But Claire either didn’t notice or didn’t understand. “But eleven men—”

“Not men,” I told her, as Radu moved to Marlowe’s side. “Senior masters.”

“And that makes a difference?”

“I…Yes,” I said helplessly, because trying to explain would take too long and I wanted to get back to the point.

But that clearly wasn’t happening.

Something cracked, loud as a gunshot, and I jumped, before I realized it was the counter under Marlowe’s hands. “Tell her,” he said harshly.

“I don’t think—”

“Tell her!”

I glanced at Mircea, who didn’t see it because his eyes were on the chief spy. Like his brother’s hand, which had slipped onto Marlowe’s shoulder. Probably in case he lost his shit and tried to go for Claire across the table.

Not that that was likely. He wasn’t an idiot, and despite appearances, he didn’t really suffer from a lack of impulse control. He was just furious. And only one thing caused that kind of impotent rage in a senior master.

“Lawrence was one of yours,” I guessed.

There was no spoken acknowledgment; Marlowe looked like he might be past it at this point. But his head jerked down in a half nod. And at least a few things started to make sense.

I glanced at Claire, who had figured out that she’d stepped in it, but wasn’t sure how. “Senior masters are like…supernatural tanks,” I told her, even though it was a lousy analogy. In a contest between the two, the tank would be toast. “They have abilities that are hard to explain—”

“I know what vampires can do,” she said quietly.

“No. You really don’t.” I glanced around, but no one was stopping me—or helping, and this wasn’t exactly easy to explain. The basics, yes, but conveying the scale…It was like trying to describe a trillion dollars. Newscasters threw that number around all the time, but it was hard to get a grip on it—until you were standing in the middle of a city block hip-deep in hundred-dollar bills.

“You know how a master vamp is stronger than a regular one, right?” I finally asked.

“Of course.”

“A lot stronger.”

“Yes.”

“Well, take that difference, and increase it by an exponential amount, every time a master goes up a level. It’s not just a step higher, it’s…a different world,” I said, floundering, because there really was no way to convey the difference.

But Claire seemed to understand something, because her eyes narrowed. “You’re saying that—what’s the next to lowest level of master? Sixth?”

I nodded.

“You’re saying that a sixth-level master compared to a seventh is like a seventh-level compared to someone like…like Ray?”

“Hey!” Drifted in from the hall.

“No,” I told her, biting my lip. “Ray is a master—”

“As hard as that is to believe,” Radu murmured.

“—he’s just not a very good one.”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Ray said, appearing in the doorway. And then dodging out again shouting, “Shit, shit!”

Claire looked after him, frowning slightly. Clearly, he was messing with the tidy little box in her mental file labeled VAMPIRE, which wasn’t supposed to contain anything quite that pathetic. “Okay, so it would be like comparing a seventh-level to a regular old vampire?”

I thought about it, and decided that was actually pretty close. “Something like that.”

“So each level…” Claire wrinkled her forehead. “It’s like they’re strong enough to be a master to the next level down?”

“That depends on the individual. Power varies a lot within levels, even before you get to first—”

“And what happens at first?”

“It isn’t really a level. It’s more a catchall for anyone who’s too powerful to fit into the system anymore. It basically means, well—”

“Really, really powerful.”

“Yes.”

“So these masters you sent out last night, you’re saying they were the equivalent of what? Eleven war mages?”

Louis-Cesare snorted.

Claire frowned.

“More like eleven armies,” I said, since she was looking at me.

“Then why are they dead? If they were so strong—”

“That is the question,” Mircea said, cutting Kit off, who had been about to say something rude, by the look of him. “We not only sent some of our best agents, but we sent them in pairs, with each selected to complement the other’s strengths and weaknesses. They were ordered to locate Varus and then to call for assistance, if need be, from a group of additional operatives we had standing by. No one called.”

“Then whatever happened, happened fast,” I said, thinking about a vampire’s lightning reflexes.

