The Council of Shadows (24 page)

I could have sworn Adrian said she was French, or at least as much as Shadowspawn can be
any
human nationality. And . . . Wait a minute. . . they've both got
swords
with them, hanging on the back of their chairs, and nobody's noticing!

Adrian bowed with a hand on his heart; Ellen sank into a carefully practiced curtsy, spreading her own long dress of robin's-egg blue a little as she did. It couldn't hurt . . . and this
was
approximately the ruler of the Earth and his consort, or something much closer to that than she'd thought there could be.

The Shadowspawn touched fingertips, evidently their equivalent of shaking hands; she'd seen it before, and then exchanged the air kiss on the cheek.

Adrian made the introductions, calmly naming her as “Ellen Brézé,” and “my wife
.
” Both the Shadowspawn looked at her.. . .

Uh-oh. There's that chocolate-coconut-macaroon look again. Why do these people . . . things . . . whatever . . . find me so attractive, or appetizing, or both? They all want to
eat
me, metaphorically and then literally. I don't mind it with Adrian, except when I get the flashbacks about his lovely sister and her winning ways, but
he
doesn't want to
kill
me as as part of the peak experience.

But they nodded acknowledgment and murmured polite words. Adrian held her chair, and put her purse on the handbag stool; it was all very Old World. Étienne sighed.

“You always were the most willful boy,” he said, in a smooth, rich voice that vibrated with undertones of power. “Willfully eccentric, as well.”

“It is a Brézé characteristic, Great-grandfather,” Adrian said lightly. “After all, belonging to the Order of the Black Dawn was an eccentricity in its day, is it not so?”

“And your parents?”

“Well, the last time I saw them. Though that was rather under false pretenses, as I was infiltrating their house with a view to a kill.”

Both the older Brézés laughed indulgently; rather as if listening to a child describing a prank.

“Ah, yes, your father has written an amusing letter about how you deceived him and killed Hajime,” Étienne said.

The sommelier came and popped the cork from a bottle of champagne, holding it expertly tilted to keep the noise and foam to a minimum. Then he filled their flutes; it was a Réserve Blanc de Blancs d'Aÿ Brut Millésimé 2000 Grand Cru, tickling her palate with citrus and honey.

Étienne sipped, nodded approval, and continued: “It was about time that someone put the little yellow monkey in his place. We did not reveal the secrets of Power to the swine so that they could raise their hands against their betters.”

Ellen choked, then coughed to cover it as the pair looked at her.

Gold and beige tableware was set out, and the
amuse-bouche
bites arrived: langoustine arranged in a little pyramid, an almost liquid mozzarella cheese, miniature samosas, beetroot as well as cheese and olive chips, with a choice of four types of bread: cereal, baguette, shrimp and bacon bits.

“Still, it's good to see family now and then,” Étienne said. “Particularly your children, one imagines.”

Adrian's hands didn't even pause as he broke a piece of bread, but his nostrils flared slightly.

“I did not have that pleasure. I was under an assumed identity, after all.”

Seraphine made a
tsk
sound. “Ah, well, your parents . . . our grandchildren, after all . . . will take excellent care of them. Perhaps better than Adrienne would have, not being either as busy or as ambitious. They much valued their time with you two when you were young, despite having to maintain the pretense that they were your aunt and uncle.”

“No more fosterage?” Adrian said.

Ouch,
Ellen thought.
Adrian really loved his foster parents, even though they were renfields. He still blames himself for their deaths. I don't think he killed them, and Harvey doesn't think so either and he was
there
, but Adrian still feels responsible.

“No,” Étienne said. “That has fallen out of fashion in the past generation. The gap between the powers of child and parent is no longer what it was in
our
generation, so there is less need for precautions.”

Seraphine nodded. “We killed our own parents, of course, as soon as we were adults, the tiresome creatures, but that would be much more difficult now.”

Ellen knew a moment's vicious satisfaction. The parents of the. . . things . . . she was talking to had been human beings. Very
bad
human beings, with a lot of Shadowspawn in them, but still not really the ancient predators reborn. They'd used what Power they had to make those genes meet and match . . . and they'd paid an exquisitely appropriate price for it at the hands of those offspring. The hands, not to mention the teeth.

What did they
expect
?
she thought.

“I am sure they will ensure . . . forgive me, my descendant . . . that your little ones have a more
conventional
attitude to things than you did,” Étienne said.

Like, conventional for a sadistic monster. Of course, he
is
a sadistic monster. Normalcy's all in the point of view, I suppose.

Whatever their moral state or age or background, the Brézés certainly ate in the grand old French manner, in fact almost in the
antique
French manner—religiously, and with only light conversation so as not to distract. That left her thankful for the chance to observe without offering more than the occasional commonplace.

She'd had a little trouble following the talk at first. Adrian's French was slightly but noticeably old-fashioned. His great-grandparents' version was
extremely
so, and not only in the way they used contractions. There was a hint of a rolled harshness to the vowels, occasionally words like
moé
instead of
moi
, as if they were a considerable way back towards the Middle Ages. Or at least towards the world between the Revolution and the fall of the Second Empire, before the accent of the Parisian bourgeoisie completely triumphed as the standard form.

“How did madame come to meet the
duc
?” Ellen said at last.

Seraphine raised one elegant eyebrow. “We are cousins, of course.. . .”

Wait a minute, there were
black
Brézés in Belle Epoque Paris?

At Ellen's look of incomprehension: “Ah, you mean my outfit! Beautiful, is it not?”

We are
definitely
talking at cross purposes here.

“It's a beautiful dress,” she said.

“Oh, no, I mean Ayan,” she said, and touched one finger to the opposite arm. “Gorgeous,
n'est-ce pas
?”

