“Very well.” Lady Eris raised her voice. Not much, but it held an unmistakable ring of command. “Let the ritual commence.”

She offered a series of invocations to the Goddess of Night in all her incarnations, of which there were many. I concentrated on taking mental notes for my database, counting the vampires in the crypt. Altogether, there were sixteen of them. Seventeen if I counted Bethany, which I wasn’t ready to do yet.

Other than Jen and me, there was only one other mortal present. I recognized him as the guy who’d played John the Baptist in the tableau vivant. He stood quiet and patient, gazing at Bethany with a look of glazed envy.

Bethany just continued to look dead.

I clutched Jen’s hand in my left, my right resting on dauda-dagr’s hilt, its coolness caressing my palm. The candles burned, wicks crackling faintly here and there. I was hyper-aware of my heart thudding steadily in my chest, the soft whoosh of air entering and exiting my lungs.

Lady Eris beckoned. One of the other female vampires brought forth a silver chalice and set it on the edge of the sarcophagus. Another inclined her head to Geoffrey the prat, proffering a little silver knife with a curved blade.

Ceremoniously, Geoffrey unbuttoned his brocade waistcoat and removed it, handing it to the nearby doorman, who folded it neatly over one arm. Then Bethany’s blood-bonded mate unbuttoned the ruffled cuff of his left shirtsleeve and rolled it up to expose a pale, muscular forearm before accepting the knife.

Making a fist of his left hand, he held it over the chalice. With the knife in his right hand, he slashed the length of his inner forearm.

The other vampires sighed in approval, making the candle flames flicker and sway, sending dancing shadows around the crypt.

Okay, so it turns out that vampires aren’t actually bloodless, which I guess I’d known on some level, since it’s their blood that turns mortals. Exactly how it could work without a beating heart to circulate it, I’d never understood. It’s just . . . it’s not human blood that runs in their veins. What pulsed out of the gash in Geoffrey’s arm was an opaque, pearlescent liquid that spidered over his skin and streamed into the chalice. The way it slithered and skittered reminded me of mercury from a high school science experiment.

I swallowed hard.

Jen squeezed my hand tighter.

The gash on Geoffrey’s arm was already knitting, fading to a faint silvery line. He shook a few errant drops into the chalice before bowing to Lady Eris and offering the knife to her.

She pricked her forefinger and extended it. One, two, three perfect shimmering globules formed at the tip of her finger, falling into the bowl of the vessel.

There was a moment of silence, broken only by the faint sound of the candles and three mortals breathing.