I started to retort, but I could see his half smile was strained and his eyes downcast. I decided to let him have the last word for once and simply gave him a goodbye salute before jogging out to the waiting car.

“They’re meeting here?” I asked with disdain.

When Lina had told us the location was a theater, I’d pictured a grand space and a dramatically lit stage. Instead, we were standing in the basement of the building, surrounded by mildewing concrete walls with the steady, echoing drip drip of water.

Reg was at my elbow, wearing a similar sneer of disapproval. “It’s not at all befitting of the governing body of the most advanced species on the planet, is it?”

“The Elder Seat never meets in the same place twice,” Lina said.

She guided us to a door at the far end of the basement. “After a few millennia, that gets pretty difficult.”

She threw the door open without waiting for a response and ushered us into a very different environment.

It was still the basement, but the concrete was bathed in the glow of a hundred candles, perched on pipes and tucked into wall nooks, filling every available space. Either this place had no power, or someone went to a lot of trouble to set a mood. The drip drip was still audible, but it seemed in harmony with the soft hum of voices on this side of the door. The murmuring only grew when Lina stepped into the room, and one by one, the Elders backed away to clear a space for the Ancient in their midst.

My chest puffed up a little. They thought they’d had us beat, forcing all the clans to turn us away, but they hadn’t counted on us playing this card.

As the crowd parted for Lina, it became clear that there was a hierarchy in the room. A few dozen Elders lined the space, a representative for every house in every clan. They milled around on foot, while five stood together on a small platform at one end of the room, slightly elevated above the rest. I recognized Elder Adante among them and felt a small current of shock to realize he was among the council’s highest-ranking members.

“Adelina,” Elder Adante’s voice floated out over the room. “Always a pleasure to be in your presence. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our honored guest, Adelina la Prima.”

The whispers in the room rose to applause, and Lina nodded politely in response.

Adante’s gaze slid from Lina to me and Reg, hovering by the door. “And, of course, our human guests.”