“No, I guess it wouldn’t have been,” he said finally. “But most women aren’t as susceptible as you are.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Because you’re psychic.” He shifted on his feet, while she enjoyed watching him sweat. He deserved it, after what he’d done to her. In front of a restaurant full of people. “Can’t we just forget it? Greyson’s my friend.”
The murmuring of the crowd grew louder. They were about to start.
“I promise, I’ll never do it again.”
He was still smiling, still charming. But Megan knew she’d gotten to him. He wasn’t lying when he’d said Greyson was his friend, and that touched her. She decided to let Nick off the hook.
“Okay. Apology accepted.”
“Thanks.”
“So, which Meegra are you in? Concumbia, or—”
He looked surprised. “I’m not.”
“But I thought—”
“Not me, despite Grey’s efforts.” He shook his head, a ghost of a smile flitting over his handsome face. “There are lots of us who aren’t full members—a sizable minority, at least. We go to them for protection or help if we need it, but we don’t get involved. Some demons disapprove of them entirely.”
“So what do you do?”
The smile became fixed. “All sorts of things. I’m an independent, let’s say.”
Megan nodded. That ended that line of questioning. She should have known better than to ask.
“How long have you known—” she started, but she was interrupted by the ringing of a bell, a gloomy, mournful deep chime. A funeral bell.
Nick offered his arm. “They’re ready.”
The torches went out, as if a sudden wind had blown them out en masse. In the perfect blackness of the room Megan heard rustlings, a few footsteps loud on the marble floor, then nothing.
Dead silence.
The bell gonged again. Megan jumped, suddenly glad Nick was there. He put his hand over hers, sending a short but thankfully minor shiver through her. He must be shielding awfully hard. She knew she was.
A voice in the darkness, deep and raw. “Templeton Horatius Black ga chrino.”
“Alri neshden Templeton Black,” the crowd responded.
A single light flared in the darkness. A tall, thin man, taller than anyone Megan had ever seen, held his hand high above his head, cupping the tiny flame in his palm. Its faint glow made his face a mask, with nothing but deep shadows for eyes and long grooves down his cheeks that would be wrinkles in ordinary light.
He glared into the crowd. “Cha krishien.”
Beside her Nick bowed, the movement of his body pulling her down as well. When they came back up, Megan had the sense that something loomed behind the gaunt man. He was the priest, she supposed, or whatever they called them. The spiritual leader, maybe.
Still holding his hand up, he stalked forward. As he vacated the spot where he’d been originally, the torches behind him flared.
The light hurt Megan’s eyes. She closed them for a long second then opened them again, to see Malleus and Spud through a gap in the crowd. They stood below and on either side of a large platform, its legs gripped in their beefy arms. On top of the platform lay the body of Templeton Black.
Megan couldn’t really see him. He was up too high. All she saw was the top of his head, the salt-and-pepper hair thinner than she remembered. For a moment, despite everything he’d done to her, she felt terribly, sharply sorry for him. He’d had everything, been head of this house and this family, and he’d died alone in a witch’s prison. In the hands of the enemy.
Would they ever find out what killed him? Or had he realized his pet witches, the ones who’d tried to murder her and Greyson, had been killed, and decided the only thing left to do was die?
The procession inched ahead. Behind Spud, Maleficarum held one of the rear legs of the catafalque. Megan only vaguely recognized the fourth bearer.
Each time the catafalque passed a torch, the flames flared into life. The footsteps of the procession made almost no sound on the marble floor, so it seemed to float, created by black mist. Megan had never seen anything like it. It was beautiful.
Nick edged her closer. Considerate of him. Even with heels she was shorter than almost everyone in the room.
The impression of the catafalque floating didn’t change, although she could now see where the legs ended, could see the feet of the bearers blurry…there was smoke. Black smoke, sliding silently over the floor, coiling around the legs of the bearers and the priest.
It seemed to take a long time for Templeton’s body to pass. Up close she could see the heavy black satin covering the frame. Templeton was wrapped in it like a toga, with a long-sleeved black shirt beneath it to cover his arms. His face and feet were bare. So were the hands clasped neatly together over his stomach. The diamond pinkie ring she remembered seeing on his left hand shot orangeish sparks onto the wall.
Megan held her breath as the body passed, only belatedly realizing a slow drum was beating somewhere in the hall. Like a march it played, while the procession stepped forward with every beat. Her heart started beating in time, and without thinking she knew the same was happening to every demon in the hall. The piece of demon in her chest, the thing she’d started thinking of as a second heart, caught the rhythm too.
Next came Greyson, his expression solemn. Beside him with her hand on his arm walked a woman, her head high, her eyes damp at the corners. She too wore a long black gown, velvet, with a string of pearls around her neck like tiny moons against the darkness. Her dark hair was swept up, exposing a face that Megan instinctively felt drawn to. Motherly, it was kind even in sorrow, but fiercely proud. Templeton Black’s widow, so different from the other widow Megan had recently seen that for a moment her mouth flooded with bitterness.
The drum kept beating. Megan wondered if Greyson would turn to look at her, but he didn’t, staring straight ahead as they passed.
Next came the rubendas, in dark suits. Some wore shirts of the same blood red as the collar of Greyson’s cassock, others white. White, black, and red were the colors of House Sorithell.
“The colors are by rank,” Nick whispered. “In case you wondered.”
She nodded her thanks.
Almost all of the torches along the walls of the long hall were lit now as the procession passed, on its way to an enormous set of wooden double doors standing open at the end. Megan had never seen those doors open. Beyond them darkness loomed, like the entrance to a cave.
Beat…beat…beat…The drum continued its mournful order as the last of the family passed. Megan turned her head to the left to watch them go, the black smoke still swirling and roiling over the floor, obscuring their feet. Her skin crawled. The energy in the room, the pure, unbridled sense of power, made her hair stand on end.
More than that was the sense she’d somehow stepped back in time. With the torches lit, only the suits of the rubendas indicated they hadn’t all somehow traveled to the inside of a pyramid, or a Viking longhouse. It was creepy and mournful and exhilarating, all at the same time.
Still creepier were the servants following the rubendas. Their faces were smudged with soot and downcast, their hair was tangled and matted. Bare feet peeked out from beneath their shapeless black togas.
She leaned closer to Nick. “Why—”
“It’s to show mourning,” he murmured. “They absorb the misery of everyone else, and it destroys their physical appearance. Purely symbolic, of course.”
“I’ve heard of that.”
The shadow of his profile bobbed up and down. “A lot of cultures took aspects of our funerals. The Romans copied it almost exactly.”
“So every house does their funerals like this?”
The silhouette bobbed again. “With a few minor changes here and there—the colors, the smoke—but basically, as far as I know.”