Midnight Marked

We followed the would-be butler, who escorted us to a high-backed settee and gestured to it. “Please.”

Sit at my feet, Ethan said, before I could move.

He must have felt my hesitation.

It is part of the illusion, of the theme of this particular room. Remember your word.

Since I’d given it, I bit back a sneer and sank to the floor at the edge of Ethan’s chair as graciously as possible.

He stroked a hand over my head. “Very good,” he said, signaling to the room that I’d pleased him.

I’d learned to bluff a long time ago, and if ever there’d been a time to use the skill, this was it. Dutifully, I rested my cheek on his knee.

“What may I obtain for you, sir?” the butler asked.

“Cognac, for the moment. We’ll see how well my pet behaves.”

I began to make very specific plans for Ethan’s quid pro quo. If I had to sit at Ethan’s feet, he’d damn well better be prepared to sit at mine.

The butler nodded, walked to a brass cart, poured liquid from a cut-crystal decanter. He brought it back to Ethan and then began checking with the other sups.

Do you recognize anyone? Ethan asked.

I trailed my fingers up and down his leg. I don’t. I count several vampires and shifters, but no sorcerers.

Caleb Franklin’s killer?

I looked them over. None had a beard, although that could have been removed easily enough. But the killer had also been tall and well muscled, and none of the vampires here seemed to have the right proportions, Ethan excluded.

I don’t see him, I said.

Me, neither.

But there’d been other doors in the hallway. There are other rooms? Themes?

Yes. All varied in the degree of their explicitness.

Do any of them have black lace and candles?

Goth, Sentinel? Really?

Someday, I was going to wander into a lair of Underworld look-alikes and my prejudice would be rewarded. Until then, Is there any way we can get to them? Inspect them?

Likely not without a fight.

I have no objection to a good fight. Especially since I’d come out on the losing end of my last one.

The butler carried a drink to a female vamp with pale skin and long, dark curls. She wore a scarlet bustier and a fluid skirt in a matching fabric, her lithe form draped across a chaise longue. A male vampire, naked but for his spill of long, dark hair and snug, hip-hugging leather pants, stood like a statue behind her. He stared at nothing in particular, seemingly waiting for her command.

There were bruises across his face, across his collarbone.

The butler spoke quietly to the woman, but she shook her head, waved him away.

Across the room, a slender man in a three-piece suit, a fedora pulled low over his head and a slim leather book in hand, lifted his hand to signal for service. The butler moved to him, bent slightly at the man’s words, then nodded, disappeared from the room.

Neither of them had looked at us, so it didn’t seem likely that had been a signal about us. But one could never be too careful.

Fedora, two o’clock, I told Ethan, nipping lightly at the fingers he brushed against my cheek.

I’m watching, Ethan said.

I turned my attention to the rest of the room, searching for magic, a forgotten alchemical symbol, some hint of that metallic magic. But there was nothing. Just the prickly air of excitement, of sensual anticipation. Considering the number of vampires in the room, I presumed there would be blood.

I looked up at Ethan, working my features into an expression of total adoration. If this is the appetizer, what’s the main course?

Ethan sipped at his cognac, kept a hand on my hair, stroking, his eyes on the room. The hallway door opened, and the butler escorted a young man inside. He was tall and leanly built, with dark skin and hair in short braids. He wore black slacks and a white button-down shirt, and his eyes glimmered with excitement.

I believe he would be the entrée, Ethan said.

Two female vampires with tan skin, high cheekbones, and straight hair pulled into high knots rose together from a sofa with an ornate back. They wore black silk dresses that snugged their bodies to midcalf, where the fabric pooled around their bare feet as they walked toward the young man. They were beautiful, and the man stared at them with obvious desire.

They took his hands, guided him toward a round, tufted ottoman in the middle of the room. They unfastened the buttons on his shirt, let it fall to the floor.

His neck and arms were dotted with scars, which the women caressed and flicked with eager tongues. It wasn’t hard to guess the scars’ origins; he’d given blood before, many times.

As the women lowered the donor to the ottoman, the butler appeared at our side. “If you’d come with me?”

Ethan kept his eyes on the ottoman. “And why would I want to do that?”

“Because Cyrius wishes to have a word with you.”

Ethan rolled his eyes, playing at a man unaccustomed to being beckoned, which wasn’t much of a stretch. But I caught the tightening of his jaw.

“I’m trying to relax, and I don’t know who Cyrius is. If he wants to speak with me, he can do so here.”

Trouble?

Cyrius runs La Douleur, Ethan said. I’ve not met him, but I know his name.

Another vampire entered the room—an enormous woman with freckles, brown hair, and silvered eyes that were focused on us. A katana in a lacquered black sheath was belted at her waist, and she probably had five inches and eighty pounds on me.

Good, I thought, as I met her threatening gaze. That might make us even.

Steady, now, Sentinel.

I won’t move unless I have to, I assured him. But I hoped that I’d have to. Even vampires bored of posturing.

“Now,” the butler insisted, all pretense of politeness—and the British accent—gone. “Or we do this here.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “This was once an establishment of some gentility.” But he put aside his drink, rose, held up a hand for me.

I nodded, rose obediently, and followed Ethan and the butler to the door where the vampire waited. When I looked back, the vampires had descended on the man on the ottoman, and the scent of blood rose in the air.

The man in the fedora was gone.

• • •

We were marched into the hallway again, then through the open door at the far end into an enormous concrete room, probably a dock for the store that had once filled the slip. A rolling overhead door was open, letting in an astringent, chemical breeze.