A young, dark-haired woman stepped into our way. We had two choices, to stop or to collide with her. We settled on stopping.
“Alessandro Sagredo,” she purred.
Alessandro gave her a polite smile. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Mira Fiore, House Fiore. The American branch of the family. You dated my cousin last spring, Constantia.”
Was there anyone he hadn’t dated?
The expression on Alessandro’s face cooled by several degrees. He didn’t respond, he just waited.
His silence and cold stare took some wind out of Mira’s sails, but she bravely sailed on. “My friends and I were wondering about your date.”
She wasn’t even looking at me.
“She’s basically a nobody,” she continued. “Her House is five minutes old.” Her voice rose. Other nearby couples had stopped dancing and watched us. “Her sister marrying Mad Rogan is the only thing that her family is known for. So, you could have had my cousin, but here you are with Catalina Baylor. I’d like to know why.”
Okay, that’s about enough. I didn’t even have to reach for Victoria’s granddaughter. I was already there. I looked at her, and Mira wilted.
“Go back to your table.” My voice was icy. “You’ve embarrassed yourself enough for tonight.”
Mira opened her mouth and saw the people around us. That’s right, you look rude and stupid. Run away while you can.
“Baylor?” a deep voice rumbled.
Oh crap.
Mira scooted off to the side. Behind her Frank Madero lumbered to his feet.
“What are you doing?” Cristal squeaked. “Sit down.” She put her hand on his forearm as if to restrain him and he pushed it off.
“Your sister put me in the hospital.” Madero peered at me, pure rage in his eyes.
I stared him down. Maderos understood strength, nothing else. “You tried to kidnap her.”
“Well, I’ve got just one word to say to you. Rematch!”
He flexed and his suit exploded. His skin turned red, his muscles swelled. He grabbed a table and hurled it at me.
I dodged left, Alessandro dodged right. The table flew between us and froze in mid-air. An older black man next to us turned and fixed Frank with a hard stare. Shelton Woods, Head of House Woods. “That’s enough. Sit down.”
“I didn’t ask you shit, old man!” Frank bellowed, and charged.
The telekinetic swung the table with his magic and smashed it against Frank. The table shattered into splinters. Frank didn’t even slow down. Lilian Woods, Shelton’s wife of nearly fifty years, grabbed her husband and yanked him out of Madero’s way. The pieces of the table and silverware rose in the air and pelted Frank. It didn’t stop him, but he had built up too much speed to turn. He tore past us and crashed into the row of tables.
Yeraz, the Armenian Magus Sagittarius, jumped to her feet, grabbed a knife off the neighboring table, and hurled it at Lilian. The knife stopped, reversed, and sank into the table an inch from Yeraz’s hand.
“Don’t do that again!” Lilian snapped.
Yeraz hissed at her like a snake, grabbed a handful of silverware, and launched it into the air.
Frank rolled to his feet, grabbed two tables like they weighed nothing, and slammed them together, screaming obscenities. Shelton Woods waved his hand. A third table slammed into Frank, slapping him down like a flyswatter coming down on an annoying insect.
Yeraz’s barrage of knives and forks fell harmlessly on the floor. The glass next to Yeraz shot into the air and splashed water into her face.
“Cool off,” Lilian told her.
“Kill the old bitch!” Yeraz howled.
Everything happened at once: Diatheke’s killers zeroed in on Yeraz’s target; the guests realized this was not part of the performance and half of them headed for the exit, while the others stayed to watch or fight; security rushed through the staff entrance and stopped, not sure who to target, and Frank Madero screamed and hurled tables into the air. Magic crackled, furniture flew, and to the left a table burst into flames.
Where the hell was Cristal?
I spun to look behind me. Linus pounded his fist on the table. The silverware flew to his arm, melting, twisting, and snapping together into a barrel. Linus swung his new hand cannon and fired at Frank, who was rampaging in the middle of the floor. Frank’s head jerked as the bullet bounced off his skull. He spun around, roaring. I caught sight of Benedict, his face twisted with rage, standing in the middle of the melee, the dark-haired aegis directly behind him. A stray chair hurtled at Benedict’s head hit the translucent blue screen of magic and bounced off.
