Although the latter might have had something to do with the silent tears rolling down her face, unnoticed and unchecked.

I’d never seen a vamp cry before. And even though I wasn’t seeing it now, it looked like I was, and it threw me. Like this night, like this whole week, hadn’t done that enough already.

I was beginning to wonder if you could get so far off balance that you’d never quite make it back to true. I was starting to feel like that, and then she looked up. But not at me.

She was cradling something I hadn’t noticed because my eyes hadn’t left her face. Something with thin blond hair, soiled and tangled, a slight form, a dirty blue shirt or dress. Something—

Someone.

Child.

The images slammed into me, most of them too fast to process, but I got the gist. She’d found the girl; she’d lost the girl. And had been looking for her ever since. Searching the underbelly of the city, places like the one where she’d found her, places like this. And cutting a swath through an entire chain of slavers, smugglers and Black Circle members in the process.

There hadn’t been a civil war in the smuggling community. They hadn’t savaged each other and then thrown the bodies into the portals. That had been Dorina on a rampage, every time I went to sleep, looking for the child she’d lost.

And finally found.

“Too late,” I mouthed along with her.

She clutched the girl harder, and her face was so open, so easy to read. More so than mine ever was. She didn’t mask her feelings, didn’t hide behind sarcasm or bad jokes. Didn’t pretend. She hurt; she cried.

And I felt the earth shift a little more under my feet, centuries of preconceptions crumbling beneath the foundations.

I didn’t know who I was anymore. Didn’t know who she was. It was strange to be facing the end of my life, and realize that I’d never really known myself at all.

Or the memory I was suddenly seeing.

The golden footsteps I had followed across the city ended at her body.

She was crumpled on the floor, near the line of cages where she must have collapsed. I did not know why she had come here. Perhaps hoping to free the others? If so, she had been too late.

Like us.

“Not quite,” the creature with me murmured, his long wings sweeping the ground as he knelt a few yards away.

And held out a hand.

And from the body rose…a golden child, happy and laughing and skipping over to the shining one, who opened his arms for her.

I stared as he picked her up, this creature made of light. Like him, I realized. I didn’t say it aloud, but he nodded.

“They stole her from my people.”

“Why?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

“For the same reason they stole all of these.” He glanced around. “They wished to make a weapon, to give themselves an edge in a war. They needed something that would work in Faerie and on Earth. But there are few things that walk the Divide well enough for their purposes.”

“The Divide?”

“Earth is the highest of the hells; Faerie is the lowest of the heavens. My people originated in one realm and…moved…to the other. Therefore our magic works in both.”

I didn’t understand. I just reached for the child, but he kept a hand on her arm. She looked up at him, bright-eyed, curious.

But he shook his head. “She must return to her people.”

“Then…she is not dead?”

“The body is. But she will one day be strong enough to make another, since her essence was not scattered. Thanks to you.”

I didn’t understand that, either. I didn’t understand anything. Except that the child would not be here.

She would not be family.

“You have a family,” he said softly. “More than you know.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. The child didn’t, either, but she pulled away from him. And this time, he let her go.

She came over to me, and looked down at the body I still held. And then up at me. And smiled.

And placed a soft kiss, light, light like air, on my cheek.

“To help you bridge your own divide,” the Irin murmured.

I looked at him, hurting, defeated. “I don’t understand,” I cried.

“You will.”

Something clattered to the floor behind me, loud in the silence. I jumped and spun—and saw no one. Just an echoing, dark warehouse, cold and empty and completely still.

And the same was true when I turned back a moment later.

And found myself alone.

The woman—Dorina—was gone. And so were the child and the Irin. No sign of them remained, not a scent, not even an impression in the dust. I stared, wondering if my fevered brain had dreamed them up.

Like the hubcap that suddenly clattered to the floor at my feet, shiny and metallic and reflecting—

“Damn.”

I started moving just as the whole towering line of boxes began to tip over, coming after me in wave after wave of cardboard. And falling machine parts, which seemed to constitute most of the boxes’ contents. Parts that were glittering in the moonlight and striking off concrete and about to cave my head in if I didn’t get out of the way.

Which would have been easier if they hadn’t been coming from both directions.

