He narrowed his gaze. “Perhaps look for Roman while I’m at it.”
“Ah.” I nodded thoughtfully.
“You did it,” he said, strolling along the narrow courtyard without needing the cane. “I told Ned you would. He wasn’t sure. He said you’d be too worried about protecting your loved ones. He was sure you’d play it safe in the end, rather than expose us all. I told him you’re a crusader. I was right.”
Ben and I faced him, our arms touching. There was only one of him, and we were strong.
“People need to know,” I said. “That’s all. Roman can’t work in secret if everyone knows.”
“But have you warned everyone about the coming war—or dragged them into it when they might have been safe?”
“They wouldn’t have been safe,” I said. “Not in the long run.”
“How like a vampire, to speak of the long run.”
“I can’t tell—are you happy about what I said, or not? Is Ned?”
“Oh, Ned and Antony both approve. They like you very much. They like the idea of a Regina Luporum. They cheered when they watched the video of your speech.”
“Regina Luporum—I still don’t even know what that means,” I said.
He chuckled. “It’s not anything official, it doesn’t come with a crown or any real power or territory. It’s more … an idea. Rex Luporum, Regina Luporum. That there exist wolves who will stand up to vampires, that will choose solidarity over warfare. Do you know the story of Romulus and Remus?”
“The founders of Rome who were raised by … a wolf…” I stared.
“Many of the old stories are simply metaphors.”
“You’re saying that a werewolf helped found Rome? And that she had children?” That spark of hope hadn’t quite died out, apparently.
“Werewolves can’t have children, Kitty,” he said. “It’s a metaphor.”
“So Regina Luporum is a label you made up. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means whatever you want it to.”
He didn’t show any sign of retreating back inside, so I stayed with him. “Did you know her? The wolf of the Rome story?”
“Yes,” he said.
I waited for another long pause. “And…?”
“She’d have liked you, I think.”
“And…?” He didn’t offer anything else. I sighed. “So what about you—did you like the speech?”
“Honestly, Kitty, one way or another it doesn’t matter. Whatever happens, happens. I know how to go to cover if I need to.”
You didn’t get to be twenty-eight hundred years old by joining crusades, I supposed. “Then we won’t be able to depend on you when the time comes?”
“Perhaps when the time comes, I’ll call on you,” he said, smiling a sphinx’s smile. “Shall we go in?”
Ned and Emma had arranged a pleasant gathering in the parlor, and I again flashed on those BBC costume dramas. Emma and I ought to be wearing empire-waist gowns, the men should have had cravats. Ned was the only one wearing a cravat tonight. The three of us who lived and breathed had tea and a decadent selection of pastries. The vampires watched us indulgently.
Ned delivered a report, condensed from information gathered by the police, the American authorities, and British intelligence. This had gone quite high up, apparently. They theorized that Flemming learned about Sergeant Tyler’s unit of werewolves in Afghanistan. The unit had originally been led by one of Flemming’s own interview subjects, the werewolf Special Forces captain who had turned the others. When the opportunity came to get his hands on the sole surviving member of that unit, he couldn’t resist. He’d never really been one for conventional methods—or civil liberties, for that matter.
He’d hired himself out as a paranormal security consultant, and a third party—an as-yet unidentified third party—had agreed to fund the “acquisition” of a real-live Special Forces werewolf. The project had two purposes: recruit Tyler himself, and use him to train up a new unit of paranormal soldiers. They had felt confident Tyler could be recruited, or suborned, which just went to show how bad their information was.
The fact that Flemming had been killed in the course of Tyler’s escape was known, but suppressed. As was the fact that Tyler had help. Ned’s people, Caleb’s, and mine were all left out of it. Apparently, we had Ned’s influence to thank for this.