ever played to a crowd that could react with as much … manifest enthusiasm as this one, Dad.
I needed to stop talking to ghosts.
Showtime.
I pushed open the door behind the buffet table and surveyed the room. It seemed simple enough. Cristos was on the little speaking stage now, and all the illustrious bigwigs were watching him.
“… and I’m very pleased to announce that we have been contacted by King Corb of the Fomor, who will be arriving shortly. Matters of state required his immediate attention, but they have been resolved, and His Majesty will arrive within moments.”
There was a round of polite applause, which Cristos acknowledged with a beaming smile. “Recent events among the supernatural nations may have caused a great deal of confusion and turmoil—but they could also be an opportunity to forge even stronger bonds between the various nations. It is my hope that, should we reach a successful treaty, our neighbors the Fomor will work hand in hand with the rest of the Accorded nations… .”
It got dull after that, even for a black-and-white feature, despite Cristos’s excellent speaking presence, and if all the supernatural grown-ups found him as cloying as I did, they hid it a hell of a lot better than I would have. Granted, the misdirection hadn’t been specifically timed to interrupt Cristos and his speech.
That was merely a happy accident.
I took a second ampule, identical to the one I’d crushed on Ramirez, out of my suit’s inner pocket and crushed it in the same hand I had the first. I’d been careful not to clean that spot on my palm, and the potion in the fresh ampule mixed with the residue from the one I’d slapped on Ramirez.
My hand quivered, clenched spasmodically once, and suddenly felt heavy, as if a large, slightly damp beach towel had been draped across it.
“On me,” I whispered. “Here we go.”
And then I spread my fingers out as if guiding a marionette, started wiggling them, and Lara and I started hauling Thomas out, Freydis close behind us.
The potion I’d slipped onto Ramirez’s cloak had been half of the brew. The stuff currently on my hand was the other half. The two were magically linked by a drop of my blood, the most powerful agent for magical bindings known to reality. With that bond formed, it was a simple enough trick to send a pulse of energy from my hand over to poor Carlos’s cloak.
The grey cloth abruptly flared, whipped wildly around as if in a hurricane wind, and promptly dragged the young Warden off his feet and across the floor—toward the back of the hall, in the opposite direction of the front door.
People and not-people let out noises of distress. Several dozen security teams bolted for their primaries. A lot of folks got tackled to the floor by their own retainers. I caught a glimpse of Molly being surrounded by a group of Sidhe and hustled to one side of the room—and I recognized one of them, the goddamned Redcap. The murderous Sidhe assassin had traded in his baseball cap for a scarlet headband of a leather whose origins I shuddered to consider.
We moved through the chaos as Carlos struggled with his cloak. He managed to unfasten it, and the damned thing promptly began flapping around like an enormous bat.
And it worked. The room stayed black-and-white. Everyone’s paranoia was so focused on the potential threat that they didn’t have enough cognitive cycles left to be paranoid about us.
The potion hadn’t been a very potent one—I’d spent most of my effort on the actual blending potion to keep us concealed—and it wouldn’t last long. The cloak’s batteries already looked like they were getting weaker, its movements less frantic. We might not have time enough to make it to the door, in fact. I hurried my pace a little, as much as I dared.
And, halfway to the door, two figures abruptly flared into full color and looked right at us.
I froze as the dragon Ferrovax, still sitting in his chair, smoke dribbling from his nostrils, stared right at me—and gave me a slow, toothy smile.
Oh, Hell’s bells.
If he raised the alarm, we were done.
Ferrovax inhaled in preparation to call out.
And, over the sounds of the room, I heard three sharp, quick raps of wood on stone.
I whipped my head in the other direction to see Vadderung, also in full color, still seated, still faced off against Ferrovax. His black eye patch lent him a particularly sinister aspect. He held a