Ben was silent when he entered, watching Tenzin gently hold Layah, her female lovebird, on her outstretched pinky. Layah was fluffing her yellow and orange feathers as Harun, her mate, watched from a nearby palm frond.
“Are you still mad at me?” Tenzin asked, keeping her voice steady. “Please don’t upset the birds. They’ve just become accustomed to me again.”
Ben sat at the small bistro table. “I’m not mad.”
“Then I’m sorry.” She frowned a little bit. “I feel like I spend much of my life apologizing now. As if I am always doing the wrong thing.”
It was such a Tenzin response; he had to take a moment before he responded. “If I was still angry with you, would you have apologized?”
“No. Because I don’t think I was wrong. I am sorry you were hurt, not that I didn’t tell you.”
Yes, that sounded about right. “Why didn’t you tell me about Saba sooner?”
She gently set Layah next to Harun, who began to furiously groom her, displeased with being separated from his partner for even a few moments.
“What good would it have done?” Tenzin pulled up her knees in the ridiculously flexible squatting position she favored when she was relaxing. “I told you I found Johari, and I didn’t kill her. You asked me not to kill anyone, and I didn’t.”
“What did you do to her?”
She didn’t speak at first.
“Tenzin?”
“I cut off her hand and threw it into the ocean. Then I flew to Nairobi, found the vampire she loved, and told him that Johari had killed an innocent student and mortally wounded someone who considered her a friend.” Tenzin shrugged. “It was all true. Her hand will grow back, but he will never see her in the same light as he once did, and she deserves that.”
Ben almost found himself feeling sorry for Johari. “She was foolish to make an enemy of you.”
“I don’t consider her an enemy.” Tenzin held her pinky finger out to Harun, but he ignored her. “She is nothing to me. A pawn, just like so many others who belong to Saba. Johari was following orders,” Tenzin said. “As she must. Saba’s children are not rebellious. Even Lucien—as old and independent as he is—he will not defy his sire.”
“I wouldn’t ask him to.”
“Good,” she said. “Because he would not.”
Ben rose and walked to the small refrigerator that they kept in the glass house. He pulled out a small bottle of blood-wine and cracked it open on the edge of the table. Then he took a long pull and felt the edge of his hunger fading away.
“I need to feed,” Ben said.
“Gavin’s pubs are open until dawn.”
“I know. I just don’t want to see anyone quite yet.” He focused on her feeding sunflower seeds to the birds. “I was panicking a bit when I went to the warehouse. Thank you for leaving a note.”
She shrugged. “I guessed that you would need some time to brood.”
He took another long drink and blurted out, “I keep waiting for you to get bored with me and leave.”
Tenzin froze, and Ben sat in silence, his heart exposed and beating furiously between them.
She looked at him, but she didn’t offer any platitudes. Which was good, as he wouldn’t have believed them.
“I cannot promise that will never happen. Not bored with you exactly. Just… bored.”
That he would believe. “Can you promise me that you’ll come back?”
Tenzin considered it. “Yes. I can promise that.”
And he could live with it. “Give me a little warning if you feel it coming.”
She nodded again. “I can do that.”
His dream from the night before haunted him.
I will burn everything you hold dear.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out Ben was scared of going up against an ancient fire vampire even more powerful than the extremely dangerous fire vampire who had raised him.
“Why do you really want to do this job, Tenzin? Lucien thinks the bone scroll is a myth, and if it exists, there’s no guarantee that Saba or Arosh would even be able to use it. It’s dangerous, difficult, and could easily land us in a lot of trouble with people we don’t want to fight with. Normally I’m with you on this kind of job—”
“No, you’re not. You’re notoriously cautious, Benjamin.”
“I have to be cautious because you’re not!”
“It’s an important artifact,” she said. “And even the chance that they may use it to control all four elements is too much power concentrated in one place.”
“There are lots of dangerous and important artifacts out there.”
“And I don’t like the idea of Saba and Arosh having more influence. Even the rumor that they hold that bone scroll shifts the center of power back toward the West. That is why my father came to inform me of it.”
“So we can find it and use it for the council in Penglai?”
“Absolutely not.” She looked up. “I would never agree to that, and Zhang knows it. Besides that, the whole of Penglai is about balancing power,” Tenzin said. “From the eight immortals to the very architecture of the island. The bone scroll is the antithesis of balance.”
“Again, who is to say that Arosh or Saba would even be able to use the thing? If the blood of Mithra legend is correct—”
“Saba told Johari that I wanted you hurt.” Tenzin looked away. She stared into the distance, and he saw her jaw clench. “She told her daughter that I wanted to force your turning.”
“But you didn’t tell her any of those things.” Fuck. Had she been lying about that too? “Right?”
“Of course I didn’t tell her that.”
“So why do you want—?”
“What if she wasn’t lying?” Tenzin stared at the ground. “What if part of me did want that? What if Saba thought she was doing me a favor?” Her lip curled up. “It makes me want to kill her.”
“You can’t kill Saba, Tenzin.” He didn’t even know if that was possible. Saba was a power unlike anything Ben had known. There was no fighting with her; there was only negotiation.
“I know I can’t kill Saba.” She glared at the wall of the glass house.
“Okay, now repeat that until you start to believe it.” Ben walked over and sat on the floor next to Tenzin. “We’re not going into Ethiopia to start a war. That’s the whole point of bringing her Desta’s manuscript and her crown. To remind Saba of what happens when she loses her temper and to trade for the scroll and safeguard it. Convince her that its best place is with us.”
Tenzin was silent.
“Right?” He prodded her with his knee. “No war. No wanton destruction of valuable global heritage sites.”
“No war,” she finally muttered. “No damaging world heritage sites.”
Ben sat down next to her. “Besides, you and I both know that you had no plans to force turning on me because you were arrogantly sure that you’d eventually have been able to persuade me to choose it for myself, right?”
Tenzin nodded. “That is true. But I do not consider that arrogance; it is simply confidence.”