Mircea nodded. “I would assume a trap or snare, although there are few that would be sufficient. And our people have been trained to recognize and avoid those. But even if I am able to accept that both operatives on a team forgot their training, or were somehow overwhelmed in another way, I cannot believe it for all six! Nor can I account for why none of them managed to send a warning.”

And yet, he was going to have to, I realized. Mircea was in charge of coordinating the Senate’s anti-smuggling crusade, which drew assistance from other senators’ families. Other senators who were probably already demanding to know what had happened to their people. And if he couldn’t tell them…Well, I didn’t actually know what would happen if he couldn’t tell them, but I doubted it would be anything good.

I wondered what he planned to do about it.

“If they didn’t send a warning, how did you know Dory was in trouble?” Claire asked.

“I didn’t.” Mircea glanced at Louis-Cesare.

“I heard her scream, in my mind,” he said briefly. “It was cut off, almost immediately, but the voice was unmistakable. I knew approximately where she was from the last time her team had reported in, and was able to track her from there.”

“But I thought you couldn’t…not unless she was—” Claire looked at me, the frown growing. “I thought you weren’t taking that stuff anymore.”

There was no need to ask what “stuff” she meant, since there was only one thing that ramped up my mental abilities. It also helped to control my fits, but so did living with a magical null like Claire. And the wine had a lot of other side effects, like decreasing my edge in battle, that had me worried.

I hadn’t worked out a long-term solution yet, like what I was going to do when she went back to Faerie. But my usage lately had gone way, way down. Too much so to explain how Louis-Cesare had been able to tune into my brain like a freaking shortwave radio.

“I am not able to read your mind,” he said, reading my mind.

“What the hell!”

“But when you are in trouble, you project—”

“Not halfway across a city!”

“I was not halfway across a city,” he said calmly. “I was leading the response team, which meant I was in Manhattan—”

“Okay, not across two miles, then!”

I didn’t know why I was so upset, but suddenly it felt like the walls were closing in. I abruptly stood up, even though there was zero chance of going anywhere until they were finished with me. But it was like Marlowe and the counter; he’d had to crack it or someone’s skull, and I had to move—now—or run screaming down the road like Ray.

Stinky snarled and spit in my arms, not because I was squeezing him too tight but because he was trying to get away. We had a lot in common, and he wanted to sink his teeth into somebody. Fey are formidable pretty much from the day they’re born, as far as I can tell, but while he couldn’t really hurt anyone in this group, the reverse wasn’t true.

“It’s okay,” I told him, stroking his soft baby hair, but I wasn’t sure who I was talking to—him or me.

“It is not ‘okay.’ You are upset,” Louis-Cesare said, undoing whatever soothing qualities Stinky had imparted.

“Stop doing that!”

“I do not need to read your mind to know that, Dorina. You are backing away—”

“I am not!” I said, right before my butt bumped into the counter. “And how do I know you aren’t?”

“Because I have just told you. And what difference would it make if I was? Why are you angry?”

“Maybe I don’t like someone messing around in my head!”

“Messing around?” His forehead knitted.

“For God’s sake!” He ran into English problems at the most convenient times. “It means—”

“I know what it means. What I do not understand is why it is a problem.”

“Why?” I just stared at him. “Why wouldn’t it be? Would you want me doing it to you?”

“I would not care,” he said, and actually looked like he meant it. “And in any case, it has happened before—”

“Rarely! And not at will!”

“—and you do not need to do it to me. You have my memories. All of them.”

I blinked, because I hadn’t realized he knew about that. A metaphysical accident had resulted in a colossal info dump shortly after I met him—four hundred years of Louis-Cesare’s memories straight into mine. I hadn’t wanted them, hadn’t asked for them, didn’t want them now. I just didn’t know how to get rid of them.

I also didn’t know why he was just standing there like it was no big deal. If anything, he looked impatient, as if I was the one being weird here. He also looked like he wanted an answer, which was a little hard because I wasn’t sure what the question was.

“That’s…different,” I finally said.

“How so?”