So, if I wanted to get his attention, I was going to have to go to him. And that meant walking straight through the consul’s front door. With no one to pull my ass out of the fire if she objected.

Sometimes I really thought I needed my head examined, only that hadn’t been going so well lately.

Like this shoe hunt. Where the— There.

“Ow!” Ray and I went for them at the same time and knocked heads. Hard.

“At this rate, the bad guys aren’t going to have to take us out,” I said, rubbing my newest knot.

“There are no bad guys!” Ray said, jerking on a white dress shirt. “It’s bullcrap. How is somebody gonna attack that?”

He gestured at the huge edifice above us, which was blazing with light from every window. It was glittering off an acre of expensive marble and a mass of silken banners and an army of golden breastplates on the chests of the double row of honor guards who were lining the sweeping staircase. It was a ridiculous over-the-top display that nonetheless managed to be damned impressive.

And to make my palms sweat.

Of course, they were doing that anyway. Just like my knees kept trying to buckle and my hands kept wanting to shake, and if the plan had been to fight, I’d have been in trouble. Fortunately, that wasn’t on the agenda.

At least, I really hoped not.

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” Ray said, as if he’d heard me. “You’re being paranoid.”

“Okay,” I said, getting the other stocking in place. “Then what about Æsubrand’s story?”

Ray rolled his eyes. “What story? Ancient war, blah, blah, something about some gods, blah, blah, fey army coming to kill everybody, blah, blah, blah. No. Just no.”

And yeah, I knew how it sounded. Which was why the only one of Marlowe’s boys I’d been able to reach by phone had hung up on me. But what Æsubrand said had answered a lot of questions.

“What he said answered a lot of questions,” I told Ray, who was fighting with his cuff links.

“Like what?”

“Like what the deal is with all those hybrids we keep finding. Crossbreeds like Stinky have been turning up everywhere—weird ones that don’t make sense. There were a bunch at that auction where I found him, and the Senate has a whole collection—”

“Slaves run away all the time,” Ray said dismissively. “And there’s occasionally some sicko trying to crossbreed ’em, to get stronger specimens for the fights. Like the ones Geminus used to run.”

“And maybe that’s where he got the idea,” I pointed out. “He was weapons master for the Senate. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for someone like him to wonder what would happen if you combined human and fey magic—”

“Only you can’t,” Ray interrupted crabbily. “Everybody knows that. It’s why you don’t see the mages going into Faerie without permission and an escort—half the time their spells don’t work, or they’re weak as water when they do. And the fey don’t come here much, because their spells take, like, ten times the strength that they do back home.”

“Which is my point. Æsubrand said that the experiments were about crossing human and fey magical creatures to come up with one whose magic worked both places. And then to harvest its abilities—”

“If it was that easy, why didn’t somebody do it a long time ago?”

“The fey didn’t do it because the only reason you’d try such a thing is if you were planning on fighting a war here,” I told him, striving for patience. “Something that most of them had no interest in. The Svarestri were the only ones who did, and they were the bigots of Faerie. They thought that everyone, especially everyone from Earth, was inferior and they never interbred with them, much less experimented—”

“And our side?” Ray demanded. “The Circle’s had plenty of spats with the fey, but nothing ever comes of ’em because humans can’t fight there and fey can’t fight here—”

“I didn’t say it was easy,” I interrupted, because patience isn’t really my thing. “And the Circle didn’t have a thousand-year-old necromancer working for them!”

“I’d still have to see it to believe it.”

“Well, I did see it,” I said curtly, brushing ruthlessly at the tangles in my hair. “And the gun I lifted off that mage at Slava’s was frightening.”

Ray didn’t reply to that, but his forehead wrinkled. Like he was actually thinking about it for a change. I took the opportunity to slide on the gleaming patent leather stilettos Louis-Cesare’s tailor had provided.

They matched the low-cut, black chiffon evening gown with little fluttery bits that I was wearing. They were supposed to move when I did, creating a flowing effect “like the ocean at midnight.” Or so he’d said, after Ray and I showed up pleading for help, since neither of us had the wardrobe for something like this. He’d seemed like a nice guy, so I hadn’t informed him that dark water hadn’t been real lucky for me lately.

