She glanced back at me, and I gave her my best blank-eyed stare back. It didn’t help that Mircea was across the table from me, on the same side as her, and down a bit, so she couldn’t watch us both at the same time. It seemed to be freaking her out slightly, but I didn’t help her.
Because it hadn’t occurred to Ismitta that she was undermining me. That she was essentially challenging me by speaking to me like that, something she would never have done to anyone else at this table. But I was human, and the Pythias were just tools to be used by the Circle or the senate, depending on who managed to grab us first. Not equals to be spoken to politely, or risk a challenge she might not be able to handle!
Calm down, I told myself. You’re angry, but not really at her. How is this different from the way the senate has always treated you? Unless they need propaganda for their war, that is.
Annnnnd now I was mad all over again.
Mircea noticed and moved to distract me, or maybe he was just doing his job. “Did Adramelech happen to mention any reason why the creature should have come here?” he asked, and maybe it was my imagination, but his voice seemed extra polite.
A small frown appeared on Ismitta’s beautiful forehead.
I shook my head. “No. But the last time one of them got loose, it trashed the Shadowland, looking for an old enemy.”
I decided not to mention that “the last time” was yesterday morning. Things were tense enough in here as it was, and that wasn’t all on me. It had been that way when I arrived, with little bursts of power being thrown around the table, which felt like invisible comets sailing past and sometimes colliding with my skin. They weren’t attacks; it was just hard to have this much energy in one place without it spilling over.
Especially when people were agitated.
“Possibly this one was doing the same thing, and was after one of the demons assigned to the army,” I added.
“Could that have been the small creature you encountered in the dead soldier’s brain?” Marlowe asked, and then winced. “That sounds insane to even say,” he muttered. But he looked hopeful anyway.
’Cause, yeah.
We’d all be happier if this was just some ancient vendetta.
“Possibly,” I said again. “He managed to escape back into the demon world while we were battling Kulullû. But he was traumatized to the point that even Adra wasn’t able to get much out of him. Just that there was a chance he was able to recognize Kulullû even in its possessed form, since they originate from the same world.”
“Which could also explain why this Kulullû was hunting him,” Mircea said. “It knew he could alert the council to the fact that it had escaped—”
“Escaped how?” Marlowe interjected. “And is there a chance that more of those things are on the loose? If our enemies manage to free them, they could use the resulting chaos to preoccupy the demon council—and us, if any more make it to earth—”
There was a general murmuring around the table.
“—and delay the invasion—”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, because I didn’t. And because, until Adra found out something, there was no reason for everybody to freak out.
Especially the way master vamps tended to interpret that term.
“Adra’s away right now,” I continued. “Looking into it personally. As soon as he tells me anything, I’ll pass it on.”
Marlowe nodded and sat back against his chair, apparently satisfied. Unlike Ismitta. The frown had been growing as Marlowe and I spoke, maybe because he hadn’t acted like he was speaking to an inferior. He’d asked a couple of questions and I’d answered them, something that would have been a normal enough exchange in the human world, if you ignored the subject matter. But in the vampire . . .
Well, it just didn’t work like that. Humans were servants or prey, nothing more. And Ismitta had clearly had enough of everyone acting like it was perfectly fine that the family dog had been allowed a seat at the dinner table.
Especially this dinner table.
It suddenly occurred to me that part of the weird tension in here might be down to something besides concern over the invasion. Vamps got together all the time in small groups, and every couple of years, the leading masters in a senate’s territory assembled for something called Convocation. Which, instead of diplomas and speeches, mostly involved posturing and scheming.
But nobody did this. Never before, until the current war, had all six senates met up and tried to talk about anything. Sure, they exchanged ambassadors at times, and discussed conflicts or the sharing of resources between two or three of them. But they didn’t all come together to decide on anything, and I wasn’t sure they even knew how.
A world senate sounded good in theory, but in practice . . . I wondered how it was going in practice? I didn’t know. But Ismitta clearly thought I was embarrassing them all by having opinions and presuming to share them.
She hadn’t been here for the last four months while the senate and I struggled to figure out where I belonged. It had been one long power play, with each of us winning part of the time. We’d finally reached a delicate sort of equilibrium, with them mostly acting like I was another master vamp, although never acknowledging that that’s what they were doing, and me trying not to yell at them half as much as I wanted.
Yet they still hadn’t learned anything
! Or they wouldn’t have commissioned a massive statue of “Goddess Cassie” and not bothered to tell me about it! Or called a meeting about the war—one I’d been fighting more than any of them—and not thought to invite me! Or let Ismitta get back to her feet with another little smile, preparing to send me out of the room.