Shadow's Edge

44

“Quite so,” Daria agreed. “People can be rather unreliable, can’t they? But one can always count on family.” She smiled again at Jenna, her expression open and engaging. “You’ll be meeting more of them at your party,” she added lightly.

Jenna looked at her, perplexed. “More of who?”

“The family,” Daria responded, still light and ever so enigmatic.

“Morgan insisted we throw you a party, Jenna, if you recall,” Leander interrupted. “I hope you don’t mind, she doesn’t get to do this kind of thing very often. Once she gets her mind set she can’t be budged.”

“One does need a distraction from the monotony,” Daria said. She smoothed the flat of her hand over her skirt as Leander glanced at her, a muscle in his jaw flexing. “Hopefully you can find something in your closet to wear,” she added, sending Jenna a sidelong glance. Her cheek lifted, as if she stifled a smile. Something in Daria’s manner reminded Jenna of her mother. She had the same effortless elegance, the same charming manner, a way of setting you at ease though you were perfect strangers. To her deep surprise, she liked her.

Jenna set her fork down and picked up the crystal glass. As she swallowed a sip of tart, cold juice, Leander spoke again.

“I definitely wouldn’t wear the red Valentino if I were you, though. I’ve asked Morgan to return it. I don’t think it would particularly flatter your skin.”

Daria looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Très gentil, mon frère,” she murmured. “Charmante comme toujours.”

To conceal the anger that flared under her breastbone at Leander’s offhand insult, Jenna tightened her fingers around the stem of her glass. She glanced at the oil paintings along the opposite wall and had no trouble reading the words that were etched on the small gold placards below the portraits.

“Just out of curiosity,” she said, swallowing a bite of the delicious carpaccio, “why do you have a portrait of Marie Antoinette on the wall?”

Daria and Leander shared a glance. He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“The doomed Reine de France was an ancestor of ours, my dear,” Daria replied, patting a corner of her rosebud mouth with a linen napkin. “The last full-Blooded Queen of the Ikati.”

“Queen of the Ikati. Right.” Jenna tried to keep her face neutral, composed. “Of course. And the portrait below hers, the one of Michelangelo?”

Now it was Leander’s turn to speak. “You really thought the Sistine Chapel was created by something so—simple—as a human?” He looked vaguely disappointed.

“Silly me,” Jenna murmured as her eyes moved over the gallery of portraits. Her surprise turned to shock as she read all the names.

Amenemhet I; Cleopatra; Michelangelo; Sir Charles Darwin; Sir Isaac Newton...

“We call this the Gallery of Alphas, Jenna. The portraits you see are a pictorial history of our most potent leaders, back to the beginning of our line, or at least as near as we can figure.”

Daria picked up her teacup and took another delicate sip. “We used to live quite in the open, but after those dreadful Romans took notice of us...” She shrugged unhappily and set her teacup back down. “We began to be hunted. We were driven out; most of our kind were killed. We’ve never really been safe since.”

“Hunted?” Jenna said, startled. “You were hunted by the Romans?”

Daria paused for just a hair longer than a heartbeat. “Among others, yes.”

“Driven from our homeland,” Leander said softly, studying Jenna’s face, “declared enemies of the state to be terminated at all costs. So we went into hiding.”

“We learned to blend in,” Daria agreed, stroking a finger along the delicate curve of painted flowers and bone china under her hand. “We interact with humans when necessary, of course, for trade or other purposes, but we never let them know what we really are. It’s far too dangerous.”

“But that was hundreds of years ago,” Jenna protested. “Thousands. Don’t you think it might be different now? So much has changed since then, things are so much better in so many ways—”

“People have not changed since the beginning of time,” Daria stated simply, still staring sadly down at her cup. “It’s only gotten worse for us with the passing centuries. In the thirteen hundreds, legends arose that witches could transform into cats to disguise their activities and demons rode to midnight meetings on giant black panthers. Because they didn’t understand us, they cast us as witches, consorts of the devil. That’s when the Expurgari were first formed—”

“The Expurgari?” Jenna interrupted.

Daria lifted her pale gaze to Jenna’s face. “The purifiers,” she said in a hushed tone, as if merely saying the word would invoke them. “They’re a small branch of the Church—trained assassins, very brutal, very militant, with unswerving faith in their dogma of death. All across Europe cats were burned, drowned, tossed from church belfries, used as archery targets. Once again the Ikati retreated into secrecy to survive.