Anna laughed. “Cordelia, you are a breath of fresh air,” she said, as a woman with dark hair bore down on them, carrying a silver salver. Her black hair was wrapped around an ivory comb hung about with silk peonies, and her embroidered gown was deep crimson. Glittering on the salver were crystal glasses filled with sparkling liquid.

“Champagne?” she said, and as she smiled, the glimmer of fang teeth appeared against her lower lip. A vampire.

“Thank you, Lily,” said Anna, taking a glass. Matthew did the same, and after a moment’s hesitation, Cordelia followed. She had never had champagne, nor anything like it—according to her mother, ladies drank only sweet liquors like sherry and ratafia.

Matthew downed his champagne in one swallow, placed the empty glass back on Lily’s tray, and took another. Cordelia lifted her glass as a dapper warlock with a ring of quills around his neck passed by arm in arm with a blond vampire in a garnet-red frock. She was lovely, and pale as new snow: Cordelia thought of the mundane women who paid to have their faces enameled white to preserve their youth and keep their fashionable pallor.

They ought to just become vampires, she thought. It would be less expensive.

“What’s that little smile of yours?” Matthew inquired. “You look as if you’re about to laugh.”

Cordelia took a sip of champagne—it tasted like airy bubbles—and regarded him archly. “What of it?”

“Most girls would be afraid,” he said. “I mean, not Anna. Or Lucie. But most.”

“I don’t frighten easily,” said Cordelia.

“I’m beginning to sense that.” He glanced over at Anna and Lily: the vampire girl was laughing, her head close to Anna’s. “Anna can seduce anyone,” Matthew said to Cordelia, in a low voice. “Anyone at all. It’s her talent.”

“Not my only talent, I hope,” said Anna, looking up as Malcolm Fade reappeared. He gestured to Lily with a dismissive wave; Lily flounced off in a swirl of silk.

“Hypatia wishes to see you, Anna,” said Malcolm. “She has a friend visiting from out of town who has requested to meet you.”

Anna gave a curling smile. “And this friend is visiting from where?”

“The seaside,” said Malcolm. “Do come, you know how Hypatia gets.”

Anna dropped a wink to Cordelia and Matthew and turned to follow Malcolm down a passageway papered with damask wallpaper. They were quickly out of view.

“She’s so beautiful,” said Cordelia. “Anna, I mean.”

“Anna has a quality.” Matthew raised a thoughtful eyebrow. “The French would call it jolie laide.”

Cordelia knew French well enough to frown. “Pretty-ugly? She’s not ugly!”

“It doesn’t mean that,” Matthew said. “It means unusually pretty. Oddly beautiful. It denotes having a face with character.” His gaze traveled from the top of her hair to the tips of her shoes. “Like you have.”