Kyle was still in the cage in the middle of the park, heavily guarded; Claire caught a glimpse of the barred square box and the heavy police presence as the car passed the borders of the square, and then took a ramp down to the underground parking beneath the buildings. Hannah had a reserved space, and as they walked toward the elevator it opened with a hiss. One of Amelie’s black-suited guards—the woman—nodded to Hannah and looked at Claire with pointed intensity.

“She’s with me,” Hannah said. “I’ll take responsibility.”

“Good enough,” the vampire agreed, and pressed the button for the meeting floor. “I’ll warn you, they’re not in a wonderful mood.”

“They never are.”

The vampire chuckled, a very human sort of sound, but somehow at least twenty percent more sinister. “Well, that’s true. Good luck.”

Once they’d stepped out of the elevator, the vampire was all business again, following Hannah and Claire as they walked down the long marble hall to a set of polished wooden doors that opened before they arrived, from inside. Claire supposed that was intended to look impressive, but it wasn’t any big trick; the vampires could clearly hear them coming.

There was only one guard in the room this time, and their escort stopped outside and pulled the doors shut behind them. Amelie was seated in her place, and so was Richard; there were folders on the table, each one neatly labeled.

Oliver was pacing, hands behind his back.

“You’re late,” he snapped at Hannah. The guard was right—he was clearly not in a good mood. Hannah sat down beside Richard, leaving Claire standing in indecision. “And you’ve brought a friend. How . . . nice.”

Claire quickly sat down in the first available chair. Oliver was eyeing her like a piece of trash he was considering taking out.

“Claire,” Amelie said. “This is unexpected.” Unexpected, Claire thought, did not mean welcome. Amelie, like Hannah, looked un-characteristically tense.

“I needed to talk to you,” Claire said. “Both of you.”

“Must we always be distracted by the yapping of your favorite pet?” Oliver said, and crossed the room in a flash to slap both hands flat on the table, glaring at Amelie. “Silence her until we’re done. She shouldn’t be here.”

That was . . . shocking. Claire had never seen him quite that aggressive toward the Founder before. It occurred to her, uneasily, that maybe she ought to have called Amelie first before showing up.

Amelie didn’t flinch, blink, or react to Oliver’s anger in any way. “She’s not my pet,” she said evenly, “and I don’t take orders from you, Oliver. Truly, you must try to remember that from time to time.”

He showed his teeth, but not his vampire teeth. Not quite. He pushed off from the table and paced again, moving like a lion who wanted a gazelle very, very badly.

Amelie turned her attention to Claire and said, “You’ll wait until our business is done. He’s quite right. You shouldn’t be here.”

Claire nodded. She didn’t really want to wait—she wanted to blurt it all out—but there was a warning in Amelie’s cold gray eyes that made it clear blurting was not a good idea.

“You are on edge, Oliver,” Amelie said. “Sit, please.”

He threw her a filthy look and kept on pacing, back and forth. “I had to put down one of my own last night, like a rabid dog. Do you imagine I should feel relaxed?”

Claire bent her head close to Hannah and whispered, “What happened?” Hannah shook her head in warning. “But I—”

Oliver rounded on her, eyes flaring red. “Do you want to know what happened, Claire?” he said. “Which part of it? The part where one of my oldest associates lost her mind and began to attack humans in the street? The part where I couldn’t reason with her? Or the part where I was forced to kill her, on Amelie’s orders?”

That met with ringing silence. Amelie continued to watch him, face calm and smooth, body very still. After a moment, she said, very quietly, “You are overwrought. Sit down, Oliver. Please.”

“I will not,” he snapped, and turned his back.

After another moment of silence, Amelie went back to the open folder before her. “Then let us move on to the business at hand. This request to expand the hunting permits is unacceptable. They’re asking for four times the current limit, and they want to include the university grounds as well. This is highly risky to all of us. My proposal is that, rather than expanding hunting licenses, we discontinue the program altogether and seek another alternative. There are always a few humans who would willingly volunteer to be bitten.”

Richard started to say something, but he was crushed by Oliver. “This is an old, tired argument. Are we vampires or not? We hunt. That’s our nature. Restricting it, even outlawing it, doesn’t curb our instincts. It only makes us criminals for having them.”

“Oh, but I fully expect you to control your instincts, as I do. Unless you’re unable to master yourself. Are you, Oliver?” Amelie’s tone was sharper than Claire expected, almost . . . angry. It occurred to her, finally, that Amelie was upset, too.

Very bad combination, having both of them on edge, in a confinedspace.

This time, Oliver did flash fangs at her. “You’re on dangerous ground, woman. Don’t push me.” Amelie’s guard took a step away from the door. “And don’t presume to have your dogs threaten me, either. I’ve supported your rule in this town. I’ve even agreed to your experiments and social rules of behavior. But I will not allow you to make us into pale copies of humans. It is not who we are, or who we should be, and you know that better than anyone.”

“I take it you will not entertain any alternative plans,” Amelie said after a moment. “Then we will leave the program as it is, with a limited number of licenses, and the university remains protected ground.”

Oliver laughed. “Are you listening? They won’t obey you for much longer. They’ll do as they choose, regardless of the law. They’re angry, Amelie. You’ve allowed humans to kill vampires and walk away. If you choose to punish vampires for following their natures, you’re as stupid as you were when you thought you could manipulate your way onto a throne as a girl of twelve. You never did reach that goal, did you? I’m sure dying a mere princess never sat well with you. That must be why you appointed yourself queen here.”

Amelie stood up, and the room went very, very quiet. Claire no longer felt the urge to try to talk. She felt the urge to crawl under the table. It was as if she, Richard, and Hannah no longer existed, at least to Amelie and Oliver.

“Are you telling me that you no longer want to serve as my second?” Amelie asked him. “Because that is what I hear.”

“Amelie . . .” Oliver’s voice was full of angry frustration. He, at least, hadn’t forgotten the presence of others, and glanced quickly aside at the humans. “Send them out. We need to settle this. It’s been a long time in coming.”

“Richard and Hannah are equal members of this council. I will not dismiss them like servants.”

He laughed, and Claire saw the sharp glitter of his fangs. “Equal? How long have you been deluding yourself like this? You think any of them are ever equal to us? You are ceding control of this town to fools and mortals, bit by bit, and we are all going to suffer for it. Die for it. It cannot go on!”

“Sit down,” Amelie said. “Now.”

“No. You are destroying us, Amelie, and I can’t—I won’t permit it to continue.”

They froze in place, staring at each other, and Claire hardly dared to breathe at all.

Oliver didn’t blink. He finally said, “Your human pets are turning on us. They’re turning on you. The boy in the cage down there is proof enough of how much in contempt the humans hold your rules, and you. And they’re not wrong, because we are killers, and they are our natural victims. If we let them have control, they will destroy us. They have no choice.”