that I wasn't eating on purpose. I really hadn't had time to eat lately. The day before yesterday I'd slept through meals, and the night had been too eventful. Then yesterday I'd been kidnapped of course. All I'd managed to eat was a hard roll while driving the Mercer home from Nick's hideout.

"I see." Stan was now lighting a tealight beneath a small teapot. He lifted the lid, sniffed, and nodded to himself. "Tea, too?" I drawled.

"Not quite," he said with a sardonic smile. "This pot is also coffee—very strong coffee—infused with Evander's...nutritional requirements."

So my infuriating Vampire was planning to dine with me? He had some nerve. And some stamina apparently, if he was fighting his torpor for reasons other than peril. I hadn't seen him awake in the day since I first came here, and he considered interrogating me in my closet a thing of urgency.

"What time is it, Stan?" I asked with a lazy yawn. There were no windows in Van's apartment, and it was impossible to tell.

"Just after noon."

Stan clapped his hands and an entirely new commotion began. A flurry of housekeeping employees, blanketing every possible surface of the suite with roses. Towering bouquets in crystal vases holding the long-stemmed variety—buds firm and furled on the edge of promising bloom. Other arrangements were silver bowls, filled with softer, slightly more mature flowers at their peak. Red swirls of opening passion.

I watched the beautiful blur of roses envelop me, and I was a woman divided. Irritated, because the modern woman in me knew that romantic gestures weren't the way to solve an argument. Yet there was a girlish part of me that was smothering a smile. No man had ever gone to such beautiful extremes to shift my mood.