I closed my eyes and took more deep breaths, concentrating on pushing my anger back down. It felt like swallowing acid. But when I opened my eyes, the runes on the staff and rod were quiescent once more.
I glanced at Molly. She looked up at me, her eyes reddened and afraid.
“I’m okay,” I told her.
She bit her lip and nodded. “Okay.”
I leaned over and kissed her hair gently. “Thank you, Molly.”
She offered me a hesitant smile and nodded again.
I stood there for a moment more before I said, gently, “You can let go of my arm now.”
“Oh, right,” she said, releasing me. “Sorry.”
I stared down the hallway in front of me, trying to order my thoughts. “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
“Harry?” Molly asked.
“This isn’t the time or the place to fight,” I said.
“Um,” Molly said. “Yes. I mean, clearly.”
“Don’t start,” I told her. “Okay. So the duchess is here to play games. . . .” I clenched my jaw. “Fine. Game on.”
I started forward again with a determined stride, and Molly hurried to keep up.
We proceeded to the White Council’s ostentatiatory.
I know. That isn’t a word. But it should be. If you’d seen the quarters of the Senior Council, you’d back me up.
I strode down the hall and nodded to the squad of twelve Wardens on guard outside the chambers of the Senior Council. They were all from the younger generation—apparently there were grown-up things happening on the other side of the large double doors, to which the children could contribute nothing but confusion.
For once, the Council’s geriatocracy had worked in my favor. If they’d left one of the old guard out here, he would certainly have tried to prevent me from entering on general principles. As it was, several of the doorkeepers nodded to me and murmured quiet greetings as I approached.
I nodded back briskly and never slowed my steps. “No time, guys. I need to get in.”
They hurried to open the doors, and I went through them without slowing down and stepped into the chambers of the Senior Council.
I felt impressed upon entering, as I always did. The place was huge. You could fit a Little League baseball field in it and have room left over for a basketball court. A rectangular central hall splayed out in front of me, its floor made of white marble with veins of gold running through it. Marble steps at the far end swept up to a balcony that circled the entire place, which was supported by Corinthian columns of marble that matched the floor. There was a quiet waterfall at the far end of the chamber, running down into a pool, surrounded by a garden of living trees and plants and the chirp of the occasional bird.
A platform stage had been erected in the middle of the room, complete with stagelike lighting from a number of brightly glowing crystals, plus another mounted on a wooden podium that would, I took it, provide amplified sound for anyone speaking near it. The place was packed with wizards standing on the floor in a miniature sea of humanity, with more of them lining the balcony above, filling the place to its capacity.
All in all, the ostentatiatory was so overdone that you couldn’t help but be impressed, which was the point, and though my brain knew it was hundreds of feet underground, my eyes insisted that it was lit by natural sunlight.
It wasn’t, though: There was a vampire standing on the platform stage, beside the newest member of the Senior Council, Wizard Cristos. He stood at the podium, smiling and addressing the assembly. The rest of the Senior Council, resplendent in their black formal robes and purple stoles, looked on with their hoods raised.
“. . . another example of how we must meet the future with our eyes—and minds—open to the possibility of change,” Cristos said. He had a great speaking voice, a strong, smooth baritone that rolled effortlessly through the enormous chamber. He spoke in Latin, the official language of the Council—which ought to tell you something about their mind-set. “Humanity is already beginning to move away from the cycle of unthinking violence and war, learning to coexist with its neighbors in peace, working together to find solutions to their mutual problems, rather than allowing them to devolve into bloodshed.” He smiled benevolently, a tall, spare man with a mane of flowing gray hair, a dark beard, and piercing dark eyes. He wore his formal robes open, the better to display the designer business suit beneath it.
“It is for this reason that I requested a telephone conference with the Red King,” he continued. He used the English word for telephone, since there wasn’t a proper Latin noun for it. It garnered a reaction from the assembled Council watching the proceedings. Such things were not done. “And after speaking with him for a time, I secured his support for a clearly defined, binding, and mutually acceptable peace. Creating the peace is in everyone’s best interests, and it is for this reason that I am pleased to present to you, wizards of the White Council, the Duchess Arianna Ortega of the Red Court.”
Several wizards not far from Cristos’s position on the stage began clapping enthusiastically, and it spread haltingly throughout the chamber, eventually maturing into polite applause.
Arianna stepped up to the podium, smiling.
She was gorgeous. I don’t mean “cutest girl at the club” gorgeous. I mean that she looked like a literal goddess. The details almost didn’t matter. Tall. Dark hair. Skin like milk, like polished ivory. Eyes as blue as the twilight sky. She wore a gown of red silk, with a neckline that plunged gorgeously. Jewels touched her throat, her ears. Her hair was piled up on her head, occasional loose ringlets falling out. Hers was a beauty so pure that it was nearly painful to behold—Athena heading out on a Friday night.
It took me a good five or six seconds of staring to realize that there was something beneath that beauty that I did not like at all. Her loveliness itself, I realized, was a weapon—such creatures as she had driven men literally insane with desire and obsession. More to the point, I knew that her beauty was only skin-deep. I knew what lurked beneath.
“Thank you, Wizard Cristos,” the duchess said. “It is a very great honor to be received here today in the interests of creating a peace between our two nations, and thereby finally putting an end to the abominable bloodshed between our peoples.”
The Applause Squad started up again as Arianna paused. People picked up on the cue faster this time. Outside of the wizards who stood on the floor beneath the raised stage, the applause was still polite and halfhearted.
I waited until it began to die before I released the door. It closed with a quiet boom precisely in the moment of silence between the end of the applause and the duchess’s next statement.
Nearly a thousand faces turned my way.
Silence fell. I could suddenly hear the little waterfall and the occasional twitter of a bird.
I stared hard at Arianna and said, my voice carrying clearly, “I want the girl, vampire.”
She met my gaze with polite serenity for a moment. Then the hint of a smile touched her face, bringing with it a shadow of mockery. It made my blood boil, and I heard my knuckles pop as they clenched harder at my staff.
“Wizard Dresden!” Cristos said in sharp rebuke. “This is neither the time nor the place for more of your warmongering idiocy.”
I was so impressed with his authority that I raised my voice and said, louder, “Give back the child you took from her family, Arianna Ortega, kidnapper and thief, or face me under the provisions of the Code Duello.”
Murmurs ran through the assembly like a rumble of thunder.
“Wizard Dresden!” Cristos cried, aghast. “This is an ambassador of an Accorded nation, promised safe conduct while she is here on a mission of peace. This is not done!” He looked around the room and pointed a finger at several grey-cloaked wizards standing not too far from me. “Wardens! Escort this man from the chamber!”