But then again, I was part vampire, too, wasn’t I? A sixteenth, Christophe said. We were all sixteenths. Something about genetics.

God, Dad, why didn’t you tell me? But I could never ask him that even if he was still alive. A splinter of ice lodged itself in my throat. He’d never even said a single word about it. Nothing except

warning me about suckers, and I picked up most of that listening around the corners, listening to

other hunters. Like his friend Augustine, who’d turned out to be djamphir too, and part of the Order.

And who was missing as well. I was thinking an awful lot about Augie lately.

“We would be honored.” Arab Boy bowed again, a little less stiffly. “I’m Bruce. Provisional head of

the Council.”

Bruce? No way. The mad urge to giggle rose up in my throat, met the rock sitting there, and died

with a burning, acid like reflux. “Provisional?” It slipped out.

“Provisional, you see, when our head, the Lady Anna, is not with us.” He straightened, and the rest

of them relaxed a little.

Well. That’s good to know. Come to think of it, Anna certainly did have the Head-Bitch-in-Charge

vibe.

I didn’t let go of the switchblade.

“And especially since,” the redhead piped up, “the Lady Anna has been on vacation for two weeks.”

The other room opening off the windowless sort-of-study was a long one, with a mirror-polished table down the middle that would have looked right at home in Camelot, except it was a rectangle.

Another table—no more than a shelf—ran along the left-hand side, full of steam dishes exhaling the

smell of food. A silver urn and another massive silver thing sat at the end, and three wine bottles

stood at attention, one in a silver container of crushed ice. The second massive silver thing on the

table was a samovar, I was sure of it.

I wouldn’t even know what a samovar was, except for once Dad and I had come across this coven

of Russian witches in Louisiana. No, really. They ran a patisserie in New Orleans. With a sideline in

hexes, cures, potions, and fortune-telling with weird greasy playing cards decorated in gold leaf.

They’d wanted me to stay with them. To learn, they said. But Dad just shook his head, and I held

onto his arm the entire time we were in there. I didn’t take the petits fours they kept offering me.

Gran had taught me all about food being a trap sometimes.

It’s woman’s power, food is. You be sure you know where’n the hook is before swallerin’ it, Dru.

You mind me, now.

You’d think I’d get used to hearing dead people’s voices in my head. Memory is like that sometimes

—it takes you by surprise, leaps on you with a roach spirit’s scuttling speed, and then you’re left