I fidgeted outside the door to the great hall, some twenty-five feet under the streets of New York City. Behind me, Brigit was toying with the hem of her crimson red ’50s-style party dress. She looked unassuming, but the deep red color set off her pale skin and hair, making her seem a little dangerous.
A month earlier I’d petitioned the other two members of the Tribunal to allow Brigit full warden status. She’d been a vampire for a year and was successfully living on her own, feeding from humans without risking the sanctity of vampires everywhere. She was, as far as I was concerned, more than ready to become a contributing member of the council.
Sig, the leader of the Tribunal, had agreed. He had been the one to assign Brigit to me in the first place, so I think it pleased him to see me taking interest in her status. Juan Carlos, on the other hand, shot the idea down immediately.
“She’s too young,” he’d insisted.
“She’s been a vampire for a year,” I argued.
“And that blink of the eye should matter to us? She is a child.”
“But she has proven herself time and again. She’s ready.”
“It will be for the council to decide.”
Without a unanimous agreement from the Tribunal, it would have to be up to the council of vampire elders to settle Brigit’s fate as a warden. And since I had been the one to petition for her, it was up to me to present her to the elders.
And the elders waited for no one. Not even a Tribunal leader with a bullet hole in her shoulder that was barely closed over.
“You ready for this?” I asked Brigit.
“Do you think they’ll make me do anything?”
I looked over my shoulder at her. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Feats of strength? Skill-testing questions?”
“It’s not a Festivus party, Bri. I don’t think they’ll make you fight to the death or anything. I’d like to think we’re a little more advanced as a society than that.”
At the words fight to the death her already pale skin went positively ashen. “Are you sure?”
Before I could answer, the big double doors in front of us swung open.
“Good afternoon, Tribunal Leader Secret,” a warden greeted us, bowing his head to me in a show of respect, then gave a polite nod to Brigit since he outranked her. “The council of elders is ready for you.”
“Thank you.” I rotated my shoulder. A hand of aching pain pushed back from inside, protesting the movement. The pain would have to shut up sooner or later because I didn’t like being anything other than one hundred percent. Right now I was at seventy-five percent, if that. I didn’t look back at Brigit because I couldn’t be seen to depend on her. It would be a sign of weakness. “Ready?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Chin up.” I smiled at the warden, but my words were all for my ward. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Brigit sighed. “I really wish you hadn’t said it like that.”
The warden stepped out of the way, letting us see into the council chamber for the first time. I’d only been here a handful of times before, in spite of technically being responsible for all the members within the room. The thing I liked about the council of elders was they tended to mind their own business and rely on the Tribunal only when necessary.
The thing I hated about the council was how I didn’t know enough about what went on behind their closed doors, and I didn’t think twelve vampires over the age of six hundred should be allowed that much privacy.
It was something I’d learned from Lucas—give a dog too much leash and he won’t appreciate the illusion of freedom. He’ll just find a way to strangle you with it.Located above the Tribunal chambers but still well below street level, the council room was significantly larger than the one Sig, Juan Carlos and I called home. Instead of three raised thrones, though, the council elders sat in low, armless wooden chairs in a half-circle, with an empty space of hard-packed dirt in the middle of the room. Their chairs were all slightly outside the solitary light in the room, which illuminated the place where Brigit and I came to stand.
In the middle of the semicircle were three larger, high-backed chairs, with six elders on either side. These chairs were reserved for the Tribunal, and one seat was vacant. Mine. In the middle of the room, commanding all the attention even in the minimal light, was Sig. He wore brown leather pants that hung low on his hips, and was slouched in his chair, his long, slender legs sprawled out in front of him. It always amazed me how relaxed he could look, no matter what the situation. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen him lose his temper.
I hoped to keep that number to a minimum because he scared the shit out of me.
To Sig’s left was Juan Carlos. His mouth curled in its usual sneer, enhanced in its menace by the scar where his upper lip had been cut open in his human life. The permanent leer showed off a formidable fang and an overabundance of loathing for me.
I blew him a kiss.
His lip curled even farther, and his dark Spanish features took on a harder edge. He could be as grouchy about this as he wanted. The fact of the matter was, if he had agreed to advance Brigit when I’d brought it up to the Tribunal, we wouldn’t have to be here.
