“Um,” he said. “Miss … I kind of do.”
Andi stepped up beside me and gave him a sex-kitten smile that made me hate her a little, just for a second. “No you don’t.”
“Uh,” he said, “yeah. Still do.”
Justine stepped up on my other side. She looked more sweet than sexy, but only barely. “I’m sure it was just an oversight, sir. Couldn’t you ask your supervisor if we might come to the reception?”
He stared at us for a long moment, clearly hesitant. Then one hand slowly went to the radio at his side and he lifted it to his mouth. A moment later a slight, small man in a silk suit appeared from inside the building. He took a long look at us.
The interest I’d felt from the guard was fairly normal. It had just been a spark, the instinct-level response of any male to a desirable female.
What came off of the new guy was … it was more like a road flare. It burned a thousand times hotter and brighter, and it kept on burning. I’d sensed lust and desire in others before. This went so much deeper and wider than mere lust that I didn’t think there was a word for it. It was … a vast and inhuman yearning, blended with a fierce and jealous love, and seasoned with sexual attraction and desire. It was like standing near a tiny sun, and I suddenly understood exactly what Auntie Lea had been trying to tell me.
Fire is hot. Water is wet. And svartalves are suckers for pretty girls. They could no more change their nature than they could the course of the stars.
“Ladies,” the new guy said, smiling at us. It was a charming smile, but there was something distant and disquieting in his face all the same. “Please, wait just a moment for me to alert my other staff. We would be honored if you would join us.”
He turned and went inside.
Justine gave me a sidelong look.
“The Rack can have a powerful influence over the weak-minded,” I said.
“I’d feel better if he hadn’t left on a Darth Vader line,” Andi breathed. “He smelled odd. Was he …?”
“Yeah,” I whispered back. “One of them.”
The man in the silk suit reappeared, still smiling, and opened the door for us. “Ladies,” he said, “I am Mister Etri. Please, come inside.”
I had never in my life seen a place more opulent than the inside of the svartalves’ stronghold. Not in magazines, not in the movies. Not even on Cribs.
There were tons of granite and marble. There were sections of wall that had been inlaid with precious and semiprecious stones. Lighting fixtures were crafted of what looked like solid gold, and the light switches looked like they’d been carved from fine ivory. Security guards were stationed every twenty or thirty feet, standing at rigid attention like those guys outside Buckingham Palace, only without the big hats. Light came from everywhere and from nowhere, making all shadows thin and wispy things without becoming too bright for the eyes. Music drifted on the air, some old classical thing that was all strings and no drumbeat.
Etri led us down a couple of hallways to a vast cathedral of a ballroom. It was absolutely palatial in there—in fact, I was pretty sure that the room shouldn’t have fit in the building we’d just entered—and it was filled with expensive-looking people in expensive-looking clothing.
We paused in the entry while Etri stopped to speak to yet another security guy. I took the moment it offered to sweep my gaze over the room. The place wasn’t close to full, but there were a lot of people there. I recognized a couple of celebrities, people you’d know if I told you their names. There were a number of the Sidhe in attendance, their usual awe-inspiring physical perfection muted to mere exotic beauty. I spotted Gentleman Johnnie Marcone, the head of Chicago’s outfit in attendance, with his gorilla Hendricks and his personal attack witch, Gard, floating around near him. There were any number of people who I was sure weren’t people; I could sense the blurring of perception in the air around them as if they were cut off from me by a thin curtain of falling water.
But I didn’t see Thomas.
“Molly,” Justine whispered, barely audible. “Is he …?”
The tracking spell I’d focused on my lips was still functioning, a faint tingle telling me that Thomas was nearby, deeper into the interior of the building. “He’s alive,” I said. “He’s here.”
Justine shuddered and took a deep breath. She blinked slowly, once, her face showing nothing as she did. I felt the surge of simultaneous relief and terror in her presence, though, a sudden blast of emotion that cried out for her to scream or fight or burst into tears. She did none of that, and I turned my eyes away from her in order to give her the illusion that I hadn’t noticed her near meltdown.
In the center of the ballroom, there was a small, raised platform of stone, with a few stairs leading up onto it. Upon the platform was a podium of the same material. Resting on the podium was a thick folio of papers and a neat row of fountain pens. There was something solemn and ceremonial about the way it was set up.
Justine was looking at it, too. “That must be it.”
“The treaty?”
She nodded. “The svartalves are very methodical about business. They’ll conclude the treaty precisely at midnight. They always do.”
Andi tapped a finger thoughtfully on her hip. “What if something happened to their treaty first? I mean, if someone spilled a bunch of wine on it or something. That would be attention getting, I bet—maybe give a couple of us a chance to sneak further in.”
I shook my head. “No. We’re guests here. Do you understand?”
“Uh. Not really.”
“The svartalves are old-school,” I said. “Really old-school. If we break the peace when they’ve invited us into their territory, we’re violating our guest right and offering them disrespect as our hosts—right out in the open, in front of the entire supernatural community. They’ll react … badly.”
Andi frowned and said, “Then what’s our next move?”
Why do people keep asking me that? Is this what all wizard types go through? I’d probably asked Harry that question a hundred times, but I never realized how hard it was to hear it coming toward you. But Harry always knew what to do next. All I could do was improvise desperately and hope for the best.
“Justine,” I said, “do you know any of the players here?”
As Lara Raith’s personal assistant, Justine came in contact with a lot of people and not-quite-people. Lara had so many fingers in so many pies that I could barely make a joke about it, and Justine saw, heard, and thought a lot more than anyone gave her credit for. The white-haired girl scanned the room, her dark eyes flicking from face to face. “Several.”
“All right. I want you to circulate and see what you can find out,” I said. “Keep an eye out. If you see them sending the brute squad after us, get on the crystal and warn us.”
“Okay,” Justine whispered. “Careful.”
Etri returned and smiled again, though his eyes remained oddly, unsettlingly without expression. He flicked one hand and a man in a tux floated over to us with a tray of drinks. We helped ourselves, and Etri did, too. He lifted his glass to us and said, “Ladies, be welcome. To beauty.”
We echoed him and we all sipped. I barely let my lips touch the liquid. It was champagne, really good stuff. It fizzed and I could barely taste the alcohol. I wasn’t worried about poison. Etri had quite diffidently allowed us to choose our glasses before taking one of his own.
I was actually more worried about the fact that I’d stopped to consider potential poisoning, and to watch Etri’s actions carefully as he served us. Is it paranoid to worry about things like that? It seemed reasonable to me at the time.