I stopped dead at the top of the foyer steps, and so did the men. Wrassler wore worry on his big, flat-featured face. Bruiser was watching me work it through. “Leo said he’d be getting a communiqué from the EC,” I said. “Not a phone call or a chat, but something that might be considered an order or a plan of action. The vamps from the council are coming? Sometime soon? Not their human lackeys?”
“That’s what I hear,” Wrassler said. “If the gossips are right, it’ll be the first time the top European Mithrans left the continent since the eighteen hundreds, and the visit could be, maybe, in as little as six months.”
Six months seemed like a long time away, but to a long-lived vamp that was an eyeblink of time. I guessed the vamps had a lot to plan. The European Council probably traveled with their entire households, steamer trunks full of clothes, dozens of servants, a lawyer or two, interpreters, cooks for the humans, maybe provisions of food that their blood-servants couldn’t get here. . . traveling like visiting heads of state. If visiting vamps was the kind of rumors Leo had been talking about, then no wonder he was worried. I would have to readdress every bit of security, both physical and protocols, for that kind of gig, which was why Leo wanted me as acting Enforcer. I was more up-to-date on current security hardware than Bruiser, his real Enforcer. I started down the stairs again, Wrassler beside me, Bruiser following. And this time I could feel his eyes on my backside and legs. Bruiser was a leg man. I felt warmth rise in me, settling deep inside.
“In addition to the announcement,” Bruiser said, “we’ll have visitors for the gather, and an introduction of the new Mithrans.”
Wrassler looked disgruntled at that and rubbed his scalp again, a gesture that meant he was disturbed. “Yeah. I got details.” He pointed to the waiting room cum holding cell just off the foyer. I went with him. Bruiser closed the door after me, leaving himself on the outside without a word. I figured he would catch up with me later. Wrassler opened the small fridge and handed me a Coke. I popped the top and took a swig.
“Two months ago, Leo sent Grégoire to Atlanta, to reorganize De Allyon’s clans, to bring to the light the Naturaleza who refused to accept Fame Vexatum.”
I knew Grégoire, Leo’s secondo heir, had been sent to clean up the mess there, but I’d assumed he was back by now. And “bring to the light” was formal vamp-speak for killing a misbehaving vampire true-dead. Fame Vexatum was the way vamps lived in the modern world. They pretty much starved, but the starvation allowed them stronger mental gifts of compulsion and more mental control than other vamps, Naturaleza vamps, had.
“It’s a real mess,” he continued, opening a can of Red Bull. “De Allyon had a human breeding and slave program on a farm in the hills near Chattanooga.” Whatever he saw on my face made him chuckle dryly. “Yeah. Federal cops are involved, and PsyLED, and because of all the hoopla, Leo has instituted the hostage chapter of the Vampira Carta with Lincoln Shaddock.”
“Hostage?”
“Yeah. When Leo put Shaddock on notice for a decade of reorganization before he could apply for Master of the City status again, he set up an exchange provision.”
I thought back to the night, months ago, of the gather, the ceremony where the chief fanghead of Clan Shaddock heard the result of his request for an upgrade in status. I remembered something Leo had said during the ceremonies. I quoted, as nearly as I was able, “For a certain amount of time there was to be the ‘customary and agreed-upon exchange of blood-servants and scions.’”
He pointed a finger of approval at me. “That. A couple of our vamps and blood-servants are in Asheville, dealing with organizational stuff, so we get a new human and a vamp in exchange.” Wrassler drank down his Red Bull in three swallows and crushed the can. He tossed it into the recycle bin, where it clanged around with the rest of the aluminum. “Quarters are tight here as it is, until Leo moves into his new clan home, and no one’s happy about the new people. We had to clear out two bedrooms with four beds each already, four more for the gather, and the rest of us are bunking in together.”
I sipped to hide my smile. “Sounds cozy.”
“Not. Anyway, none of this household stuff is your job, since you already updated the hardware, but the gather will be.”
“I’m supposed to be here before dusk to go over security for the ceremony.”
“Come hungry. Stephen is making his signature chili, so hot it’ll melt your eyeballs and fry your brain.”
I finished my Coke and tossed the can. “Somehow that sounds more dangerous than delicious, but I’ll be here.”
“You only live once. Unless you’re a vamp or a cat.”
I chuckled at the joke, ignoring his speculative expression. Yeah, I got killed, turned into a big-cat, and came back to life in the back of Leo’s car. Not going there. And didn’t say it aloud. “See you tonight,” I said, and made my exit from vamp central.
CHAPTER 5
Molly’s Dead Body