“Thanks for the invitation.” I glanced around nervously, but Alette was alone. No Leo. I relaxed a notch. “Not that you gave me much of a choice, with Bradley keeping tabs on me all day.”
She ignored the dig and indicated the chair with a graceful turn of her hand. “Please, sit.”
The table only had the one place setting. By her chair, the polished mahogany surface was empty.
I should have been relieved.
She said, “I took the liberty of asking the cook to prepare your filet rare. I assume this is acceptable.”
There was a time I didn’t much like steak, and I preferred any meat I ate ground up and well burned on a grill. The Wolf, however, liked meat to bleed. So I ate rare steaks.
“Yeah, thanks.” I gestured at the empty place on the table in front of her. “So, what are you . . .”
“I’ve already dined this evening.”
This was going to be awkward. When one of her staff brought out a plate with the steak and tastefully arranged vegetables and set it in front of me, I half expected she’d also bring out a goblet full of thick red stuff and give it to Alette. Though it was probably just as well she wasn’t going to be . . . dining . . . in front of me.
I managed to overcome a lifetime of socialization about eating in front of people who weren’t and started in on the meal, which was perfect, of course. Warm, bleeding, tender, tangy. Small bites with fork and knife; not messily devoured. The Wolf and I compromised on these points.
“Tell me how the hearings went today.”
I was supposed to be her spy, then? “I think C-SPAN was broadcasting. At least they had cameras there. You could have watched it for yourself.”
She narrowed her gaze. “I was indisposed.”
I shrugged, nonplussed. “You could tape it. Heck, you could probably download it off the Web.” I didn’t know if the old vampires even used the Internet. She probably let her minions do that.
Resting her elegant chin on her hands, she said, “I want to hear what you think.”
Did she really want to know what I thought, or was she testing my bias?
“Flemming testified today. He’s the head of the Center, and the committee has put him in the position of having to defend his project, his baby. In that respect, this could be any government research project being put under the microscope. But then there’s Duke. He wants to turn it into a witch hunt. Since this is a PC world, he can’t get Flemming to make a judgment call like ‘vampires are evil’ or ‘werewolves are hellspawn.’ Flemming’s being very clinical about the whole thing, and I think it’s pissing Duke off. I’m wondering if this isn’t all his idea in the first place. He’s always been on the fringe. He may see these hearings as a way to gain validation for his ideas.”
“Senator Duke knows very little of the matters on which he speaks so fanatically.”
“Yeah, but he’s a fanatic with political clout. That makes him scary.”
“The werewolf, afraid of the politician?”
I smirked. “As werewolves go, I’m a total coward. Give me a good alpha to hide behind any day.”
“You just haven’t found a good one, is that it?”
It was kind of like finding a good boyfriend. You kept hoping the perfect one existed, but the trial and error in the meantime could be gut-wrenching. “You’re very nosy.”
“It’s how I learn. You have some experience with that yourself, I believe.”
“Can’t argue.”
“What have they scheduled for tomorrow?”
“More grilling of Flemming, I think. If it’s anything like today they’ll end up going around in circles. This is an oversight hearing, so they could go for days, until they’ve heard everything they want to. They haven’t even announced the whole schedule of witnesses yet. It’s like the whole thing was thrown together.”
“When do you testify?”
“I don’t know.”
“Duke will postpone your testimony until next Monday, if he can.”