“I don’t understand,” I said harshly. “I know it’s possible to extend life with magic, but that much?”

“It can be done,” Marlowe said grimly.

“Then why doesn’t everyone do it?”

“Because not everyone wishes to go mad!” He made a savage gesture, and the disembodied head disappeared.

He was looking a little tense, so I looked to the others for an explanation. Which Radu was happy to provide. ’Du loved to lecture.

“Magical humans are symbiotic creatures,” he told me pleasantly, crossing one silk-hosed leg over the other and sipping at his coffee. “Unlike vampires, or normal humans, they derive energy from two different sources. In effect, they are human talismans, feeding from the natural magical energy of the world as well as from food.”

“I thought they made magic.”

“It would be more accurate to say that they process it, transforming it from its natural, wild form into something they can use. Some of them are better at that than others, of course, and those who are tend to live longer. They can rely more on their magic as their human bodies begin to fade. It’s quite fascinating, really.”

“The stronger the mage, the longer the life,” Ray said, quoting an old saying. Which was a mistake, because it reminded Marlowe that he was there.

“You. Out,” he said, hiking a thumb over his shoulder.

“Why? I was there—”

“And you gave your statement last night. I don’t know what the hell you’re even doing here.”

“Supporting my master.”

“Supporting—she is not your master!”

“Yeah, well. We’re in negotiations.”

And suddenly something shifted behind Marlowe’s eyes. The rich brown went dark and flat and dead, and I put a hand on Ray’s arm because he did not need to make a wrong move right now. Not that I thought it was too likely. He’d frozen in place, the bones in his wrist going completely rigid. It was like I was gripping a statue.

Until Marlowe said: “Get. Out.”

Ray got out.

Sometimes he could be smart.

There was a momentary lull while coffee cups were refilled and Marlowe presumably choked down his desire to kill everyone in sight.

“If it’s something that they can do naturally, then why does it drive them mad?” I finally asked.

“There is nothing natural about what Jonathan does,” Louis-Cesare said.

But Radu shook his head. “A mage consuming someone else’s magic is no more unnatural than a human taking drugs. The problem is the amount.”

“Jonathan is overdosing?” I guessed.

“In a way, yes. But he doesn’t really have a choice at this point. It is possible to extend a mage’s life, but it requires a great deal of energy. And as the years pass, the amount needed grows, as their human side breaks down and they become more and more dependent on magic to survive. Considering his age, it is safe to say that Jonathan receives all or almost all of his life energy from magic, and his body cannot possibly produce so much on its own.”

“But it’s still just magic.”

“Yes, but it isn’t his, you see. And mages are supposed to feed off a mix of food and magical sources. When they start feeding their bodies only magic, it throws off that balance. And when they begin feeding them multiple different types of magic, since it is not usually possible to obtain as much as they require from a single source, and when some of those types are not even human…”

“They short-circuit their brains.”

“Something like that. It’s very much like a human taking too many drugs, and mixing them in ways they weren’t designed to be mixed. It rarely ends well.”

“None of which is the point,” Marlowe said severely.

“The point is, where is he getting it?” Mircea said.

Marlowe nodded. “He is hemorrhaging magic every moment, simply by existing. Not to mention any spells he may do, and if he was the one behind last night’s fiasco—” He threw up his hands. “Even were he on the premises—”

“He wasn’t,” I replied. “At least, that’s what he said.”

“He was likely telling you the truth. He is not one to risk his own neck,” Louis-Cesare said bitterly.

“Which means he was having to project over a distance,” Marlowe said. “Which requires even more energy. Someone, somewhere, is feeding him a great deal of power. A very great deal.”

“Which may well be why we haven’t heard from him,” Radu pointed out. “He doesn’t need Louis-Cesare if he is being fed, so to speak, by someone else.”

“But why?” I asked. “What does a smuggling ring need with an ancient, crazy necromancer?”

“This isn’t about a smuggling ring!” Marlowe snapped.

Mircea agreed. “Smugglers work best in secret, trying to hide their tracks and avoid the authorities. They rarely provoke them, and certainly not in such ways.”

