jewelry in what Hilde had provided, or smart pantsuits, or casual little dresses, or anything that might work for further meetings. The implication was clear: get your ass home. Which I planned to do, just as soon as I got a debrief. And some of whatever delicious scent was wafting through the louvers on the door.
I stuck my head out. Mircea was there, tie and jacket off and shoes somewhere other than on his feet. He was putting the contents of a tray on a little table under the Chagall, and there were two place settings. Since I didn’t see anybody else around, I wandered over to take a look.
Damn.
Lasagna.
Well, I had to stay now.
“Where are you finding cooks?” I asked. “I thought you took them all for soldiers.”
“Practice soldiers,” he corrected, adding a basket of breadsticks. “Although some turned out to be quite apt. Some of those decided to stay and chance their luck. I believe the consul pulled the rest of her staff out of Dante’s to make up the deficiency.”
He gestured at the table, and I sat down. And discovered that there was also salad, wine, and sadly thin slices of cheesecake to go along with the meal. I dug in.
Mircea joined me, to my surprise. Vamps don’t have to eat, although some seemed to enjoy it anyway. He was off and on. Tonight—and it was night; it felt like I’d slept for hours—I guess he wanted to be sociable.
Although, for the next ten minutes, that mostly involved watching me shovel it in. And, seriously, it would have been a shame for whoever made this to end up as a soldier. He—or she—had a gift, one that stretched to homemade noodles, fresh San Marzano tomato sauce, real ricotta, plump creminis—
Damn, I was hungry!
I finally looked up, at the mopping-up-the-plate-with-bread phase, to find Mircea watching me. “What?” I asked, around a mouthful of garlicky goodness that rivaled even Tami’s.
“Nothing,” he said, smiling, and refilled my glass. “I enjoy watching you eat.”
I didn’t know how to take that, so I concentrated on the wine. It was red, of course, and dark as blood, but tasted of Tuscany: soft, mellow, and meltingly sweet, almost a dessert wine, but with a bit of a bite to it. It reminded me of the man pouring it, although Mircea was only soft and sweet when he wanted something.
But I was too mellow to even bother narrowing my eyes. I just waited for it. And pulled over the cheesecake.
Mircea did not offer me his, which was a pity, but I couldn’t have held it anyway. I finally sat back with the rest of my wine and regarded him through the golden glow of a serious food haze. He knew how to mellow me out.
The bastard.
“To what do I owe this bounty?” I finally asked, because eating had made me sleepy again, and I wanted my bed.
“It was the least we could do.”
I tried raising an eyebrow as Dorina had done, but both went up instead. I sighed. Mircea grinned; he seemed much more relaxed tonight for some reason.
“You may have saved the alliance this afternoon,” he explained. “I do not think that most of the people there realized that you were bluffing.”
“And they needed the lesson because?”
He sat back with his own wine. “It has been a struggle, getting the other senates in line,” he admitted. “There’s constant resistance, more than I anticipated—and I anticipated a good deal.”
“Why?” I looked at him in disbelief. “Don’t they get it? This isn’t a freaking drill! The senate’s been attacked—more than once—two gods have almost come back and stomped us out of existence, and now this Jonathan character nearly blew up a city! What does it take?”
“But they did not see any of that, Cassie. Well, except for the assault on this senate a month ago. An assault during which they sat by—quite literally in some cases—while we fought, not willing to risk their people in what might be a charade.”
“A charade? But the gods—Apollo, Ares—”
“You dealt with the gods,” he reminded me. “In one case, far out in the desert; and in the other, far back in time. No one saw you, at least no one whose word they would take. To many, this looks less like a war and more like a power grab on behalf of the consul.”
“They can’t honestly believe that!” I said, and then I thought of the covens. If they believed something similar, then their attack made a lot more sense.