If he wanted to be a stubborn ass, he had a thing or two to learn about how frustrating and inflexible I could be.
Brigit stood a step behind me when I came to a stop in the middle of the room. I cast a glance around the half-circle, pausing to look at each elder individually. There wasn’t a gender balance rule among the council, but for the time being there were an equal number of men and women sitting in mixed order on either side of the Tribunal thrones.
I nodded to each member, and they bowed their heads in return, showing the appropriate display of respect. It must have been hard for some of them, especially the very old ones. Not only was I not a full-blooded vampire, I still had a pulse. For me to outrank them must have ruffled a few feathers, but if that was the case, they hid it well. Ultimately, my succession to the Tribunal had been their decision, and they’d chosen to respect tradition.
I think most of them had assumed someone would challenge me and I’d be killed shortly after I took my seat. But it had been some nine months since I’d executed the former owner of my position, and I had yet to be called out. Maybe they thought I was doing a good job.
More likely, they were afraid of what Sig would do if they came forward.
The Tribunal leader crossed his leather-clad legs at the knee and gazed at me with his ice-blue eyes from under a blond fringe of bangs. He looked almost too casual. “Good evening, Tribunal Leader Secret.”
“To you as well, Tribunal Leader Sig. Tribunal Leader Juan Carlos.” I nodded to them both.
“Tribunal Leader Secret,” Juan Carlos growled.
“And welcome, Miss Stewart,” Sig continued, ignoring the venom in Juan Carlos’s tone. Brigit stooped into a low bow, not meeting Sig’s or Juan Carlos’s gaze as she greeted them both appropriately. When she rose, Sig addressed his next comment to me. “So, Secret, you stand in front of us today rather than sitting beside me. How does it feel to be back in your old place?”
A rustle of hushed responses fanned throughout the room. I tried to ignore how scandalized the elders were by his comment and chose to respond as I assumed Sig would want me to. “I don’t plan on getting used to it. Though I don’t miss the bad cushions.”
Sig smirked. “Very good. I think Juan Carlos would miss you terribly if you decided to leave us.”
The former conquistador and I locked gazes and shared a mutual exchange of loathing. Neither of us challenged Sig’s words, though.
“I will now turn everyone’s attention to Council Elder Hansel, who will lead today’s proceedings.” Sig nodded to a compact, dark-skinned man to the right-hand side of my vacant seat.
The man, who was bald and lean to the point of being skinny, rose to his feet and bowed to the two seated men before turning his attention to me. After a tense pause he bowed to me as well. Hansel was one of the elders who I knew was less than thrilled about my power position. I couldn’t blame him. He was seven hundred years old and I was twenty-three. I nodded back and kept my smile in check. The old ones like Hansel didn’t take well to random displays of emotion. They thought you were silently mocking them.
We exchanged salutations, then he got down to business. “What motion do you bring before the council on this day?”
“I am here to propose the promotion of my ward, Brigit Stewart, to full warden status.” The room flooded with more hushed muttering. I swore they did it to heighten the drama. I crossed my arms over my chest, doing my best not to wince at the renewed fire in my shoulder.
“This is a serious proposal, Tribunal Leader Secret,” Hansel said. His use of my official title sounded forced. If there was anything I hated hearing more than “Miss McQueen”, it was “Tribunal Leader Secret”. I would only ever be Secret. Anything else sounded absurd to me, especially something as bombastic as my Tribunal moniker. Too bad the title was a part of thousands of years of tradition. I had no say in the matter. Hansel continued. “Why do you believe your ward is ready?”
I listed off the half-dozen reasons I’d given the Tribunal when I first made the appeal. To Juan Carlos and Sig I’d pointed out how, without Brigit’s aid, the former Tribunal Leader Daria would have killed me and gotten away with it. To the council, however, I didn’t want to make it seem like a lowly ward was all that stood between me and certain death. Instead, I focused on her instrumental role in uncovering the rogue within their midst.
When I finished speaking, the room was silent. Vampires didn’t breathe, so there wasn’t even the sound of throat-clearing, sighing or other human-type background noise. After a painfully long pause, Hansel spoke again.
“Tribunal Leader Secret, we are thankful for your statement. If it pleases you, your seat awaits.” Such careful language. He couldn’t offer me my seat because I was his better, but he needed me to sit down before he could continue.