“At least give me a moment to explain before you attack!” Evelyn said. To me, I guessed, judging by the fact that she was looking this way.
I glanced around and saw that there were a few vamps behind me, backing me up. Only one of them was Roy, who was casually sucking on a latte; one was Emilio, who was blinking sleep out of his eyes and had the terminal case of bedhead that only us curly-haired types really understand; and the last was Marco. And, okay, Marco had those massive arms crossed over the equally massive chest and was looking fairly fierce, but he in no way appeared to be in attack mode.
I looked back at Evelyn and swallowed pancake. “What?”
She stared at me for a moment, and finally seemed to take in the rumpled bathrobe, the messy curls, and the naked toes. And the syrupy snack that I was still working on, because I hadn’t brought enough napkins. I inhaled a bit more while she made a mental adjustment.
“Did we get you out of bed?” she finally asked.
“Out of the kitchen. I was eating breakfast.” I looked around at everybody, a number of whom were staring at my food. “You want some?”
The witches glanced at each other.
“I could eat,” one of them offered.
And so we all went back to the kitchen.
The war mages followed and clustered near the door, muttering among themselves. But the witches went right on up to Raphael and peered curiously into his pan. And then stared in wonder as he began crafting them perfectly rendered pancake portraits of themselves, using three pans and vampire speed to expedite the process.
“You missed your calling,” I told him softly, putting a hand on his shoulder so I could whisper in his ear. “You should have been a chef.”
He laughed. “Perhaps I will take up a new profession. After so long, it may be time.”
“Lady Cassandra?” one of the mages said, and I looked up.
“You want some breakfast?” I asked.
The man—an older, gray-haired mage with skin like burnished bronze—scowled at me. I didn’t take offense; they always looked like that. “No. We want to talk to you.”
“As do we!” Evelyn said, bouncing up from a stool with jam on her chin. She gestured at the witches clustered around Rafe, some of whom were suspiciously young-looking and appeared as wide-eyed and charmed as the initiates.
“I’ll be back,” I promised, eyeing up the girls. “Finish your meal.”
She looked like she wanted to argue, because Evelyn always wanted to argue, but Zara put a hand on her arm and pulled her back down. The impressive-looking woman I’d first met at the train station, and who had afterward been part of the attack at the consul’s, was standing behind them, looking awkward and out of place. I’d noticed her outside—she was hard to miss—but she didn’t seem remotely menacing at the moment. Or all that impressive. More small and chagrined and deflated, with even the electric mass of her hair hanging dispiritedly around her face.
She also wasn’t eating, which was a shame, considering that you didn’t get a meal like this every day.
She saw me looking at her, and her face fell some more. “I—I wanted to apologize—” she began.
“Eat first, apologize after,” I told her, and looked at Tami, who had just come back in with more stools, borrowed from the bar, by the look of them.
“Juice or coffee?” Tami asked, shoving one of the stools behind the impressive woman’s knees.
“Uh. What . . . what kind of juice?”
Which was a mistake, because we only had about fifty. Good; that ought to hold her for a while, I thought. Tami started rattling them off, while I stepped outside with the mages.
“Cassie!” Marco called from the living room, before they could get a word in.
“Sorry,” I told them, and hurried across the lounge, stuffing down the rest of my breakfast.
“Is it always like this around here?” I heard one of the mages ask.
“No, you caught us before the daily crazy starts,” I said, and then wondered if I’d lied. Because Rico was striding across the living room, which wasn’t a surprise. And had Rhea thrown over one well-muscled shoulder, which was. Especially considering some of the things that were coming out of her mouth.
One of the war mages reacted, but I put an arm in front of him. “You draw weapons in my house, you never see the inside of it again,” I warned.
“But that’s the Lord Protector’s daughter!”