breaking off the metal spike with a twang. Then she caught the stone, screamed with rage, and hurled it the length of the hall, where it impacted with a clap like thunder.
Saffron turned towards Darkrose’s cage, and the guards tensed, raising their crossbows. One was too tense, and he loosed his bolt. Saffron caught it midair and crushed it in one hand.
“If starving me has taken my daylight, you all die, ” Saffron snarled, broken splinters dropping out of her hand one by one to the stone floor below. She no longer sounded human; she sounded worse than the lich. “If you kill my mate, I will torture you all to death.”
“Such power, such fire,” the lich said. “Most impressive, surely, but you have been listening. The calculus in this room has not changed-unless you relent. Recall my offer. We are willing to acknowledge your power… if you acknowledge ours.”
Saffron glared at him, looked down, nodded.
“You planned this,” Iadimus said. I couldn’t pin down where his voice was coming from; if anyone was going to walk out of this alive, it was him. “You knew the Lady Scara would oppose so you had her taken out-and you knew who the Lady Frost would choose.”
“Would it change your vote?” the lich snarled. “We have lost two elders to this plague. We have already discussed replacements. She was our first candidate. Shall we proceed?”
Iadimus was silent for a moment.
“No, it would not change my vote,” he said. “And, yes, I think we should.”
“Congratulations, my dear,” the lich said, cackling. “You may sit at the big table.”
“You pompous windbag,” Saffron snarled. “You really think I will let this go?”
“Now now,” the lich said coolly. “Don’t be petulant, my dear. Delancaster has spoiled you. But the Gentry will not quake before you like leaves. Tantrums are unbecoming in well-groomed children.” His voice hissed like sandpaper. “Don’t make me take away your pet.”
Saffron tensed. So did the guards around Darkrose. Then Saffron seemed to crumple, and looked up at the lich, who gestured to the throne where Cinnamon sat. When the guard’s hand touched her shoulder Cinnamon hopped up like her ass was on fire. He led her to the edge of the stage, and she stood where he put her, holding her tail so it wouldn’t switch back and forth. A little gasp escaped her lips, a rough cough and head snap, and the lich hissed at her sharply.
“Be silent, you foulmouthed brat,” he snarled. “Even if you are Frost’s daughter-”
“Leopold,” Vladimir warned. “The child has a condition.”
“Enough,” the lich said, voice crackling. “She was warned. No more insolence.”
Cinnamon nodded; then she looked at me, eyes pleading, neck twisting in its steel collar. Talk about stress- Cinnamon was one outburst away from setting the lich off again. How was I going to help her, sprawled on the floor amidst a pile of twisted metal rails and cracked stone?
“ Thank you, Dakota,” Saffron said, and I looked up to see her looking sadly down at me. “I never wanted to force that on you.” Then she lowered her head, walked down to the stage, ascended the dais, and sat down under the crossbow of the guard.
“Uh… okay,” I said, sitting up but still totally bewildered. “What just happened?”
“‘The Gentry’ means a clique of the most powerful vampires in a region,” Vladimir said, bending down, examining my wrist. “This Gentry just offered ‘acknowledgement’ of Saffron’s power. By acknowledging their power in return, Saffron gains standing among them.”
“Wonderful,” I said, wincing as he pulled out a tiny silver flask with a cross and poured a clear, fizzing substance on the wound- holy hydrogen peroxide? “A vampire country club.”
“ Don’t think of your vestigial Western aristocracy,” Vladimir said, pulling out a compact first aid kit. “Gentry is an old word, and the organization it represents is older still-”
“Enough history,” the lich interrupted. “I have kept my part of the bargain. A life for a life, Dakota Frost. Now… I count four more. What do you have to offer me in return?”
“What do I have to offer?” I asked helplessly, as Vladimir bound the wound on my wrist. “I don’t even know what you want.”
“Scara was right,” the lich said. “We did not bring you here just as the Envoy of a House we do not respect. And, as it turns out, neither did we capture Darkrose just to get to Saffron. You are a slippery woman, Dakota Frost. We captured Saffron to get to you.”
“To me? ” I said. “What do you want with me?”
“ Some of us,” Iadimus said, appearing on the dais, carefully staying out of direct eyeshot of Vladimir, “are not fooled by your protests and denials. You have to know why you are here: to stop your assaults on vampires.”
It took me a moment to get it.
“Do what? ” I said. “You think I’m behind the attacks?”
“The police certainly do,” Iadimus said. “According to the Lady Scara’s sources, the district attorney suspected you from the start.”
“The district attorney is not the police,” I said, “and if she suspected me, it’s only because I was a magician at the scene of a magical crime-”
“With a history of killing by magic,” Iadimus replied.
“The police called me to that crime scene,” I said, inwardly cursing. McGough had been right from the start. I should never have been there. “They knew my history-”
Iadimus’s eyes tightened. “Perhaps they wanted to see what you would do.”
“Hang on, you’re saying the police, my uncle, invited me to the scene of an assault hoping I’d turn it into a murder, and didn’t arrest me on the spot when it did?” I said. “I don’t think you know how human police work-or my uncle, for that matter.”
“Perhaps your relative didn’t want to see you for what you were,” Iadimus said, pointing at Demophage’s coffin. “After he let you walk, you annihilated the Oakdale Clan.”
“Oh, you didn’t just accuse me of killing my own lover,” I said acidly.
“Bah,” Iadimus said. Yes, he actually said bah, and it was all I could do not to follow with humbug. “You are a magician, with knowledge, skill and animosity towards vampires. Before you eluded the police, they confirmed your presence at several of the attacks.”
“Because I was investigating them!”
“So the Lady Saffron claimed, but the Lady Scara’s sources say otherwise,” Iadimus said, holding up my Moleskine. “And you have detailed notes going back to the very first kills.”
“Of course, moron, ” I snapped, “because Saffron assigned me that task weeks ago!”
“ Her story,” Iadimus snapped back. “Perhaps she is shielding you out of misplaced loyalty, or well-placed loyalty if she is using you to eliminate her competition.”
“ Some Edgeworlder had to investigate, because the police clearly don’t trust us-”
“Don’t trust her,” Iadimus said. “After the Lady Saffron’s spectacular lack of success dealing with assaults on the Gentry, the Lady Scara warned her contacts in the police the Lady Saffron might be attempting a coup, using you as her instrument.”
“Gee, thanks, ” I said. “Now I know why I had to sleep under a bridge-”
“We warned the police, and the Lady Saffron publically disowned you within the hour,” Iadimus said. “Yet she was seen working with you closely mere minutes later, when the safety of someone still under her protection was at stake-a crime for which we could have charged her.”
I scowled at him. This was a conspiracy theory, deep rooted. It would not be easy to win them over. Heck, I was starting to question Saffron, and I knew I wasn’t her hired killer.
“There was a brief lull when the police managed to bring you in on a pretext,” Iadimus continued. “But you eluded them, and since then, seven more vampires have been killed.”
“ Jesus, ” I said, making Iadimus flinch. “That makes the combined toll, what, fifteen?”
“Sixteen vampires,” he said, eyes narrowed to blazing chips of ice. “But not just vampires. Sixty-four of our human prey- your kind-have died, and four werekin-”
“ Fah, ” Cinnamon said, flinching first at the death count-then at Iadimus’s glare.
“ Not my fault,” I snapped, trying to refocus the conversation back on me. “Even when I was in hiding I was working to stop-”
