"So what now?" asked Alessandro. "Another search? Find another changeling to question?"
"What's the point?" asked Omara softly. "The wolves captured the changeling, and so it made sense to see what we could learn. But to chase down another? They are barely articulate. Their tolerance for pain is legendary. A waste of time. We need to find their master."
The elevator doors slid open and they got out. Omara started down the hall to her room, Alessandro at her side.
"I don't understand what happened tonight," he said. "When I left you earlier, you were going to question Pierce."
Omara waved a dismissive hand. "The affair with the changeling was more urgent."
"You let Pierce interrogate the changeling."
"Pierce was here and you were not."
"So, just like that, you let him deal with the prisoner?"
"I wasn't about to touch the changeling myself. Besides, I knew I could count on John's cruelty. He needed a chance to redeem himself after tonight's little performance with the human."
She sounded almost—he searched for the right word—indulgent. Not like Omara at all.
Alessandro tried again, frustration making him push. "But what if he is in league with them? Wasn't that what we were wondering? The tokens, the bleeding ring? Murders?"
Without answering, Omara stopped in front of her door and handed Alessandro the passkey. He swiped it and pushed open the heavy door, holding it for his queen. The balcony doors were open, and the sitting room was cold but fresh. Omara switched on a table lamp, showing expensive, spacious, and utterly anonymous decor. Alessandro entered after her, locking the door.
"Consider this," he said. "Pierce's clan is well versed in magic. Someone has been casting summoning spells. If Clan Albion wanted to stage a coup, what better way than to raise an army of changelings and summon a demon to perform their bidding?"
Omara turned, throwing her arms in the air. "But why? Why would there be an alliance between Albion and a race of hideous mutants?"
Thrown on the defensive, Alessandro raised his voice. "I can remember when they were your rivals. Albion was bitterly ambitious. Only your superior sorcery stood between them and the crown, and they would have taken your place as ruler had you had faltered for one instant. Do you think they have changed so much since those days? Besides, changelings would never challenge you on their own. They are too few. They have to be working with somebody else."
"But John Pierce is not capable of any of this. He is pretty, vain, and foolish. A man with a child's need for reassurance. He behaves badly because he wants my love."
"Earlier tonight you thought he might be the murderer."
"Earlier tonight I was angry with him."
"But the Albion clan has always been a problem. I beheaded Pierce's brother for breaking your laws."
"John would never hurt me. Nor my throne. He adores me."
There was real anger in her voice. Alessandro stopped, not sure he believed what he had heard. Possessiveness. Protectiveness. She is defending Pierce against me!
A thrum of alarm traveled through him. Pierce was a wastrel, his family a pack of villains. Omara knew that. What is going on here? "Does he know about the portals?"
"I have not discussed the subject with him. Just the murders." Omara fell into one of the beige tub chairs that faced the balcony. The position turned her face from Alessandro. "I do not know how many ways I can say this. John is selfish. He is not, however, a mastermind of evil."
The vulnerability in her voice shocked him. He stared at her profile, and she stared out at the dark, sparkling night. She loves him, but treats him like a dog. He abases himself in order to wound her, but still seeks her favor. They are engaged in some bizarre, destructive affair. A queen cannot behave this way. Not with the throne in the balance.
His voice grew soft, but cutting. "Is it possible that one who has walked the gardens of ancient Babylon and has seen the sun rise and set on the pharaohs could stoop so low as John Pierce? The notion is breathtaking, and not in a good way."
Her tone was glacial. "Don't criticize me, Caravelli. I've slept with you, after all."
"But you would still tear my eyeballs out in a human heartbeat if you thought I'd crossed you. You forgive Pierce everything."
Omara gave him a scathing glare.
After all that the queen had put him through, Alessandro felt a petty thrill of satisfaction. He had found her out. "You like him. You love him. He challenges you."
Omara looked away.
Alessandro went on. "Ancient evil though you may be, you still fell for the bad boy. Perhaps that is why you've promised to share Desire the last times we've met, but never kept that pledge. I am not Pierce. I no longer please you."
Her profile was marble, yielding nothing. His triumph melted to pity. For all her power and ferocity, Omara had surrendered to a charming smile. That wouldn't be so bad, but Pierce was Pierce. "You can't afford to lose your judgment. Not now, with your throne under attack. You know it."
"I know it." Her voice was small. "In all these centuries I've made only this one blunder of the heart. I know I am in the wrong. A queen's mistakes are the errors of a whole people."
Alessandro sat in the tub chair next to hers, stretching out his long legs. They sat, sharing the view of the skyline. The moment was oddly companionable. The power balance between them had shifted, if only for that tiny slice of time.
"Is he involved?"
She sounded weary. "He showed no mercy to the changeling, as you saw."
Alessandro pondered that. "Where do you think the changelings are coming from?"
"Maybe the portals," Omara answered. "The changelings disappeared from the earth, and then here they are again. It is one possible answer."
He sat up straight. "I thought only demons dwelled on the other side. Demons and the damned souls sent to keep them prisoner in their hell. In the Castle."
"There is more to the Castle than that. It is a danger to all the supernatural species."
Alessandro's shoulders tightened. "How so?"
"It was meant as a prison for us all."
"What?" Alessandro held his breath, shocked.
She sank further into the chair. "The only nightmares I ever have are about getting trapped there."
She stopped talking. A TV went on in the room next door, loud at first; then someone turned it down. After a minute or so Omara went on.
"When I was young, magic was commonplace. Demons and dragons prowled freely in the dark places. Humans were not the all-powerful species they are now."
She stopped again and toed off her shoes.
"And?" prompted Alessandro.
"The human sorcerers banded together." She sounded far away, her voice rising and falling in the rhythm of the old storytellers. "They believed, in the beginning, that they would weave a great spell to help protect their people. In the end they built a monument to their own absolute power."
"A prison for nonhumans?" He had never known where the Castle came from.
"Yes. They gathered together and raised a powerful force, the most fearsome since the birthing of the sky and the seas. They created their prison for the demons and the dragons, the hellhounds and the werebeasts, the vampires and the fey. They gave it existence outside the laws of time and place, and there they locked away any creature that possessed the merest whiff of magic."
Alessandro saw the irony at once. "Any creature excepting themselves, of course."
"Indeed."
"But they failed," he put in. He didn't want to believe what she was telling him. "The supernatural never left this world."