“Then who does?” I asked.

“Someone who wants to make them look bad.”

“What?”

Marlowe nodded. “That could be one point of this whole fiasco—making us look like fools. We finally persuade the senates into an alliance for the war—an alliance, I might add, that is paper-thin and hanging by a thread—”

“You think this is about the war?”

“What else? If someone wanted to make us look weak, they could hardly do better than to kill our agents at will, to attack us in our own base—”

“We think that’s why they—whoever they are—needed Jonathan,” Radu explained. “To attack Central. There’s not too many ways in there, you know.”

“And then there’s the matter of what they did when they broke in,” Marlowe said, and threw something else into the air.

This image was flat, black and white and grainy. A security camera feed, I supposed. It hovered in the air like the other, only it was transparent enough that I could see Radu blinking at me from the other side. I shifted in the chair slightly, putting the wall as a backdrop, and saw the main doors at Central. Frick was being buzzed through at the head of the group of Slava’s boys, who filed into the lobby and—

“What are they doing?” I asked, stunned.

“Slitting their throats,” Marlowe said, as the group did exactly that, almost in unison.

And, as anyone would, the vamps at the desk ran forward to try to stop the slaughter—and ended up being part of it. Frick threw something on the ground, sending a wash of smoke into the air that obliterated the camera feed for a moment. And when it cleared, the guards were gone and the gaping hole I had found when I arrived was in their place.

It looked like a pit out of hell, the edges still smoking and on fire. Which didn’t stop Jonathan’s zombies from jumping down into it in orderly rows. They were completely fearless, completely without hesitation, despite the fire and vamp flammability and the resistance they were about to meet. I watched them, mesmerized, the hair standing up on my arms, the eerie quiet making it all the more disturbing.

“They bypassed the main defenses by going through the floor,” Mircea told me. “And then proceeded to kill everyone they came across. The acid compound in their veins made it easy.”

I nodded. The fight with Slava had given me a heads-up—I had known to stay out of range. But the vamps at Central hadn’t. And even if they won a fight, the tainted blood that sprayed all over them would begin eating them alive, slowing them down, and then the next group they met, when they were already confused and weakened and in pain—

I shuddered. And apparently I wasn’t the only one.

“Turn it off,” Radu rasped.

“She needs to see—”

“She’s seen! Turn it off!”

The staticky horror blipped out, like an old-fashioned TV signal, and Radu got up and went to the bar. Which is how I ended up with a glass of very fine port.

It didn’t help much.

“They killed every single person there?” I asked. “I thought maybe someone…was hiding.…”

“No,” Louis-Cesare said. “Only Radu and Ray survived, thanks to you. Those creatures killed everyone else.”

There was a short silence. Very short, because Marlowe wasn’t in the mood for introspection. Marlowe was in the mood for blood.

“But that is all they did!” he rasped. “They didn’t even bother to turn off the damned cameras! We’ve watched the whole event now, several times, and there was no copying of files, no attempt to access the vault, no prisoners liberated. They came in, they killed everyone, the end.”

“Why?” I asked, bewildered. “And how do you get a whole group of people to die for you? Especially like that?”

“We believe they were likely already dead when they arrived,” Mircea said quietly. “And that the throat slitting was merely a diversion. As to the why…It is possible that the idea was to give everyone a reason to question whether the alliance should stand. And, if it does, under what leadership.”

It took me a moment to process that. “You’re saying this could be someone on our side?”

“It is possible. There were a number of consuls who wished to lead the alliance. They were less than pleased to have ours put in charge. And if she is made to look weak enough…”

“But the other side in the war has even more reason to oppose our union,” Marlowe pointed out. “If they’ve found out about it, they’d want to crush it quickly, before it gained us an advantage. Not to mention—”

“No,” Mircea said stubbornly. “This is a vampire plot.”

“We don’t know that!”

“It’s too intricate for anything else.”

“But…wait,” I said, my head starting to hurt again. Which was what usually happened when politics were brought up. “Jonathan is with the Black Circle. He’s a dark mage.”