I'd been too young when I met him to realize that the handsome young man who told me Romanian folk tales was actually older than Tony by about a century. He sent me an encouraging smile now out of a face that had looked thirty for five hundred years. I smiled back in spite of myself; I'd had my first crush on those brown velvet eyes, and I'd forgotten how attractive he was. Those same features had won his longer-lived brother Radu the title of «the Handsome» back in the sixteenth century. Mircea paused to brush a speck of lint off his snazzy black suit. Other than Rafe, who preferred more casual chic, Mircea was the only vamp I knew who cared much about modern fashion. Maybe that was why I'd never seen him wearing the court regalia of old Wallachia, or possibly the clothes then had just sucked. In any case, he looked completely up-to-date now, except for the long, black ponytail. I was glad to see him, but even assuming he remembered me fondly, I doubted one vote would do me much good.
Speaking of a need to update a wardrobe, the vamp next to Mircea—the same one who had been loitering around the waiting room—looked like a GQ ad, if the magazine had been printed in the seventeenth century. Considering that I'd spent a lot of time in a Goth club, I didn't object to the embroidered frock coat, frothy shirt and knee britches he was wearing. I'd seen weirder getups, and at least this one was flattering—silk hose shows off legs better than most modern styles, and his were worth playing up. The sticking point was that the whole deal was in buttercup yellow satin. I'm sorry, but a vamp in yellow is just wrong, especially when you throw in bright blue eyes and glossy auburn curls cascading halfway down his back. He was very handsome, with one of those open, honest faces you automatically trust. It really irritated me that it belonged to a vamp. I gave him a tentative smile anyway on the theory that it couldn't hurt, and thought maybe I'd get a brownie point for being the only other one in yellow in the room. Of course, my happy-face T wasn't looking its best at the moment, which maybe explains why he didn't smile back. He was watching me almost hungrily, the weight of his gaze so intense that I spared a thought to hope he'd already eaten. I needed to get this blood off me before I started looking to someone like a walking hors d'oeuvre.
The remaining vamps, two on the far side of the Consul, were so alike that I assumed they had to be related. I found out later that it was a coincidence. The man was almost as old as the Consul, having started life as one of Nero's bodyguards even though his mother had been a slave captured somewhere much farther north than Italy. He'd been one of the emperor's favorites for having even more sadistic tastes than his master: want to guess who really burned Rome? The woman, who looked so much like Portia that I did a double take, had been born in the antebellum South. She was said to have killed more union soldiers in the twenty miles or so around her family home than the Confederate military did, and to have mourned the end of the war and the easy hunting that had gone with it. So, different eras, countries and backgrounds, but they looked like twins with their milky complexions and wavy dark hair. They even had similar eye color, a light brownish gold, like the light through autumn leaves, and were dressed in complementary outfits of white and silver. Admittedly, his was a toga while she looked like she was on her way to a Savannah ball, but they looked good together.
The Consul gave me time to size everyone up before she spoke, but when she did, I had no desire to look anywhere else. Wherever her kohl-rimmed gaze landed, it felt like tiny pinpricks along my skin. The sensation was not quite painful, but I had the impression that the pins could become swords very easily. «You see how many of our seats are empty, how many voices silenced.» I blinked in surprise. I'd assumed there was a problem, but not that—four ancient vampires aren't exactly easy to kill. But she confirmed it. «We are greatly weakened. The loss of some of the greatest among us is felt keenly by all in this room, but if it continues, it will echo around the world.»
She stopped, and at first I thought it was for a dramatic pause, but then she zoned out on me. Some of the really old ones do that sometimes, drawing into themselves for a minute or an hour or a day, and forgetting that anyone else exists. I'd gotten used to little time-outs with Tony, so I didn't let it bother me. I noticed that Tomas had been joined at the door by yet another guy I didn't know. What looked like a life-sized statue stood near him, a rather crude one with no paint to cover its clay exterior and poorly defined features. Tomas and the new guy seemed to be arguing about something, but their voices were too low to hear. I had a brief moment of nostalgia for Tony's audience hall, where most of those present were murderous scumbags, but at least I knew their names. I was jumpy enough standing in blood-soaked clothing in front of a group of vamps powerful enough to kill me with little more than a thought, without also having to work in the dark. Rafe was a comfort at my back, but I'd have preferred someone whose specialty was more in the guns-and-knives line.