“He is young,” Vasiliy said.
“He is spoiled rotten,” Evdokia barked. “He spends all his time trying to kill my cat. One child is a doctor, the other is an attorney, the third is a serial killer in training.”
Vasiliy stared at her, shocked.
“We’re taking a short recess!” Curran roared and took off. We staged a strategic advance to the entrance of the steak house, right past Barabas, bent over double and making high-pitched strangled noises.
Outside, Curran exhaled and turned to me. “Did you know they were crazy?”
“I didn’t even know they were married.”
“They aren’t,” Roman said next to me. Somehow he’d gotten outside. “They love each other, they just can’t live together. When I was younger, it was always drama: they are together, they are apart, they are seeing other people.” He shrugged. “Mom never could stand all the blood, and Dad has no patience for the witchery. We’re lucky the magic isn’t up. At the last New Year’s they set the house on fire. There was alcohol involved. Did you bring my staff?”
I looked around for the boy wonder. “Derek?”
Derek popped up by my side and thrust a stick with a trash bag on top of it at the volhv. Roman ripped the black plastic off. “What’s with the bag?”
Derek bared his teeth. “It tried to bite me.”
Roman petted the staff. “He was just scared, that’s all.” He took a step toward me and lowered his voice. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
We walked away a few feet, like it would make a difference with a bunch of shapeshifters. Roman leaned to me. “The gorgeous blonde, does she work with you?”
I glanced to where Andrea stood by the doors. “Andrea? Yes.”
“Oh, that’s a pretty name,” Roman said.
“Bad idea,” I told him.
“Why? Married?”
“No. An ex-boyfriend. A very dangerous, very jealous ex-boyfriend.”
Roman grinned. “Married is a problem. Dangerous, no problem.”
Over Roman’s shoulder I could see Curran. He stood absolutely still, his gaze fixed on the back of Roman’s neck.
Houston, we have a problem.
“Step away from me,” I said quietly.
“Sorry?” Roman leaned closer.
Jim was saying something. Curran started toward us in that unhurried lion gait that usually signaled he was a hair from exploding into violence.
“Step away.”
Roman took two steps back, just in time to move out of Curran’s path. The Beast Lord passed by him and deliberately stepped between the volhv and me. I touched his cheek, running my fingers over the stubble. He took my hand into his. A quiet growl reverberated in his throat. Roman decided he had someplace to be and he really needed to get there as soon as possible.
“Too much excitement, Your Majesty?” I asked.
“He was standing too close.”
“He was asking about Andrea.”
“Too close. I didn’t like it.” Curran wrapped his arm around my shoulders and started walking, steering me away from the group. His Possessive Majesty in all of his glory. “This writ of kinship, what the hell is that? Does it make you allied with them?”
And he changed the subject, too. “No. I’ve only run across it a couple of times before. It’s a document that states that I acknowledge that my mother is my mother and that my mother was born to such-and-such family. The witches are big on family record keeping.”
“Will she take it to Roland?” Curran asked.
“It’s not in her best interests. She hates him.”
“So what’s the point of it?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.”
He dipped his head, his gray eyes looking into mine. “Are you going to take them up on it?”
“Yes. Nothing has changed. Julie is still dying.”
“Then do it soon,” Curran said.
“Why?”
He pointed at the road. A caravan of black SUVs slithered its way up the highway. Thin emaciated shapes dashed along the shoulder of the road, their gait odd and jerky.
“The People are here,” Curran said.
CHAPTER 21
AN HOUR LATER THE INSIDE OF THE STEAK HOUSE had been cleared, every table in the house set into a square. The People had brought four out of their seven Masters of the Dead, headed by Ghastek. Nataraja must’ve declined to make an appearance. Because the meeting was held in the Pack’s territory, the People had their choice of seats and positioned themselves with their backs to the window, so they could observe the front and back doors.
The four Masters of the Dead—Ghastek, Rowena, Mulradin, and Filipa—took their places at the table. Behind them a gaggle of journeymen sat in their chairs flush against the window, their faces carefully blank. Between the journeymen, vampires crouched like monstrous gargoyles: hairless, corded with a tight network of steel-hard muscle, and smeared in lime-green and purple sunblock. Bubble-gum-tinted nightmares.
I had to fight the urge to keep glancing at Rowena. Short, only about five two or so, Rowena was a teenage boy’s wet dream. Perfect figure, sensual face, emerald-green eyes, and fiery red hair falling in a cascade of glossy waves all the way past her waist. An elegant business suit molded to her curves like a glove. When she smiled, male heads turned. If she said something, people nodded in agreement. There was something about her that made you want to earn her approval. She could make you feel like a hero for passing her the salt.
This was what my mother must’ve been like. I might’ve had her DNA, but not a drop of her magic had made it through.
To the left of the People sat the representatives of the Mercenary Guild. I recognized three veteran mercs and Mark, nominally the Guild’s admin and in reality the Guild’s overseer now that Solomon Red, the Guild’s founder, lay six feet under. At least some of him did. After my aunt was done with him, there hadn’t been much left.
Next to the Guild sat representatives of the Natives. I recognized shamans from the Cherokee, Apalachee, and Muskogee Creek tribes, but the other two I’d never seen before.
Norse Heritage took up the next three seats. The Norse Heritage Foundation claimed that their goal was to preserve Scandinavian cultural traditions. In reality, they took the idea of Vikings and ran with it as far from any cultural or historical accuracy as they could go. Norse Heritage took everyone in. As long as you were willing to drink beer, get rowdy, and proclaim yourself a Viking, you had a place at their table. Ragnvald, their jarl, a huge bear of a man, came easily enough, but Jim’s people had the devil of a time getting his escort to surrender their axes and horned helmets. There was a lot of roaring and cursing and promises of doing indelicate things and screams of “Make me!” and “Over your dead body!” until Curran came out, looked at them for a while, and went back inside. Ragnvald read the writing on the wall, and his crew decided to disarm voluntarily.
The College of Mages provided three representatives, followed by us, and then by the witches, volhvs, druids, and half a dozen other smaller factions. Getting everyone to take a seat and be quiet was like trying to roll Sisyphus’s boulder up the mountain. By the time we were done, I wanted to stab myself in the eye. Nobody seemed ready to make trouble, but I kept Slayer on my lap under the table just in case.
We put Kamen in the middle of the square in his own special chair. Just in case he decided to wander off and invent a black hole generator out of a box of matches and paper clips while we weren’t looking. Rene and the Red Guard brass sat at the table directly behind Kamen. Rene looked a bit green in the face.
Tea, coffee, and water were served, and then Jim rose and gave a succinct summary of Kamen’s invention and the aftermath of its usage. The Red Guardsmen were presented as being heroic; the volhvs’ involvement was tactfully omitted. When he moved on to explain the third device, silence claimed the steak house. Five miles. Absolute destruction. If you had a drop of magic, you would not survive.