However, the air was redolent with meat and spices. Food! Beast thought. "Later," I murmured, as if to myself. Bruiser looked my way, but I pretended not to notice. The table was laden with food for humans, and humans were gathered along it, spearing smoked salmon, ribs, something that looked like lollipops but smelled like lamb, kabobs, shrimp, fried seafood in bite-sized pieces, and boudin, a Louisiana favorite, onto plates. There were veggies and a multitude of breads and cheeses too, not that I cared.
To the left was a place set up like a parlor, with couches, chairs, tables, and a fireplace scaled to fit the warehouse, burning huge logs that looked custom cut. Bruiser led me left, to pause partially behind one of the round pillars. The seating area was decorated with French and Spanish antiques, lots of burled wood on cases holding paintings and priceless objets d'art. The upholstered furniture had sweeping lines, tufts, tassels, skirts, and gewgaws--art deco and art nouveau maybe, fancy, like something that might be seen in an old black-and-white movie. Yet everything was dwarfed by the scale of the room.
Midway to the back half of the warehouse was another area, marked off by rugs tossed on the slate floor, and here vamps and humans sat on large pillows, talking and smoking, bohemian-style. The scents were overpowering here too, pepper, parchment, fresh mint and camphor, dried herbs, subtle perfumes, and a hint of mold, though that might have been from the old building. Underlying the vamp smell were traces of fresh blood from recent feedings. Beast didn't like that stench, and hissed deep in my mind.
There were eight clan blood-families in New Orleans and it was dizzyingly difficult to keep their political and social divisions straight, but it was something I needed to know as rogue-vamp hunter in their territory. Pellissier, Laurent, Bouvier, and St. Martin were in one political alliance, with Mearkanis, Arceneau, Rousseau, and Desmarais in the other. The clan homes of the latter four blood-masters were in the Garden District, and once upon a time, they had all been thick as thieves. But from the social groupings tonight, it was clear that the alliances were changing, the vamps gathering in odd clusters. All was not right in the world of the blood-sucking predators.
I spotted Rafael Torrez, the small, black-eyed scion and master of Clan Mearkanis, and self-proclaimed enemy of Leo, in intense conversation with two unknown vamps--an overdressed guy in a red costume and a vamp with a scarred face, the wound recent and still healing.
I heard the word "Leo" from the little group across the room. And "clan," and "true-death." From the way his body tensed, Bruiser heard too. I asked, "What do they get if Leo suddenly dies or is defeated in war?"
"I'm not sure." His eyes crinkled at the corners as he scanned the room. "If Leo names a new heir and solidifies his political base, then at his true-death his power would move to his successor, who would become master of the city. Of course, the new master would then have to hold it by his own wits and might. But if Leo holds off naming an heir, if something shifts in the political alignment, if we go to war and vampires start dying, it all becomes . . . difficult."
I had a feeling that "difficult" was an understatement. I tugged him away, to the table with human food, as in food for humans, not a table full of humans to feed vamps. Having vamps around tended to make such distinctions tricky. The sexual tension between Bruiser and me and the atmosphere in the room had left me starved. "I need to eat and then mingle," I said, "to see if any of them smell like the young-rogue maker--wear that perfume I noticed," I amended. I'd never been good keeping lies straight.
I handed Bruiser a crystal plate and filled mine with smoked pink salmon. Beast panted within me. Better raw, she said, and sent me a vision of a mountain lion's claws grabbing a dappled trout from a stream. I hadn't known Beast fished, but it did seem like something all cats liked, whether a tabby from an aquarium in a New York City apartment or a mountain lion from a cold mountain stream.
Bruiser looked at the heap of salmon on my plate and tilted his head in surprise, amusement, and vague condescension. The expression was uncannily like Leo's, and I wondered how many decades one had to live with a vamp to pick up his mannerisms. It could be seriously disturbing. "I like fish," I said, defensive. "And I'm hungry."
"Of course," he murmured. He handed me a square of folded linen and two pieces of gold-plated utensils and said, "Fish service."