Annnnnd they didn’t.

I faltered, but Ray caught me halfway down. “Are you okay, dear?” he asked, but with an edge that made it into “Get up or I’m leaving your ass here, I swear to God.”

I got up.

“Fine,” I croaked. And on we went.

And on. And on.

But it was like we’d somehow stumbled onto a down escalator. Because no matter how far we climbed, the top never seemed to get any closer. And it was beginning to feel less like stair climbing and more like mountain climbing, one of the really tall ones with no oxygen and no Sherpa to help carry the load.

And then I suddenly found the Sherpa, and he was riding on my shoulders. Along with a couple of his friends and maybe a yak. Because the consul was an anal-retentive bitch and she’d arranged the guards by rank.

That left the weaker ones, relatively speaking, at the bottom, and at the top…well, it explained why the blasts of power coming from both sides were no longer washing over me. They were slicing right on through and meeting inside my skull. And threatening to rip it apart.

I gasped at a particularly strong gust, and Ray’s grip tightened. “I told you not to wear those shoes,” he said, his voice strained. And then, “I’ll get you a drink when we get inside.”

“Sounds good,” I croaked, even knowing that it was a lie. Inside was an illusion that had never existed and never would because life consisted only of this infernal stairway and he had to be kidding me with inside.

But I gritted my teeth and pushed on, since there were exactly zero other options, fighting my way through air that didn’t feel like air anymore, but liquid. First water and then molasses and then something that was fast approaching a solid. And then I wasn’t moving at all, and was so far gone that it took me a second to realize that I’d just hit something.

It turned out to be Ray, who had abruptly stopped in front of me.

“A moment, dear,” he said, giving a little whinny of a laugh. “I have to give the man our tickets.”

I nodded, trying to look nonchalant…and then realized that I didn’t need to try. The ticket thing should have worried me, because it meant that we were no longer just two faces in the crowd but were being individually scrutinized. This was the moment of truth, when I was going to be recognized or not, depending on who was on duty, something I had absolutely no control over. It was the sort of thing I hated, the random chance in every mission that usually had my spine stiffening and my pulse racing and my fight-or-flight response kicking in big-time.

Except for tonight.

Tonight, I just stood there, too exhausted to care about a scrutiny I couldn’t see properly anyway. I looked around, because it would have seemed weird to do anything else in the face of a spectacle like that, but my eyes weren’t working right. All I saw was a blur of dark red and flashing gold and gleaming white and pitch-black. Until we started moving again, and the black abruptly changed to dazzling light.

And I stumbled, but for a totally new reason.

“Oh…oh God,” I gasped in dazed wonder, as Ray dragged me away from what I guessed was the front door.

“This way, this way, this way,” he chanted through clenched teeth, as I wafted around, feeling like I might just float away. Because the pressure, the horrible, horrible pressure, was suddenly just…gone.

“Stop it!” Ray hissed, as we found a wall somewhere.

“Stop what?” I asked thickly.

“That!” And he pointed me at something that turned out to be a mirror. And I guess my eyes worked now, because I managed to identify myself, looking slick and soigné and faintly French—and drunk off my ass. I was flushed and bright-eyed, grinning like a loon and still weaving a little. And the only reason we hadn’t already been nabbed was the sheer number of people who looked pretty much the same.

The place was packed.

“What—” I began.

“Spell to make the mages more comfortable,” Ray said, standing beside me and pretending to fiddle with his cuff links. “They can feel vamp power if there’s enough of us, and it makes ’em…jittery.”

“Mages?”

“Silly girl. You didn’t think vamps were the only ones who want to see the fights, did you?” he asked, still in character, because yeah, we couldn’t talk now.

Not that I was up to it. I was busy catching my breath, and watching the throng ebb and swell behind me, like a glittering tide. I was seeing them in the mirror, although it was a little unnecessary. The whole place looked like it had been dipped in varnish in the hours I’d been gone. The walls and floors and ceiling gleamed, almost mirror-bright, reflecting chandeliers brilliant as diamonds overhead, stretching in a long line down the wide main corridor to the ballroom.

The consul’s house usually looked like something out of the end of the eighteenth century, when Greco-Roman had been forcibly married to Baroque, in a shotgun wedding that did neither any favors. But tonight it was stunning. Which made it a marked contrast to a good portion of the crowd.

