That set her back a step. “Me? You won’t be leading it?”

“No,” I said. “I have another duty to perform. A more difficult one.”

She understood, then, or thought she did, and bent her head to me, just a little. “You have my respect, Oliver. And my sympathy. It is a terrible thing to do.”

At that point Theo stepped out of the shadows near the door. “You seemed ready enough,” he observed. When she sent him a murdering look, he shrugged. “I told you I don’t play politics. I don’t. But you, my dear, stabbed me in the back. Quite literally.”

“I wanted to spare my sister the agony to come,” she said. “As you do now, Oliver. I think we understand each other well enough. Whatever this heretic liar has said …”

“We are all heretics together, now,” I said. “Theo’s beliefs are between him and God above.”

She laughed at that and crossed her arms. “Quite a change from you, the warrior of God.”

She was right. I had changed. Vampirism does that—carves away all the arrogance of your place in the world and forces you to accept new, starker realities. It builds a far different kind of arrogance, which both Naomi and I had in full, violent, dark portions.

“I task you with the attack, Naomi, but be certain you understand: you are not Amelie, nor will you ever be Amelie. You will not rule Morganville, now or ever, while I survive. I am her successor. Not you. We can dance around it until you try to stick your stake into my back, but I can promise you, I won’t be as forgiving or as just as Dr. Goldman. Are we clearly understood?”

That earned me a full, cool stare. Full of steel, this one, underneath all the fine manners and kind graces. I wondered if the humans who liked her really understood her depths. Likely not. Amelie had been the same, capable of things no one would have ever guessed, and she had possessed more of a human conscience than Naomi ever had. There were many bodies in this one’s past, and that was well before she’d taken the path of immortality.

Politics was a game of murder, and always had been.

That was why she believed me now. And why she bent her head, very slightly this time, to acknowledge my sovereignty. For now. She knew it was not the time to challenge me.

But the time would never come. Not for her.

I accompanied her out into the area where the vampires were gathering. Eve and Michael were there, parsing out bags from the ridiculous barrel that—so Myrnin said—held the final victory of the vampire nation; I supposed I should not feel so disappointed that the fight would not be won with steel and silver, but with something so … humanly mundane. It was not my affair any longer. Naomi quickly took charge, once I showed the flag and acknowledged that I made her commander; she tried to appropriate Michael and shut out Eve, a tactic I knew to be doomed from the start. I didn’t bother to enlighten her.