The woman with golden hair stepped toward him, her wide skirt shushing as she moved, elegant as any court lady. She put a seductive sway in her step, gazing demurely down her fine nose. “Now he is wondering who we all are, where we all came from.”
“I suspect you are come from Spain.”
She studied him, revealing the sharp points of her teeth in an amused smile.
“Please do come with us, señor. I should so very like to know you better.” The woman moved to hook her arm through his.
“Forgive me, my lady, for I have not yet formally introduced myself. I am Don Ricardo de Avila, and I am pleased to meet you.” He stepped back and made a very proper bow, as if they danced in some fine hall in Spain.
The woman’s eyes shone. She appeared delighted. “Ooh, you are very fine indeed. I am the Lady Elinor.” She curtsied just as precisely, then took up Ricardo’s arm and tucked her own in the crook of his elbow. In his old life such familiarity would have astonished him, and he would have stammered as he tried to hide any sign of attraction to her. Now, though, they were merely two hunters in the same territory. Perhaps allies, perhaps rivals, who could say which? He was wary.
He placed his hand over hers, securing her to his side. Her skin was as cold as his own. Together with Eduardo, they made a small procession to an alleyway that led to a villa, one of the more modest in the neighborhood. The liveried footman who opened the gate for them was human. He seemed quite ordinary, middle-aged, his gaze downcast, deferential. His skin was tan, his hair dark; he might have been mestizo. Ricardo wondered, did he know that he served demons? Did he know who dwelled here?
They continued across a courtyard and to a set of double doors made of some rich carved wood. Another human footman opened these doors.
Inside the villa, the chill and power of the demons loomed large. Some terrible mystery waited for him here, another revelation that the world was not as it seemed, and everything was about to change. Could he survive this new change as he had survived his first transformation?
He hesitated, pulling against Elinor’s arm. “Are you afraid?” she said, hiding a laugh.
Considering a moment, he found that he wasn’t. “This feels rather like making one’s first confession as a boy. One hardly knows what to expect.”
They all stared at him, and he wondered what about the statement shocked them. Then he realized: he had probably been inside a church more recently than any of them. This thought made him smile, which no doubt only confused them more.
Guided by Elinor, he strode on and imagined himself walking into his own parlor.
He had not been in a room like this since he left Madrid. A true palace, with marble floors and painted ceilings, gilt accents on furniture, tapestries on the walls. The smell of beeswax candles saturated the walls. Shadows lingered on every surface.
More devils came out to meet him. Twelve of them, men and women in their primes. He could not tell how old they really were, how long they had walked this earth, beautiful and elegant, dressed in the height of fashion. If Ricardo were more vain, he would have been chagrined at his own clothing, which he realized now was a decade or more out of style. He had not been paying attention as he should. No matter. If he cared for fashion, he would live here in the capital, not on his remote estancia. Or he would go back to Spain.
Eduardo and his entourage joined the others, so the whole court of them spread out around him. Elinor let him go and went to her place among them, leaving him alone in the center of the floor, as if he were the focus of some tribunal.
Proud, pleased, wicked, all of it, Eduardo stepped forward. Ricardo recognized the look—his old acquaintance Diego, the man who had brought him to Fray Juan, had looked like that.
“Welcome, Don Ricardo! It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to our patroness. Our Mistress. The reason for our being here.”
All the devils in the guise of lords and ladies turned to the back of the room, where a great velvet armchair stood on a shallow dais. A woman in black silk and cloth-of-gold reclined there as if bored, gazing with heavy-lidded eyes. She looked young but seemed ancient, centuries pressing out of her like waves of cold from a block of ice. Her skin was olive, her features not particularly fine, but they had strength in the set
of her jaw and brow. Her dark hair lay loose around her shoulders, a few clips set with gemstones pinned on locks here and there. She gave the impression of being a woman of great power who had the luxury of not caring too terribly much what happened around her because her fortress would always remain secure.
The men and women of this court waited to see what he would do when confronted with this startling vision of a woman on an almost-throne. Their gazes were heavy on him.
Eduardo addressed the woman. “Mistress Catalina, I bring to you Don Ricardo de Avila y Zacatecas, of whom I spoke—our mysterious hidalgo de la noche. Don Ricardo, you are in the presence of La Reina Catalina.”
She was not the queen. As subjects of the Spanish crown—technically speaking, he supposed—they had only one queen. Yet all of them bowed to her as if she were a queen. No—they would not abase themselves so deeply for His Majesty King Philip. This was more than a noble lady with her attendants. There was power here, ropes of it between Catalina and the others. They were linked; he could feel it.
She had turned them all as Fray Juan had turned him. Turned them, made them hers, and they seemed grateful for it. Unlike him.
Ricardo offered only the respectful bow he would to any noblewoman in her home. “Doña.”
Remaining silent, she held the tableau for some time. Finally, in a calm voice that matched her demeanor, she said, “Don Ricardo. The gentleman who should not exist. Eduardo has told you this, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, he has, señora. And yet I am here. I confess—I do not understand.”
Catalina leaned forward, and her acolytes watched as if witnessing a duel. “Do you know what you are, sir?”
He swallowed, and his breath caught—he did not have to breathe since that night he had died and been reborn as the monster. If he wanted to speak, he had to concentrate to draw breath, and for just a moment he’d forgotten. He had never spoken the words aloud. He had never explained it. Not to a stranger.
“I am a demon,” he said.