Four large men in gold armor came down the ramp. Their suits were covered all over in little scales, mimicking the ones on the dragon. They took up places on either side of the ramp, two by two, holding up long spears like an honor guard. Then, from the dragon’s belly, floated a tiny chair holding an even tinier woman. Her impossibly small feet were wrapped in satin lotus shoes, and I didn’t have to ask why the levitating chair, because no way could those minuscule things have held even her weight.

At first glance, she looked helpless, like an overdressed doll that had to be moved around by her attendants. The image contrasted starkly with the power that radiated from her like a small supernova, flooding the street with an invisible but almost suffocating force. The guards were for show; this beauty didn’t need any defenders.

“Who is that?” I managed to croak.

“Ming-de, Empress of the Chinese Court—roughly the same as our Consul,” Mircea whispered, his breath frosting the air in front of my face.

I watched the jeweled dragons on Ming-de’s dress coil and twist and writhe in ways that I initially thought were due to the flickering lantern light. But no, a small gold one scurried along the hem of her gown, bright as fire against the crimson silk, and I realized they had minds of their own. “But how did she get here?”

“Ley-line travel,” Mircea said, as the whole party proceeded indoors in a stately procession.

“What?”

There was another flash, of green this time, and a crash loud enough to make me jump. I blinked, and when I looked again, a large gray elephant complete with gold howdah was standing behind Ming-de’s barge. The elephant didn’t appear to have as much room as it would like, and it let out a thundering trumpet of protest. A guard’s head poked up from the back of the barge and shouted something, then the huge ship lurched forward a scant few feet until it hit a lamppost and had to stop. It was starting to look like a party where the hosts hadn’t thought enough about parking.

After a moment, the elephant knelt and an Indian couple got out. They were wearing gorgeous outfits of peacock blues and greens, although nothing seemed to be moving. Between them they had on as many jewels as I had in my little bag, and the sapphire on the guy’s turban alone was as big as my fist. But they didn’t have to denude themselves for the auction; when they headed for the door, a small flying carpet bobbed along in the air behind them, carrying a chest. I felt my stomach fall. If these were examples of the bidders I was up against, I was in trouble.

“Okay. What is going on?” I demanded.

“Maharaja Parindra of the Indian Durbar. Like our Senate,” Mircea explained. “I believe the woman is Gazala, his second.”

“But how did they get here?”

“They came through the ley lines.”

“You said that before. Not helping.”

Mircea quirked an eyebrow at me. “You have never surfed a ley line?”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Really? Remind me to take you sometime. I think you will find it…exhilarating.”

I stared at him and tried really hard to remember what, exactly, we were talking about. His mouth pursed into an odd almost-smile, his earlier intensity forgotten or, more likely, masked. “I will be happy to elucidate later. But for now, I would appreciate a more coherent explanation of our presence here.”

“We’re going to bid on a spell book. You just saw our competition.”

Mircea gave me a skeptical look. “I know Ming-de well, but only because I was once the Senate’s liaison to her court. And I have met Parindra but once, because both have a reputation for rarely traveling beyond their own lands. If they wanted such an item, they would send a servant.”

“Well, obviously they didn’t,” I said, rummaging around in the remains of Mircea’s jacket until I found a handkerchief. I wiped away as much as I could of whatever he’d thrown at me; luckily it had mostly dried and a lot of it dusted off. “At least it doesn’t smell,” I said sadly.

Mircea took the handkerchief and set to work on a green smear on my neck. His knuckles barely brushed me, and even then it was through the satiny weave of the linen. It was an odd sensation, close enough to not quite touch, warm enough to not quite feel, the sleeve of his jacket whispering along my bare arm. “Why did you come back for me?” he murmured, stroking lightly, pressing just hard enough for me to feel the embroidered initials on the cloth. “Do I not exist in your time?”

Define “exist,” I thought, as the small square worked its way downward, the banded ends just tickling the top of my breasts. “The Consul wouldn’t let me come alone,” I breathed.

When I’d talked to Billy about taking Mircea along, he’d still been relatively lucid—as much as the geis allowed anyone to be. But if the Consul had been desperate enough to order him confined, then he was too far gone to help me. And I really needed competent help.