For a moment the gesture itself distracted Ellen's attention from its meaning; the way Seraphine held her wrist and moved the finger was. . .

Exaggeratedly feminine. Effeminate, in fact; sort of like a drag queen or a really old silent film of Sarah Bernhardt . . . Why would she . . . Oh, that's it. It's Edwardian body language, or even Victorian. It's what drag queens
imitate
these days, passed on down by generations of convention while the way
actual women
hold themselves and gesture changed. That's the sort of posture that she picked up from her mother as a little girl, before she grew up and tortured her mom to death. She's the real article in more ways than one.

Seraphine went on: “We acquired her near Djibouti shortly before the Great War, when I was still corporeal. Actually bought her as a slave from some nomads, a strange experience but intriguing. Beautiful, and of a fierceness . . . She lasted an entire year and died exquisitely, such defiance mingled with the pain and despair.”

Ellen paused with her fork halfway to her mouth, looked down at the little samosa on it, and doggedly chewed and swallowed.

She's
wearing
one of her victims like a
dress
,
she thought.
Oh, new vistas of ick-ness open at every turn!

Then:
Adrienne could have been wearing
me
for the next thousand years when she felt in the mood, calling up my body's DNA from the memory bank; she certainly drank enough of my blood . . . and whatnot. God, but I'm glad she's dead. Actually all-the-way dead.

Seraphine turned to Adrian for a moment. “Your Ellen has the most intriguing mind, but what have you been
doing
with it? The surface is like the armor of an ironclad, there are so many wards and blocks and traps!”

“Elementary precautions, my dear Seraphine,” Adrian said.

Suddenly Ellen felt a warmth inside.
He's just tolerating them,
she thought.
Even
they
can't tell, but I can. And he's flaunting me partly just to piss them off, which I find I don't mind at all.

Étienne went on: “But killing your sister, and the Final Death at that . . . perhaps a little excessive,
mon fils
?”

“It's not as if she hadn't tried to kill me often enough,” Adrian pointed out. “Serious attempts. And not only in the line of duty, as it were.”

“Ah, well, sibling rivalry,” Seraphine said tolerantly. “Who can avoid it? I still remember how annoying little Anaïs was when we were children, taking up our parents' time and being tiresome. And how often I tried to drown her or push her out of windows or set her on fire, even when
Maman
scolded me for it. What I am really annoyed about,
mon chouchou
, is that you have neglected us so long. Admittedly you were involved with those horrible Brotherhood vermin, but still, after the closeness of your childhood visits, it is a wounding.”

The next course arrived:
terre et rivière
, a sea urchin–and-avocado dish, and
truffe blanche d'Alba
,
gnocchis légères
,
eau de Parmesan
, with beetroot and eel.

“These Brittany sea urchins are unrivaled,” Seraphine said. “The current chef here is Breton.”

“Oh, they're better than the Santa Barabra variety, a little,” Adrian said. “But in my opinion those of Hokkaido are fully as good, if not better. The gnocchi are delicious, but extremely un-gnocchi-like.”

Odd,
Ellen thought.
I can actually
enjoy
dinner under these circumstances
.
Am I getting callous? Or just . . . case-hardened? Or am I braver than I thought I was? Or has Adrian turned me into a compulsive foodie? Or all of the above?

The contrast between the buttery richness of the avocado and the sea-kissed taste of the urchins was certainly arresting. They finished the champagne, and she cleared her mouth with some of the bread.

“Ah, turbot with black-truffle emulsion,” Étienne pronounced. “Now with this, Meursault. Les Tessons Domaine Michel Bouzereau 2007, I think. It will serve admirably for the
Noix de Saint Jacques en coquille senteurs des bois
and even for the
Jambon blanc truffe spaghetti au parmesan
as well. One must not be a purist, like some visiting . . . foreigner.”

He was about to say
visiting American
, I think
, Ellen mused.
Well, miracles never cease. Tact.

The sea scallops in their shells were barely steamed, soft-textured and fragrant, with wild wood vegetables, salsify, tomato, turnip and black truffle.

“I do prefer the ham,” Seraphine said, looking down in pleasure at the smoked meat in its rectangular nest of al dente spaghetti, with cèpe mushrooms and black truffles standing like the masts of a ship. “One grows nostalgic for a sauce that is a true
sauce
rather than an ethereal wisp, and the truffles are of the earth. I grant you that this is no longer the age of Escoffier, and one must move with fashion, but yet. . .”

The white Burgundy blossomed in Ellen's mouth like the scent of apple orchards in the springtime.

“I notice Arnaud was not included in this little family gathering,” Adrian said. “It would, perhaps, be a little awkward just at the moment.”

Ellen closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the way the dead man had fallen, and the other coming for her with the knife. And the mindless killing malice behind the fossa's snarl. When she opened her eyes Seraphine's yellow gaze was on her, avid, and her tongue came out to moisten her lips in what was
probably
an unconscious gesture; she returned the look with a bland smile and mentally elevated a finger.

“Arnaud, Arnaud,” Étienne said with a regretful sigh. “I fear he is more and more a creature of impulse; and impulse always did govern him more than is good. He is unlikely to see the twenty-second century at this rate.”

A smile that was at once cultured and feral. “Surely, my dear boy, you do not imagine that if
I
sought your death I would proceed in so amateurish a manner?”

“Granted, Great-grandfather.”

The table was cleared and the desserts came: a concoction of meringue, white chocolate and almonds, pastries filled with chocolate and an iced pistachio side, and a fantasy of cooked and raw grapefruit and lime sweet as palate cleanser. Then coffee,
noir
for the three Shadowspawn, and
noisette
for her in deference to American sensibilities, and cognac.