I killed a yawn before it started. Most Masters of the Dead maintained a strict corporate uniform that would’ve made them at home in any high-pressure boardroom. Ryan sounded the part and looked the part as far as his dress was concerned. His navy suit was obviously custom tailored, his square chin clean shaven, and his cologne expensive. He also had a huge purple Mohawk. The Mohawk was currently lying down, draped over the left side of his skull, and he kept tossing his head back, because the hair kept getting into his eyes. The flip of the purple hair turned out to be strangely hypnotic and I had to force myself to listen to what he said instead of waiting for another head toss.

“It’s not that we object to the purchase of that particular building.” Flip. “It’s the principle . . .”

Bernard’s had put us into a private dining room with one long table. We sat on one side, the People sat on the other. To the right of me Jim surveyed the room, periodically glancing at the door. To the left of me Robert Lonesco played with his fork, his handsome face lost in thought. Ryan’s journeywoman, whose name was Meghan and who stood behind her boss’s chair, was discreetly checking him out. Robert turned heads. He had the kind of quiet beauty that with the right photographer and a big billboard would stop traffic. His skin was a light even bronze, his hair soft and so dark it was almost blue-black, and his eyes, serious and large, seemed bottomless.

To the right of Ryan, Ghastek watched Meghan’s pining with neutral curiosity. Thin to the point of being gaunt, he was somewhere on the crossroads of thirty and forty, his short brown hair still untouched by gray, and he wore “smart” like it was a perfume. Where Ryan Kelly looked like a businessman who somehow sprouted a Mohawk, Ghastek looked more like a scientist who accidentally found himself invited to a formal party where everyone was dumber than him and was now spinning his wheels, trying to make his brain acclimate.

Mulradin Grant himself was MIA, since it was Ghastek’s turn to participate in the Conclave, but his wife, Claire, was in attendance. She was in her late thirties, blond, well-groomed, with an average build and a toned figure. Her pantsuit looked expensive and her hair spoke of pampering and many salon visits.