I hadn’t worn a disguise because I’d assumed anti-glamourie charms would be in effect for security reasons. And I had assumed right. Because the crowd was looking…a little scary.

The mages were okay; about what you’d expect, with maybe a few more wrinkles and blemishes than usual. The vamps, though, were another matter altogether. The clothes were couture, the jewels were dazzling, the hair a stylist’s dream. But the faces…

Ray looked pretty much the same, except for a big zit on his nose, possibly because he hadn’t been covering up much. But that wasn’t true for the guy passing behind us, who must have been starved at some point like Radu. Only either it had been for a longer duration or he hadn’t had a brother with serious healing skills, because he looked…well, like a corpse. A dessicated, dried-up stick of one with a sunken neck and eyes, discolored, mummy-like skin, ropy muscle, and a puff of grizzled hair erupting from his skull—what was left of it.

The humans were scattering ahead of him, looks of ill-concealed horror on their features, a fact that was not lost on the vamp. A corner of one leathery lip raised, in sardonic acknowledgment of their fear. Or maybe in the knowledge that he could have any one of them outside these walls, where a moment’s work would return him to youthful beauty.

Although he’d probably do okay without it, I thought, as his power hit me, like the train on his sweeping emerald robes. And despite the spell the consul was using to keep her mage guests from melting through the floor, and despite the fact that he wasn’t even trying, the force of it was like a backhanded slap. I had to clench my teeth to keep an undignified yelp behind them until he passed on, and his power dissipated into the background buzz of the rest of the room.

“Hassani,” Ray muttered. “African consul.”

Great, I thought, swallowing, and feeling a little like a squashed bug. Thankfully, he didn’t know me. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be true of others.

We needed to get moving.

“Where are our seats?” I asked Ray.

“Nowhere. We’re standing.”

“Standing?”

“Hey, I was lucky to get anything this late,” he said, as we merged with the flow heading down the main hall.

And we weren’t the only fashionably late arrivals—the huge corridor was shoulder to shoulder. Or shoulder to head, in my case, and elbow to head, and knee to thigh, since the jostling crowd tended to top me by at least a foot. If it was like this inside, I didn’t know how we were supposed to find anybody.

Ray wasn’t doing any better, getting knocked all to hell across from me, until I grabbed his arm, pushing him into a stairwell. “This isn’t going to work. I need to be able to see.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s what everyone else wants, too,” he pointed out.

“There’s got to be someplace—” I looked up at the stairs. “Where do these go?”

“To the box seats, I guess. But our tickets don’t let us—”

He stopped, because I was already moving, under a velvet rope and up the stairs, which unlike the cattle call below, were completely clear. And then around a bend and up some more. Until I was stopped by two guards lounging in a marble hallway leading to a row of little rooms. The box seats, I assumed, judging from the flash I got of one as a man came out.

A very familiar man.

It was Radu’s latest boy toy, a blond hunk whose name escaped me but who didn’t seem to have that problem himself. “Dory?” he asked, in disbelief.

“That would be me. And this is Ray.” I shoved him forward. “Sorry we’re late.”

“I…you…yes…”

“But we made it, so that’s what counts,” I said, starting forward. Only to find another hunk in my way, this time of the vamp variety. An apologetic-looking one, because anyone who might belong here rated the white glove treatment.

“I am afraid I will need to see your ticket, Miss…”

I ignored the hint for my full name, since I didn’t think it would be popular. “Oh yes, that’s right. Give him the tickets, Ray,” I said, and dodged around the vamp. Who let me go, because it was that or tackle me, and he wasn’t ready for that.

Yet.

“Tickets, I…yeah, where did I put those?” I heard Ray say weakly, as I slid through a red drape of curtain. And into what must have been the family box.

Mircea was absent. Louis-Cesare equally so. I hadn’t really expected them, though. But considering Gorgeous George—or Ted or Harry or whoever—outside, I had expected Radu.

Who wasn’t there, either.

A bunch of other people were, however, who had been talking and drinking and gossiping and who were now silently staring at me, as if I had suddenly grown two heads. I ignored them in favor of turning to the blond, who had just come in behind me. “Radu—”

“Was asked to stand in for your father in the consul’s box. For the opening ceremony.”