If Mircea died, I had no doubt that the Consul would blame it on me. And, unlike the Circle, who seemed to have too many problems to concentrate all their energy on hunting me down, she struck me as the single-minded type. If she wanted me dead, I had the definite impression that I would get dead. Really fast.

“You could have chosen another senator,” Mircea pointed out.

I couldn’t come up with a convincing lie with goose bumps trailing over my skin, following his caress with slavish devotion. “The other you was busy,” I said, snatching the damn handkerchief away before I went out of my mind. This wasn’t going anywhere and I wasn’t a masochist.

“For something that important, I would have thought I could have made the time,” Mircea said lightly.

And yes, I was busted, because no way would he have sent anyone else to take care of something that concerned him so personally. But I still wasn’t telling him anything. “You’re just going to have to trust me,” I said.

“Even though you will not do me the same honor?”

I took a deep breath and concentrated on not banging my head into the wall. “There’s not a lot more I can tell you. I’ve probably said too much already. All you need to know is that we have to get that book or we’re both in a lot of trouble.”

Mircea took a moment to process this. I was certain he wasn’t going to let it go, wasn’t going to just take my word for it. But then he held out his arm. “May I assume that this counts as a first date?”

“Oh, we’re way past that,” I said, before I thought.

He smiled slowly. “Good to know.”

Chapter 20

The guy who answered the door was in his early forties, with thinning hair under the wig that sat askew on his head, and many teeth already rotted away. He didn’t look like somebody who should have been able to defeat a legendary wizard, but maybe he was just the butler. We followed him through a narrow hall and up a staircase to a library. It contained an ornately carved marble fireplace, bookcases lining two walls, mother-of-pearl detailing on dark wood moldings and about three dozen guests.

All of whom paused to look at us as the butler or whoever he was made introductions. I hadn’t heard Mircea give his name, but the man knew it anyway, although I was just “and guest.” I needn’t have worried about our appearance: Mircea managed to make losing the coat seem like a fashion statement. I saw several other male guests surreptitiously shuck theirs after a moment, not wanting to miss out on a new trend. But one remained unmoved, muffled head to toe in a thick black cape that swept the ground and didn’t leave so much as a nose visible. That was okay with me, because the people I could see were disturbing enough.

A woman appeared in front of us carrying a basket of knitted blue, white and red rosettes. I chose not to poke a hole in Augustine’s creation, and carried mine, but I didn’t like it. It felt funny; I couldn’t figure out what material had been used.

“Human hair, probably from the guillotined,” Mircea murmured. I quickly slid it onto a nearby table.

A moment later, a pretty, dark-eyed French girl sashayed up with a tray of wineglasses. She gave Mircea one and then just stood there, apparently waiting for him to finish it so she could give him another. It looked like the rest of the room was out of luck. But he didn’t drink, I noticed; he just held the delicate stem casually in one hand, the bloodred contents glimmering in the low light.

I took one off her tray and downed most of it in a gulp. It was good, and the head-clearing fumes were better. Mircea watched me with a smile and switched our glasses, giving me his full one.

“You don’t like wine?” I asked, sipping at my new drink with a little more decorum.

“Under certain circumstances.”

“Such as?”

“Remind me to show you sometime,” he murmured as our group was joined by a stunningly beautiful woman.

She was Japanese, or at least she looked Asian and had origami hummingbirds buzzing about, holding up her hand-painted train. And she was only the first of many. Despite the fact that we found a dark corner beside the fireplace to wait for the main event, a steady stream of people made their way over to speak to us. Or, more accurately, to speak to Mircea, since most of them barely gave me a glance. I couldn’t help but notice that a disproportionate number of them seemed to be attractive and female.

I don’t know why this surprised me. It had been the same way at court, when Mircea came for an extended visit to Tony. I’d overheard the staff complaining that they’d never had so many guests; even vamps who loathed Tony had shown up to pay their respects. Because Mircea wasn’t just a Senate member, he was a Basarab, which pretty much put him in the movie star category as far as vampires were concerned.

Or maybe rock star, I thought, restraining myself from forcibly removing the hand that the current groupie, a statuesque auburn-haired witch, had placed on his arm. He moved back on the pretense of setting his empty glass on the mantel, and his admirer moved with him. His mouth curved into a rueful smile that, for a moment, I wanted to taste so badly that I couldn’t even think.