• • •
I distributed the room keys and badges to Seri and her entourage and saw them to their rooms. We passed a half dozen guards on the way, which made me relax a little more.
They’d given me a suite with an amazing view of Grant Park and Lake Michigan. It was styled much like the lobby, but with Chicago flair. Expensive fabrics in pale gold and deep turquoise were paired with large, stark photographs of Chicago architecture: the nautilus staircase in the Rookery Building, the stair-step silhouette of Willis Tower, the lions in front of the Art Institute.
My suitcase was waiting and already propped on a stand. I stuffed clothes into drawers and toiletries into the bath, then hung up the fancier things I didn’t want to have to iron over the next few nights.
I’d traveled in jeans and layers for the inevitable chill on the plane. The reception was semiformal, but still work. And it would require something more dramatic.
I’d learned early how clothes helped make the vampire, and that had only been reinforced in Paris. I’d brought a black cocktail dress—a simple column with a hem that ended just above the knees and long, fluid sleeves—and I paired it with black stilettos. Not practical for fighting, assuming that would happen at a supernatural reception, but they were kicked off easily enough.
I left my hair down, gave myself a quick makeup check, and added blush to cheeks made extra pale by travel, and mascara to green eyes that needed a pick-me-up.
After the party, I’d come back to the room, rehydrate, and try to squeeze in a few yoga poses. I’d started doing yoga as a teenager, because the stretches made painful vampiric growth spurts a little easier to bear, and I’d kept up the practice. I liked being flexible. But, most important, I liked being in control. Yoga gave me the focus I needed to stay that way. When I focused, I wasn’t Elisa-and-Monster. I simplywas.
I decided to leave my katana in the room. But I slipped a small knife into my clutch, just in case.
A vampire couldn’t be too prepared.
• • •
Vampires were the only supernaturals officially participating in the talks, but the reception was open to all of Chicago’s sups. Both sets—European vampires and Chicago supernaturals—were given the chance to make their own entrance into the party, a chance to show off their particular cultures. It was our version of the Olympic opening ceremony.
A wide wooden staircase led from the hotel’s opulent lobby to the second floor, where the Red Ballroom awaited its guests.
There were metal detectors and scanners at the entrance, and a coat check for jackets, wraps, bags, and supernatural weapons that weren’t allowed into the ballroom. I’d gotten an exception for my knife since I was there, at least in part, to keep an eye on the Dumas vampires.
A large man with broad shoulders, a short neck, and a pug-nosed face—one of Chicago’s River trolls—offered a length of pipe to the young woman who manned the coat check, gum popping and apparently unfazed as she attached a tag to the pipe and handed the troll his receipt.
“Have a good night next please,” she said, the words running together in a well-practiced song.
I walked into the ballroom, which was an impressive space. The walls were painted with sweeping murals of Chicago’s history, the floor covered in crimson carpet patterned with gold filigree. Strings of tiny lights reached down from the ceiling like stars within reach.
There were bars and buffet tables along one wall that smelled enticingly of meat, a string quartet on the dais at the opposite end that played a low concerto, and a long aisle between cocktail tables where the supernatural parade would make its way through the room.
“Hey, Elisa,” said a voice I didn’t immediately recognize.
I glanced beside me, saw only shoulders. I had to look up to see the face of the Assistant Ombudsman I’d met earlier today.
“Hey,” I said with a little wave. “It’s Theo, right?”
“That’s me.”
He still wore the dark suit and bright gingham bow tie. “I like the tie.”
“Thanks. I like the dress,” he said, and gestured to his own arm. “And the sleeves.”
“Thanks,” I said with a smile. “Did you get all the delegates checked in?”
“Every last one of them,” Theo said. “They’re scattered around the city, of course, in the unlikely event anyone should attack. That was a challenge, and not just because of the egos.”
“Complainers?” I asked with a smile.
“You have no idea. I won’t name names—Spain,” he muttered behind a fake cough, “but one delegate was angry about the size of his three-room suite, because he’d been promised a four-room suite.”
“Obviously intentional to humiliate him.”
He smiled knowingly. “Exactly. Another was mad because themini-bar booze wasn’t top-shelf, and she wasn’t going to drink swill.”