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“That’s—you—wait—” the carny said. And then he said something else, but I couldn’t hear him. Because an eardrum-rupturing horn had just gone off, and I thought it possible I’d never hear again.

It time, Olga mouthed, as the whole field suddenly jumped up and started for the house.

Chapter Three

“You’re upset,” Louis-Cesare said, from amid a forest of bear.

He was carrying all three, one affixed to his belt where his sword usually went when he was somewhere he could wear a sword. The other two were under his arms, with the huge violently pink bodies lolling like drunken children. I frowned at them.

“I’m not upset.”

“We won,” he pointed out. “Most people enjoy winning.”

“We didn’t win. You basically bought them.”

“That is what is troubling you?” He looked surprised. “We can go back after—”

“No. The man was a shyster. I don’t—Why were you carrying gold?”

“Gold?” He blinked at me.

“The coins? The ones you threw?”

I stopped, hands on hips, to stare at him, because if I’d just thrown a handful of gold at somebody, I’d damned well remember it. And then I almost got run over. Because the whole staircase leading up to the building was moving. Seriously, it was like an avalanche in reverse.

Louis-Cesare pulled me against his chest, inside the blindingly pink buffer zone. “For tips.”

“What?”

I thought I’d misheard, because my ears felt like they were under siege. The loudspeakers were screaming instructions, people were jostling and fighting, and a group of inebriated dwarves behind us were belting out what I guess was a fight song. They were not among the more musically gifted of fey, something they were making up for with enthusiasm.

“Tips!” Louis-Cesare shouted, and just made things worse. But then he rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign for stubborn wheel grease and light dawned.

And still made no damned sense.

“For who?” I shouted back.

“The court.”

“What?”

He bent his head down to mine. “The servants at court. Whenever they do anything for you, it’s considered customary to tip them.”

“With gold?”

“It’s better than favors,” he replied, with more cynicism than I’d have expected from him.

Louis-Cesare wasn’t just a vampire; he was a senator, and therefore one of the ruling elite of the vampire world. But while most of the people who reached those lofty heights were manipulative, sneaky, and deviously clever, Louis-Cesare had reached them because somebody else fit that description. Namely, Anthony, the charming rogue in charge of the European Senate. Who’d realized that having a champion with Louis-Cesare’s fighting ability meant that no one in their right mind was likely to challenge him—ever again. Giving Anthony all but absolute power.

Until recently, that is, when Louis-Cesare had gotten tired of playing bodyguard for an amiable tyrant and defected to the Senate’s North American counterpart, where his new role had yet to be determined.

But it wasn’t likely to be in central intelligence.

Not that he was a dumb jock, or dumb at all. But he was honorable—to a fault. And honest and decent and straightforward, none of which were traits that adapted well to the world of court intrigue. Not in Europe, where scheming Anthony ruled with an iron fist, and not at the court of courts that our own consul was putting together. Which, as luck would have it, had just become the focus of the entire vampire world.

The usually somewhat-turgid and uber-traditional vamp society had gotten a shake-up recently, when the long-running war in Faerie spilled over into Earth. And quickly became enough of a threat to cause the unthinkable: an alliance of the world’s six vampire senates for the first time ever, since for the first time ever they had a common enemy. Other than themselves, of course.

Nobody knew how this was going to work, or if it was, since the senates mostly hated one another. So, normally, I’d have been worried about Louis-Cesare in that unholy snake pit, which was now more like an unholy canyon filling up with opportunists from all over the world, eager to make whatever they could out of the war and the chaos it provided. Because they wouldn’t get another chance like this.


Tags: Karen Chance Dorina Basarab Vampires