I’d never seen so many young vamps talking back to their masters before, both loudly and in public. And from the shocked look of some of the masters, neither had they. But the usual power dynamic wasn’t at play here. The masters, even those at senate level, couldn’t force this on their servants, putting them in the unusual position of having to persuade.
And they sucked at it.
Adra seemed to agree. “They appear to be having some trouble with their servants,” he murmured.
“That’s what comes from giving orders for hundreds of years. You forget how to do anything else.”
He smiled slightly. “I think Lord Mircea might remember.”
“Hopefully, he’ll be here soon.” The senate could really use his diplomatic skills right about now. I looked at Adra. “Keeping him around would seem like a good move, if you’re going to need his persuasive ability.”
The eyebrows crawled up the forehead again. “Is that a roundabout way of asking if we have a deal?”
“And if it is?”
“Let us see how this plays out,” he said, amused gray eyes meeting mine. And then narrowing, as he caught my expression. “Is there something else?”
I nodded. “A question—about possession. I thought—” I stopped. But then I went on, because whether I sounded stupid or not was the least of my problems right now. “I thought I saw Ares on the drag this morning, in possession of a mage.”
“A mage?”
“The leader. The one rallying the troops.”
“The one you yourself possessed?”
I didn’t bother to ask how he’d known that. Three of his creatures had been there. “Yes.”
“And when you entered him—”
“I found someone else already there. He attacked me, and I barely escaped. And then I saw him again, this afternoon—”
“Again?” That was sharper. “I was told the mage was dead.”
“Not in the mage. In—” I stopped again, because everyone in the room could hear me if they wanted.
Until a second silence spell snapped shut around us, one that felt different somehow. And looked it, too. Partly opaque, it browned out much of the room. I didn’t know why. And then I realized: no lipreading.
Adra wasn’t taking chances.
“Tell me.”
“Nimue,” I said simply. “Fifteen hundred years ago. It was the same as on the drag: a darkness, a . . . coldness.” I gestured futilely. “I know I’m not explaining it very well, but I knew him. And he knew me—or at least he knew what I was. He called me vlva—it means seer.”
“I know,” Adra murmured, his face going blank.
It didn’t bother me so much this time, because I hoped the reason was that he was thinking too hard to bother keeping up the facade. But I still didn’t like looking at it. I stared out at the room, wondering where the hell Mircea was, and why nobody seemed to be noticing anything unusual about us.
But they weren’t. The crowd ebbed and flowed beneath us, the ones who weren’t part of the ongoing argument taking the opportunity to refresh their drinks or to group up, talking quietly. Nobody seemed to notice us at all—well, almost nobody.
I sighed, catching sight of the baby vampire, blundering over in our general direction. He must have seen Adra and me talking a minute ago, and now he couldn’t find me. And he was getting distressed again; I could see it on his face, although I didn’t know why. The most dangerous thing happening at the moment was that they’d run out of vermouth.
Even worse, Marlowe was following him.
Not obviously, not unless you were looking for it, but when the baby moved, a few seconds later, so did the chief spy. He was hunting for us, hunting for us using that poor, scared baby vamp as bait, and that was just—
“I see two possibilities,” Adra said abruptly.
I turned back to him.