Across the Grand Foyer, Cristal ducked into the hallway leading to the bathrooms.
Frank finally saw me. His beady dark eyes lit up. He barreled at me through the crowd, enormous, brick red, and breathing like a charging bull.
Crap.
Alessandro thrust himself into Frank’s path.
“Go!” Alessandro yelled to me. “I’ve got this.”
I ran after Cristal. The last thing I saw before I turned the corner was Alessandro on Frank’s shoulders, choking him with a plastic bag.
The hallway stretched in front of me, empty. I sprinted, checking the doors with my hand as I ran.
Locked, locked, locked, empty, bathroom. Nobody in the stalls.
I kept running. The hallway turned, ending in a big round room. A stack of tables waited at the opposite side, where two other hallways branched off. Next to the tables, Cristal had halted, obviously trying to choose an escape route.
“Cristal,” I sang out, sending my magic her way.
She turned, a panicked look on her face.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” I said in a cheerful, singsong way.
Her mind fluoresced in my magic’s eye, a pale glowing smudge. She had a lot of power. It burned bright, but her will was weak and she wasn’t a mental mage. My magic wrapped around her, cushioning her from the world and reality. It was almost too easy.
Cristal turned to me.
If I pumped too much magic into her, she would do anything to keep me happy. I needed her to be honest and answer my questions, but not so far gone that she started lying. Linus would have to defend this interrogation, and I didn’t want to give anyone ammunition to question it. It had to be evident that Cristal still had some control over herself.
“You know what helps me when I’m scared? I like to sing a little song. Twinkle, twinkle, little star . . .”
“How I wonder what you are,” Cristal finished. “It’s a baby song. It’s stupid.”
Perfect. “Do you feel better?”
“I do. But I’m still scared.” She knotted the fabric of her skirt in her hands. “Big events are difficult for me. This was supposed to be safe. It was supposed to be nice. There are only nice people here and I have two bodyguards.”
I had no idea how much time I would have with her. “It’s okay. You’re safe with me.”
“I know. You seem like a nice person.”
I turned my phone on and started Bern’s app. He’d written the custom piece of software specifically for times like this. With one tap, I turned on recording, encrypted it, and uploaded it to our cloud. Even if I lost the phone, the conversation would be saved.
“Tell me about Lawrence. Was he a good subject for your research?”
Cristal frowned. “He survived. In terms of compatibility, we could have done better. The goal of the process is to enhance magical talent without the warping side effect.”
“What did you use to enhance him?”
“The 1012 variant.”
No good. “Variant of what?”
Cristal gave me a look like I was stupid. Even besotted, she still kept her natural disdain for people below her level of expertise. That was some deep personality flaw.
“Variant of the Osiris serum.”
“Is 1012 a derivative of 971?”
Cristal gave me a bright smile. “Of course it is.”
“Why are you experimenting with the secondary application of the Osiris serum on human subjects? Do you know that it’s illegal?”
“Throughout human history a great many things have been illegal. There are always people who stand in the way of progress. There is no difference between Galileo and me. He was the first to discover that the Earth revolved around the sun. I’ll be the first to cure a failing vector.” She paused, looked at me, and added, “A person born into a magical family whose talent is weaker than their parents’ magic.”
She had dumbed it down for me. How nice. I wondered what she would say if I told her that the model of heliocentrism was first developed by Aristarchus in the third century BC, eighteen centuries before the birth of Galileo. “That’s so interesting, Cristal. Who is financing this important research?”
“Diatheke. Benedict isn’t a scientist, but he understands the value of scientific discovery.”
“Do you know what Diatheke does?”
“Of course. They’re assassins.”
And that didn’t bother her at all. “How many warped assassins have you supplied to Diatheke?”
“Three.”
“How many test subjects died?”
“Seventeen.”
“How were these people selected?”