“Do as you like, magpie,” said Anna, “you’ve stolen half my best lines already.” Her gaze flicked about the room. “Did you see Matthew with Kellington? I hope that doesn’t start up again.”

“What happened with Kellington?” Lucie inquired.

“He rather broke Matthew’s heart, a year or so back,” said Anna. “Matthew has a habit of getting his heart broken. He seems to prefer a hopeless love.”

“Does he?” Lucie was scribbling in her book again. “Oh, dear.”

“Greetings, lovely ladies,” said a tall young man with dead-white skin and curling brown hair, appearing at their table as if by magic. “Which of you dazzling beauties yearns to dance with me first?”

Lucie leaped up. “I shall dance with you,” she said. “You’re a vampire, aren’t you?”

“Er—yes?”

“Capital. We shall dance, and you will tell me all about vampirism. Do you stalk beautiful ladies through the streets of the city in the hopes of snatching a sip of their genteel blood? Do you weep because your soul is damned?”

The young man’s dark eyes darted around worriedly. “I really only wanted to waltz,” he said, but Lucie had already seized him and dragged him out onto the floor. Music rose up in a surge, and Cordelia clinked glasses with Anna, both of them laughing.

“Poor Edwin,” Anna said, looking out at the dancers. “He has a nervous disposition at the best of times. Now, Cordelia, pray tell me every detail of the wedding plans, and I will get us some fresh champagne.”

2 ALL THAT TURNS

If sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a gully, in the mournful solitude of your bed chamber, you wake up, the intoxication diminished or dispelled, ask the wind, a wave, a star, a bird, a clock, all that flees, all that moans, all that turns, all that sings, all that speaks, ask what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will answer you: “It is time to become intoxicated! To not be the martyred slave of Time, be intoxicated; be unceasingly intoxicated! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, as you wish.

—Charles Baudelaire, “Enivrez-vous”

“Look out behind you!” Christopher barked in alarm. James ducked hastily out of the way. Two werewolves flew past them, locked in drunken combat, and crashed to the floor. Thomas held his glass above his head to keep it safe from the jostling crowd.

James had not been sure that the Devil Tavern was the right place for this party, given that he was there several days a week anyway, but Matthew had been insistent, intimating that he’d arranged something special.

James glanced about at the chaos and sighed a quiet inner sigh. “I rather imagined a more sedate evening.”