“No,” Cody said bluntly. “It’s not.”
Lady Eris came off her stool with blinding speed to slap him across the face with an open hand, her nails raking his cheek. Her attendants scattered out of the way. Cody’s head snapped sideways, his face distorting in a snarl, his mouth suddenly full of too many teeth, hands clenching into fists. Hairy, hairy fists. She stood imperiously before him, unmoving, unbreathing. “Mind your manners, wolf. This is my territory.”
He growled at her in response, blood trickling down his cheek.
“Whoa!” I found my voice. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, people! Let’s not go all Underworld here.” No one was listening to me. “Cody!” I thumped him on the back. He glanced at me with a low growl, his face still distorted and his eyes glowing with green phosphorescence. “Hey! You’re in uniform.”
I’m not sure what made me choose those words, but they worked. His features shifted back into human form. “I could arrest you for assaulting an officer,” he said in a hard voice. “You’re not above the law.”
“You could try.” Unimpressed, Lady Eris sat back down on her ornate stool. She raised her hand to taste Cody’s blood on her fingernails with the tip of her tongue, then made a face. I guess werewolf blood wasn’t yummy. She gestured to an attendant, who scrambled to bring her a bowl of water in which to dabble her fingers. “Is that what you really want?”
“No, my lady.” I got the words out before Cody could respond, elbowing him in the ribs for good measure. “Just the chance to look for the child.”
Lady Eris and I did the locked-gazes thing. What can I say? It was big in the eldritch community. I kept my expression neutral and my miniature shield shining between us. “Naturally, I have no desire to be in violation of Hel’s order,” she said at length, snapping her fingers at her attendants. One hurried to arrange her hair in a loose chignon, while the other eased a pair of open-toed mules onto her feet, careful not to smudge the fresh nail polish. “Come! Let us review the latest acolytes.”
Once acceptably attired, she swept out of the room before us, down the mauve-lit hallway and up the grand staircase to the ballroom on the third floor, where her early arrival—not to mention Cody’s and my presence—provoked consternation.
“My lady!” A tall vampire with a supercilious face protested. “The spectacle isn’t ready yet!”
I knew that face. Geoffrey Chancellor, the insufferable prat who was blood-bonded to Jen’s sister.
“Oh, my lady! It’s so important to get the lighting just right!” added a young mortal woman from above, tears in her voice.
And that would be Bethany Cassopolis, whom I did not expect to find up on a scaffold, arranging lighting. From what I could tell, they were in the midst of staging a scene from a play. On a low dais there were three, maybe four, people dressed in Renaissance-looking robes and frozen in poses around a platter with what appeared to be a bearded man’s severed head on it. Hence my confusion regarding the actual number of people on the dais.
Cody took a step forward. “What the fuck?”
“It’s a tableau vivant,” Lady Eris said irritably. “Caravaggio’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, tonight’s surprise spectacle, which you’ve now ruined. Well?”
I studied the tableau. Unlike the members of the string quartet in the corner, sitting bloodless and motionless with their instruments at the ready, the participants were mortal. Now that I looked closely, I could see that the severed-head effect was accomplished using a black curtain affixed to the rim of the platter. Phew.
All of them held their poses resolutely, but the young woman playing Salome, draped in a red robe and ostensibly holding the platter, was trembling.
“Heather Simkus?” I said to her. She didn’t respond, keeping her face averted. “Heather?”
“Goddammit!” Bethany Cassopolis came storming down from the scaffold, a lighting canister in one hand. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Ignoring her, I eased the folds of Salome’s robes off her nearest arm, revealing dozens of lines of cutting marks, some of them old scars fading to pink, others still red and angry. Aside from trembling, she didn’t budge.
“Leave her be!” Bethany grabbed my shoulder and yanked me away with surprising strength. “She’s mine!”
“Excuse me?” I said, steadying my faltering shield.
“Not like that, duh!” she retorted.
Geoffrey the insufferable prat glided over, stopping a few feet away when Cody angled toward him. “With her ladyship’s blessing, I gave Bethany permission to recruit an acolyte,” he said, looking down his nose at me. “I assure you, she came most willingly.”
On the dais, Salome—or Heather, I should say—gave the tiniest of nods. She had a pretty face in that sort of soft, unformed way some teenaged girls do. At the moment, there were silent tears trickling down it.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “She’s a minor. She’s sixteen.”
“Do you think I didn’t ask?” Bethany glared at me. I had to say, she actually looked better than she had in years; less strung out, more pissed off. Maybe recruiting acolytes agreed with her. “She’s eighteen.”
I glanced at Heather. Her trembling had turned to shaking. “She didn’t show you ID, did she?”
“Miss Simkus, you can’t stay here,” Cody said in a gentle voice. “We’ve come to take you home.”
At that, she abandoned her pose with a gulping sob, turning to Bethany. “You promised! Don’t let them take me! I don’t want to go!”
Bethany looked uncertainly at Geoffrey.
Geoffrey looked uncertainly at Lady Eris.
Lady Eris smiled. “I don’t suppose you happen to have proof of the girl’s age with you, Officer?” she asked Cody. “A birth certificate, perhaps?”
He stared at her. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Not at all,” she said in a complacent tone. “The mantle of my protection has been extended to the young lady. I take these matters very seriously.”
I was pretty sure she was just yanking our chain because we’d ruined the evening’s entertainment, but the musicians in the corner laid down their instruments and rose to add their pale and silently menacing numbers to the assembled vampires. On the dais, the remaining members of the tableau broke character, straightening to watch the events unfold with glazed, haunted eyes, and in the case of John the Baptist, a curtain-draped platter around his neck like a collar.
“Hel takes her rule of order very seriously, too, my lady,” I murmured to Lady Eris. “She has banished others for defying it.”
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, tapping one mule-shod foot. “If you return with a valid birth certificate, I will relinquish the girl in accordance with Hel’s rule and mundane authority,” she said eventually. “But since the issue is in question, if you desire immediate satisfaction . . .” The living and the dead hung on her words, awaiting her decree. She smiled again, this time showing a hint of fang, her dark eyes sparkling with glee. “I declare myself neutral in the matter and proclaim this an individual dispute.”
A murmur ran around the ballroom, where the number of vampires appeared to have multiplied as they emerged from their chambers to observe the confrontation. Someone did a polite golf clap.
“What does that mean?” Cody asked.
“It means Geoffrey and I have the right to stop you from taking her!” Bethany said defiantly, positioning herself in front of the dais. “Right, honey?”
Although he didn’t look quite as committed to the battle, he joined her. “Right.”
Cody and I exchanged a glance. Obviously, the smart thing to do would be to go get a copy of Heather Simkus’s birth certificate and return. If we were lucky, her parents had it in a handy file at home and we’d be back within half an hour. If we were less lucky, they kept it in a safety-deposit box and we’d have to wait until the banks opened tomorrow. And if we were downright unlucky, it might be lost or in storage someplace where it would take days to retrieve it or to request and obtain a new copy, during which time God knows what might happen to Heather at the House of Shadows. She’d probably end up blood-bonded.