Chapter 7: The Council Dinner

The Council dinner was at an old club on Michigan Avenue.

The ballroom was full of chandeliers and vampires who had been bored since the Civil War.

Birdie dressed me in dark green silk, pinned my hair up, and put a tiny knife in my garter.

"For luck," she said.

"Is it silver?"

"It's a butter knife, Duck. But it's the thought."

Benedict met me at the door in a black dinner jacket.

He looked at the dress for a moment, and then at the ceiling.

"You look..." he said, and gave up. "Stay near me. Don't eat anything you didn't watch being poured."

"What happens at these things?"

"Dorothea Lisle tries to take something from me in public," he said. "Usually it's a vote. Tonight I think it's you."

I took his arm.

His sleeve was cool through the cloth, and under it his pulse, which vampires aren't supposed to have, was going hard.

"Is that for me?" I asked.

"It's for everyone in this room."

The ballroom went quiet when we came in, and I heard my own heels on the floor.

Seven chairs sat at the high table.

In the middle one was a woman with a silver bob, a pearl choker, and a smile.

I knew her from the book.

Dorothea Lisle looked fifty-five, and she had been alive since before the Mayflower.

"Benedict, darling," she said. "And this is the famous Miss Haverty."

"Madam Chair."

"I'm told you refused my buyer at the auction."

"I did. He had terrible shoes."

A ripple of laughter went round the nearest tables, quickly strangled.

Dorothea's smile did not move.

"A spirited girl," she said. "I admire that. I would pay triple what Benedict did, you know. Twelve million. You'd have a lovely room."

"In the cellar?"

The ripple stopped.

I took a breath and decided to be reckless on purpose.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Extra the Vampire Bought Was Supposed to Die in Chapter Twelve from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.