For me.
Roger smiled broadly and gestured to the floor below with one shoulder. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”
And then he turned to gaze below at the pit, that sunken area of the first floor where the mortals were dancing. A band was playing lively music on the stage. He strangled the fear of turning his back on Seamus because nothing was wrong. He threw himself into the belief like he had every time he needed to fool his mind into a place of calm, and he fell into the trick in a second. He wrapped it around him like a cloak and kept gathering information. Zack and Takashi would want to know everything.
Many of the vampires had chosen subdued costume-inspired attire for the party like Roger and Seamus had. Some had props like Takashi’s hat. Roger spotted more than one hammer among the crowd. The name of that god didn’t spring to mind, and he didn’t recognize every deity that was represented. The vampires remained at the edge of the pit, which was an old tactic Seamus had implemented during parties. He enjoyed having the weakpenned in, and the mortals were always the weakest, in his opinion.
Unlike their vampire masters, the mortals in the pit were in full costumes. They were dressed as nymphs, satyrs, spirits, demigods, and other creatures from mythology. Zack, Kit, and Carver had wound their way into the middle.
Seamus joined Roger at the railing, and Roger fought to keep his shoulders relaxed, especially as Seamus put his hand between his shoulder blades. After a second, Seamus slid his hand up to Roger’s shoulder so that he had an arm wrapped around him as they stood together. “Was Nell’s party for you anything like this?”
Nell’s party had been a pirate-themed costume party, and no one had been forced to wear a collar. Roger had given Zack a gold medallion of his crest to wear, but that had been an overabundance of caution than necessity. Other than the fight with Quinn, it had been delightful. Seamus would hate to hear that.
“The band wasn’t nearly as good,” Roger said and meant it. Though this band wasn’t playing the same sort of music, he preferred the sound of electric instruments to the strings that had been at Nell’s party. “I hope you’re not upset about Quinn.”
“Why would I be? He was your progeny,” Seamus replied. “And he was becomingannoying.”
“Let me guess, he bothered you about starting a war over his murdered pets?” Roger knew the answer to that. Quinn had explained his reasoning for wanting to kill Zack before attacking him for what became the final time. Having met Callum Wright, Roger was certain those innocents weren’t the only ones the hunter had killed. He saw no difference between a vampire and someone who chose to be with them.
“He peddled that crap to you, too?” Seamus snorted softly and leaned against Roger. “I never understood why you wentthrough with turning him into one of us. He was always such a pest.”
Roger forced his smile to stay in place. Seamus had been the one to pay Quinn to seduce him, and he had lorded that fact over Quinn’s grave while Roger waited for him to rise. If not for Quinn pressuring him, Roger never would have offered him the chance to become a vampire. In the end, Quinn had begged for Roger’s blood for money and immortality, not for love like he had claimed.
Seamus knew all of that. Yet he was choosing to revise history to one that suited him.
Like he always did.
“I was young and foolish,” Roger said, though he’d been about the same age as Takashi was now. “And you did find him amusing.”
“Only for your sake.”
The music shifted, and a thrum floated on the air. Magic of any sort had a potency that played against the body’s five senses. Typically, Roger shoved his awareness off, but he began to note the way the power of the spell registered. Data was at the core of a good plan, so he opened his mind to the sensations.
And somethingshiftedin him. The difference was like streetlights illuminating a darkened street. Sensing the lust or fear in an individual was like brushing his fingers across their skin, but the touch of this spell went past the five senses. He struggled to keep pace with the experience. The spell slithered out from the music and became a weight on his chest. At the same time, the magic had a magnetic pull that attempted to pull him under its sway.
The band was glittering, and their glamours faded away to reveal their true forms. A pack of Unseelies controlled the instruments, and at the front was their singer, a siren. He washandsome, and Roger was certain they’d fucked at some point in the past, but that wasn’t the danger of the moment.
The first problem was the goddamn spell. Roger was strong enough to resist the urge building in his loins, but others weren’t. The mortals in the pit, who the spell was aimed at, certainly weren’t. While Kit’s and Carver’s motions were becoming more suggestive, Zack was growing tense. His hunter’s tattoo was likely protecting him from the siren’s song just as it blocked Roger’s abilities.
Vampires from the edges began to thread their way into the pit where the mortals danced. That didn’t bother him much.
But he finally spotted Anton below. Dressed entirely in black, he blended into the shadows and the in-between places as he slid through the crowd. He grabbed a mortal that started to dance up against him and sunk his teeth into their neck. They dropped to the floor. Anton’s lips and chin were covered in blood.
This was the trap. Roger had been in it before, in 1845. Seamus had pulled him close during a party, kept an arm around him, and murmured into his ear while Anton slaughtered the mortals he’d brought. The threat of what Seamus could do had kept Roger in place, and he’d watched his mortal lovers drop one by one.
Anton was going after Zack. After Kit. After Carver. He would kill other innocents along the way.
Roger started for the stairs, but Seamus seized his arm and yanked him to a stop. Once, during training with Nell, Roger had asked Zack how he was so slippery, and his response had been,“Physics.”
You can’t grasp a shadow. Instead of drawing the shadows around him, Roger imagined his arm melting into the shadows, joining them. A burst of darkness spotted his vision, but when he blinked, he’d propelled himself a step backward, free of Seamus.
The look of shock on Seamus’s features spoke to a truth that something had happened, but Roger was too cold and dazed to sort through the particulars. He had to get to Zack, had to save him.
Since walking past Seamus would only cause more trouble, Roger jumped up to the balcony railing. The ceiling was high enough that he didn’t have to bend. Instead, he was where everyone in the club could see him. He caught sight of Takashi struggling to get past the vampires at the top of the staircase. He must have realized the trouble and was attempting to get down to their mortals.
And Takashi wasn’t the only one who was worried. The second-floor vampires were that touch farther from the spell, were able to resist it that fraction better. They were a mix of older and younger, and Roger saw among the older ones the same realization he’d come to. Anton and Seamus were playing with all of them. A few weren’t as quick to hide their helplessness.
Then, they spotted him standing on the railing.