I stopped, turned, and went back the other way, but found no escape. Except for one. I dove into an empty cage, trying to avoid seeing what was on either side in favor of watching what was in front. Because I knew who was going to be coming through that fall of destruction, and I needed to be out of here before he trapped me in—

And then it wasn’t a problem anymore. When he suddenly materialized out of nothing in front of my makeshift bunker and snatched me out. And while his face was still a blackened mess, he must have been busy healing the important stuff. Because my feet weren’t even touching the ground.

“I just want you to know,” Lawrence said amiably, “when I am consul, your father will be the first to die.”

“Then he’ll live a long time,” I gasped, because the hand holding me was around my throat. “The Senate remains.”

“For the moment,” Lawrence said, frowning, because I guess I wasn’t on script. I was supposed to be cowed and begging or awed and overcome by his brilliance.

Instead, I decided to go out as I’d lived, a bitch to the very end, and materialized a stake into my hand. Only to get thrown at the remaining boxes. Which hadn’t budged because they contained what felt like solid rock.

I slid off and was jerked back within striking range, because Lawrence wasn’t afraid of me. And why should he be? I was beat-up, bruised and bloodied, and had the use of only one hand. Even if I managed to slip the wooden sliver into that cold, dead heart, there would be no way to slice his throat before he snapped mine.

And he knew it.

A smile cracked those burnt lips, causing a little blood to ooze down his chin. “I think this is what they call checkmate.”

And it would have been. Except for the figure who suddenly rose up behind him, very real in the darkness. With black, black eyes that met mine.

And locked.

I swallowed, and Lawrence eased up slightly, waiting for my final pleas, I suppose.

He would wait a while.

“I don’t think…that’s a game…for three,” I whispered, and saw his eyes go wide.

Right before he threw me away, trying to get space to turn.

But the boxes that hemmed me in did the same to him, and there was nowhere to go. I hit the ground, but turned in time to see a shining blade slice cleanly through his jugular. He knocked his assailant away, sending her sailing halfway across the length of the warehouse, but I was already moving.

I lunged off the ground, ducked under a fist that disintegrated before it could touch me, as Lawrence’s patented trick rippled inward from the extremities. He was disintegrating, but not as quickly as before, his injuries taking a toll. And the target I needed was still solid. He stumbled back, trying to buy himself another second, even as his legs foamed away into nothingness.

Even as I fell on him, snarling.

And slammed my stake home.

Epilogue

It was amazing what twenty-four hours could do, I thought, gazing out over the now pristine ballroom.

Not that there weren’t still signs of the battle. Tapestries were draped around the walls, hiding missing marble panels and weapons’ fire, and lending the room an odd Gypsy vibe. Potted plants had sprouted here and there, too, covering gaps in the floor where broken tiles had been pried out and not yet replaced. And one of the great chandeliers was missing, obviously too damaged for repair, leaving a strange patch of dimmer light in the center of the floor, where I stood.

That was okay, though. That was actually my only saving grace. Not that a shadow did much to conceal me from the hundreds of sharp vampire eyes scattered around what remained of the ballroom, but it was better than nothing. Especially since I had the vague impression I might be listing slightly to the left.

I straightened up, trying to look nonchalant, and caught an eye roll from Ray in the family box.

He was easy to spot because he was hanging over the side, dressed to kill in a tux so sleek it simply had to be bespoke. I didn’t know where he’d gotten it, but I suspected that Louis-Cesare’s tailor was being taken advantage of. I didn’t know, though, since I hadn’t seen Ray. I hadn’t seen anybody much, since I woke up an hour ago, after apparently being out of it for most of a day.

And I pretty much still was. I’d been woken up, still half asleep and dreaming about little golden footprints leading me out of a long, dark tunnel. And then dressed in a scarlet, bias-cut gown that was far too attention-getting for my taste, only nobody had asked me.

They hadn’t asked me when they dragged me in here, either, surrounded by a bunch of guards I didn’t need except as props to keep me on my feet. Only then, the guards had disappeared, blending back into the crowd and leaving me alone. And facing a balcony stuffed with new faces.

The new senators had been inducted while I slept, I guessed. I recognized the old crew, the ones too wily or too strong or just too damned hard to kill for the war to have removed them. There was Marlowe, looking like a guy on his way to a fancy dress ball, in full-on Elizabethan regalia. Or maybe Stuart era; I always got the styles mixed up. But the velvets and laces didn’t make him look any less deadly, maybe because of the searing look he was sending me.