But at least it fit. Unlike Ray’s outfit, because even vampire tailors balk at whipping up a bespoke tuxedo with all of five minutes’ notice. And there hadn’t been anyone on staff with one the right size. In desperation, the guy had cut down one of his own, but the result was…less than perfect.

Ray scowled and jerked the jacket on, which he barely managed to button.

Good thing vamps don’t need to breathe.

“Yeah, well,” he finally said. “Say they did come up with some kind of super-weapon. Somebody’s still got to use it, don’t they? And how you gonna get an army here from Faerie with nobody noticing? Especially a Svarestri army?”

“What difference does it make what kind it is?”

He rolled his eyes. He was going to make himself dizzy at this rate. “You just said it. The Svarestri don’t like Earth; think it’s beneath ’em. So they almost never come here. So how you gonna hide a few thousand people who don’t speak the language, don’t know the laws, can’t drive a car and dress completely crazy?”

“In New York? Check them in at the Y.”

He glared at me. “We’re being serious, all right? And seriously, how do you hide something like that right underneath the Senate’s nose?”

“You don’t.”

Ray nodded, looking smug. “That’s right.”

“You bring them over all at once.”

His smile faded. “What?”

“Æsubrand said the idea was to use Geminus’s portal network to bring everybody over on the night of the attack. But then he was killed, and suddenly nobody knew where the portals were. Well, except for Varus, and he wasn’t talking.”

“And how do you know that?” Ray demanded—angrily, because this was starting to sound plausible and he didn’t want it to be true, any of it. “He’d have had to be in on it. He was Geminus’s second!”

“Yeah, but being a crook and a traitor are two different things, and it’s possible that cagey old Geminus hadn’t told his buddy exactly what he was planning to bring in. Either that, or Varus got cold feet. Either way, we know that because Varus stalled and contacted the Senate, once he understood what was going on.”

Ray started to say something else, and then stopped. “But Varus wasn’t gonna tell ’em any details until he got a deal,” he said slowly.

“Only somebody got to him first, used him to set up the only guys likely to stumble across this whole mess, and then killed him and dumped him in a portal.”

“Not knowing it was one I’d hacked.”

I nodded. “So instead of going someplace he’d never be found, he floated over to Olga’s. But a dead body didn’t tell us much, and someone has been doing a damned good job keeping me from remembering whatever I saw at the wharf. Giving the bad guys time to find another way to bring in their army.”

“But they couldn’t,” Ray argued. “None of the other bosses knew where Geminus’s portals were, and you can’t use what you can’t find!”

“Right. Which was why they decided to use yours.”

I could almost hear the record scratch as Ray slowly looked up from pulling on a pair of dress socks, and stared at me. “What?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, damn it! This…none of this has anything to do with me!”

“Well, of course it does,” I said impatiently. “How many people do you know who have a portal network to Faerie? It’s not like they had a lot of choice!”

“But I…nobody ever…I wasn’t contacted—”

“Because you were in the Senate’s loving embrace. Nobody could get to you. Which was why they had to attack Central.”

“They—” He stopped and just blinked at me for a minute. “You know, people are always saying that you’re cuckoo. Looney Tunes. Off the freaking edge. But I tell ’em, no, she’s okay. She’s just got some…anger management issues. But you know what? They’re right. You’re nuts.”

“Frequently. But that doesn’t change the fact that the bad guys went into Central to get you.”

“They did not!” Ray said, the anger now mixed with a healthy dose of remembered fear. “That was Radu! Everybody knows the guy is some kind of crazy genius. If anyone was gonna figure out what they were up to—”

“It might have been ’Du, yeah. But think about it. Radu came and went to Central via the portal system. He never used the front door. He had a hard time even telling me what level he was on that night, because he’d almost never been in the elevators. So it wouldn’t have been possible for them to know if he was there or not.”

“They could of…assumed.” Ray scowled.

“Attacking Central was a one-time deal. Whoever they were going after, it had to be someone they knew was there. Not suspected. Knew.”