“Hardly.” Mircea’s voice went cold. “If anything, it was the opposite.”
“Explain.”
I jumped slightly and whirled around, having turned toward Mircea during the conversation and away from the nonexistent door. Which was how the consul had come in without my noticing. Not that that was unusual; she was a vampire, after all, and could move with the same silence that they all did. But the two senators hadn’t noticed her, either, judging by their slightly appalled expressions.
Or maybe that was down to the outfit.
I’d been admiring clothes all day, because the senate always put on a show, especially when they had guests. But this was next-level, even for her. Because she wasn’t just wearing snakes, as I’d originally thought.
She was wearing cobras.
I stumbled back a few paces to get away from the three curious, flat-headed horrors who had just detached from the living sheath covering her from breast to groin and flicked their tongues out at me. Others twined around her arms like living bracelets and climbed up her legs like the straps on gladiator sandals, only she wasn’t wearing any. She’d finished the ensemble off with black snakeskin pumps so high that I didn’t know how she walked in them and black pearls so lustrous and scattered so thickly through her long, dark hair, that I couldn’t tell what was a jewel and what was the gleaming black eyes on another of her creatures.
Taken all together, the ensemble was stunning and eye-catching and horrifying and weirdly beautiful, just like its owner. Especially now, with her color high and her dark eyes flashing. It didn’t look like she’d been warned about Mircea’s little show, either.
“Of course,” he said smoothly. “But perhaps Cassie should—”
“Stay,” the consul snapped. “You used her as a strong-arm tactic; she has the right to know why.”
“I did not,” Mircea said stiffly. “I didn’t know she planned to be here.”
“Then you took advantage of the opportunity. Or perhaps this was your idea?”
And, suddenly, those flashing eyes were on me.
“What? I—no,” I said, stumbling back a bit when one of the damned snakes lunged at me. I didn’t know if they responded to their mistress’s temper, but it kind of looked like it, with more and more of them peeling off to stretch deadly, snub-nosed heads in my direction.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I’m supposed to be here! I’m Pythia—”
“Lady Phemonoe did not attend our meetings,” she pointed out.
“Well, did you invite her? Because mine got lost in the mail!” I said, trying to recover. “And anyway, we weren’t at war then! And this new senate of yours has every other damned head of—of anything—on it, and it didn’t even exist in her time!”
I was practically babbling, but damn, it was hard to think with those things reaching, reaching, reaching—
“Shit!” I said, and shifted the closest fanged horror with no destination in mind, just “away.” Which I guess my power interpreted as the other side of the senate chamber, because a tray suddenly clattered to the floor and somebody screamed. Although maybe that was down to something else.
Around here, who the hell knew?
“If your invitation was lost, as you say, then why are you here?” the consul persisted.
“I came to see Mircea!”
“About?”
I really considered telling her to go to hell. Or perhaps sending her there. And for some reason, even the thought made me feel better, because I could do it. I wouldn’t—I wasn’t that stupid—because no way would the fallout be worth it.
Besides, she’d probably enjoy it.
I turned to Mircea, since he was the one I’d come to see. “You need to stop poaching my guys,” I told him. “It’s becoming a problem.”
“Poaching?” He actually looked confused. I guess Batman hadn’t had a chance to warn him.
“You keep taking my guys,” I clarified. “The masters you sent me? My bodyguards?”
Mircea finally looked like he’d caught a clue. “Yes, there has been some necessary reshuffling—”