wearing a shapeless, knee-length plaid shirt that looked like it would have been thrown away at a thrift store.
She was scrutinizing an actual paper spreadsheet she’d laid out on the desk, but she looked up and smiled when I entered. I felt an instant spike of adrenaline. Maven was so old and so powerful that if I wasn’t ready for it, meeting her eyes could feel like looking at the sun. “Hello, Lex,” she said pleasantly. “Thanks for coming in tonight.”
“No problem.” I closed the door of the tiny office, positioned my chair sideways so I could see both the door and my boss, and sat down. “What’s up? Another call?”
I tried not to sound bored. During the past couple of months, I’d sat in on a number of calls between Maven and the Old World leaders she was trying to recruit for her new project: a countrywide system of government in the Old World. The calls were long, dull, and filled with careful language and absolutely no commitments. Maven said that was how most vampire deals went—lots of circling each other before any decisions were made.
“No, not a call.” Maven studied me for a heartbeat, and said, “Is everything all right, Lex?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said instantly. I hoped that a quick answer would keep her from noticing the lie. It worked sometimes with Quinn . . . or at least, I thought it did.
Maven gave me a small smile that suggested she was not an idiot. “At any rate, I actually have a real assignment for you. If you want it.”
“Really? Now?” I hadn’t expected to get an actual assignment until Maven had marshaled more support . . . which had seemed like it would take months, if not years.
“Believe it or not, you’ve been requested,” she said. “In Atlanta.”
I almost said, “Atlanta, Georgia?” but stopped myself in time. Of course she meant Georgia.
You need to get more sleep, babe.
Ignoring Sam, I squinted for a second, trying to remember Maven’s lectures on the power structure of the continental US. Like most older, large cities, Atlanta was vampire territory. But there was something weird about the cardinal vampire. What was it?
Oh. Right.
“The Mad Cavalier,” I said, earning a slight nod from Maven.
“Some of his people call him that, although I don’t think he appreciates it,” she said mildly. “He’s one of the rare vampires who still uses his full name, Abner Beaumont Calhoun. What do you remember about him?”
“Uh . . . not a lot.” I searched my memory. “He was turned during the Civil War; he’s been in charge of Atlanta for a long time . . . and you’re hoping to get him to accept the parliament’s authority, but you don’t want him as one of the actual members because he’s nuts.”
She frowned. “I wouldn’t say that he’s nuts. He’s . . . eccentric.”
“Isn’t he the one who turned four of his buddies and named them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”
Maven actually chuckled. “So you were paying attention. Yes, he did turn four of his own men when they were dying on the battlefield. He can be . . . impulsive.” She paused for a moment, considering. “If he were a woman, he’d probably be called ‘emotional.’”
I snorted. “Still,” she continued, “Calhoun is seen as nonconformist, independent. He’s not a man who would willingly be anyone’s puppet. That’s exactly why I would like you to go help him, if you’re willing.”
Ah. That made more sense.
Maven’s plan required two things: she needed to recruit the parliament members themselves, of course, but she also needed the majority of the American Old World to agree to be governed. That would be the harder part.
Right now, the Old World was a disparate collection of territories, each with its own leadership. Many of those leaders would see the parliament as Maven trying to take over the whole country, or trying to interfere in their business. That wasn’t her intention at all, but in order to prove that, she would need to get a number of influential people to trust her. Calhoun could be one of them.
“Have you already pitched the parliament to him?” I asked.
“He wanted to think about it,” she said, straight-faced. That was more or less the response we’d been getting from everyone since Dashiell. Nobody wanted to be the next domino—or the first one to defy Maven. “My hope is that by going to Atlanta and helping him with his problem, you can convince him to join the cause.”