“What do you do with it?” Kristin asked. Declan smiled a grim little grin.
“You’ll see tonight,” I told her.
It was well after the dinner hour when we all gathered on the roof, and I mean pretty much all of us. Chris and Tanya with the twins, ‘Sos, Nika, Arkady, Deckert, Lydia—who was sitting thigh to thigh with Bruce—Holly, Kristin, Chet Atkins, three of the security guys, Doctor Singh—who had insisted on a glancing exam of my non-existent gunshot wound—myself, and, surprise, surprise, Elder Senka. Mack and Jetta were there, of course, having taken a summer job helping with our training facility. Even Katrina, Tanya’s college co-ed-looking fixer with the heart of a sociopath, was there. And, of course, my witch, who was the main entertainment.
Tanya had ordered weatherproof furniture set up in the center of the rooftop, and because regular humans were part of the group, she’d had a railing installed. And she was Tatiana Demidova, so the end result looked like one of those super-expensive outdoor kitchen and living areas that are all the rage with McMansions everywhere—but this one was on steroids. There was comfortable seating for probably thirty people, most of which also rotated back like a zero-gravity lounge chair, leaving the occupants staring up at the night sky over New York. There were also three gargantuan, all-weather flatscreens that had to go over eighty or ninety inches; hell, maybe over a hundred. Each screen folded flat, screen down, on the roof when not in use, but lifted on a telescoping arm so that we could still see them when lying on our backs and facing up. Omega would project the target orbits, live views from spaceborne drones, and any other information germane to the target practice. There had been considerable speculation about watching football in the fall, at least among those so inclined.
And there was food—lots and lots of food. Chef Remy always pushed his kitchen staff hard to provide the best finger foods possible, from mounds of shrimp cocktail and raw oysters to slider sandwiches of all flavors and fillings, and popcorn… bacon-flavored popcorn. With multiple weres, Chris himself, and of course, Awasos, nothing went to waste.
Claiming seats had become a competition early on, which was kind of funny because there weren’t any bad ones. Just what you get when you put so many competitive people in one place.
Declan ignored it all, sitting cross-legged on a twelve-by-twelve-foot white board where he could draw out his spell structures, runes, and target data with dry erase markers. He was already there when I escorted my youngest wolf to the rooftop.
Kristin instantly went super quiet at the sight of Chris and Tanya, and she was completely unprepared when Elder Senka seemed to appear out of nowhere, right in front of us.
“Stacia, dear, who is your young guest?” she asked in her flawless Oxford accent.
“Elder Senka, this is Kristin Vilhelmsdottir. She was bitten on a visit to Iceland and Changed when she got back to her family’s current home in Portland, Maine. Caeco and the Suttons found her. She’s thinking of attending Arcane this fall.”
Senka immediately spoke to her in another language—Icelandic, I surmised. Surprised, Kristin answered readily in the same tongue, earning her a nod from the old vampire who looked and dressed like an upper-middle-class soccer mom. Then the vampire, who was likely, as far as we now knew, the oldest on the planet, turned back to me. “How is he progressing?”
“Scary fast or reassuringly quick, depending upon your point of view,” I said. “He and Omega have been cooking up some new technology that is supposed to help him. We’ll see how it goes tonight.”
Her pale face lit up with a pleased smile, her delight both sincere and infectious. Chris had once told me that one of her vampire-enhanced gifts, the things that humans carry with them over into vampirism, was an ability to affect people around her, at least their emotions and maybe some of their perceptions. So a happy Senka made for happy Coven members and a happy party.
Nika, who had already been introduced to Kristin, appeared and sought a moment of the Elder’s time. We slipped away and headed for the food.
“This is unreal,” Kristin said as she filled a plate with stuffed mushrooms, lobster sliders, and seared curried scallops. “Do you guys always eat like this?”
“Here at the Tower, pretty much yes. Out in the real world, we have to fend for ourselves, but we do pretty well. Tanya’s chef, Remy, is very old and extremely skilled.”
She groaned her agreement around a mouthful of lobster and fresh-baked roll. “This is better than I get in Maine.”
“Which is where the lobsters originated. They’re flown in every couple of days.”
“My family is pretty well-to-do, both in Maine and back in Iceland. My father has an amazing job that pays very, very well. But this level of wealth… it’s crazy. And she’s so young!”
The she in question was bouncing Cora on her hip as she talked with Chet Atkins.
“She is a business prodigy who came to the party pretty well loaded from Coven assets given to her at birth. Vampires are the poster children for compound interest,” I said.
“And you and Declan work for her?”
“Sort of. We both receive a partial salary for stuff we do. Declan maintains all the wards on Demidova property, and I’ve been the model in much of their advertising. We both are members of the team, but that’s not something we need to get paid for. But when you have Omega for an investment manager, your performance numbers are massive, so we’ve got our own money. Come on; let’s get seats. I think the show’s about to start.”
That was more of a feeling I was getting from my mate than any visible sign.
