Page 107 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“How long have you known him?” I ask.

“Two hundred and fourteen years.”

“Right.”

“Boston,” she says. “The autumn of 1812. He was pretending to be a shipping agent and doing it badly, and I was pretending to be a widow and doing it extremely well.”

“That’s a long time.”

“It is a long time.”

“And you and he⁠—”

“No,” says Victoria.

“I didn’t ask a question.”

“You’ve been asking it since you came through the door. You’ve been asking it very politely, and I would like to give you the afternoon back.” She turns the cup a quarter inch in her hands. “I have known Julian Volkov for two hundred and fourteen years. If I’d wanted him, I would have had him by 1830. There have been at least four occasions on which it would have been the practical arrangement. I declined all of them, twice in Vienna, which he will not discuss.”

“There is nothing to discuss,” Julian says from the window.

“There is a great deal to discuss and none of it is flattering.” She looks back at me. “He’s the closest thing I have to family and I find him exhausting. Does that answer it?”

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

“You may still dislike me. It’s simply that you should dislike me for the correct reasons.”

And I think, with a small definite click, oh, I’m going to like her, and it’s going to take about a year.

Then she puts the cup down on the table, untouched, and takes a slim leather folder out of her bag, and everything gets worse.

“You’ve seen the website.”

“On the twenty-first.”

“I saw it on the eighteenth. I have a woman in Utrecht who monitors these things for me. Her mother did it before her. Every publication, broadcast, podcast, forum. She sends me paper.” Victoria opens the folder. “Paper cannot be searched. It is the only advantage I have left, and it costs me nine thousand euros a year.”

The folder has The Veil in it. Episode lists. Articles. Printouts. Notes in a precise hand that probably belongs to the woman in Utrecht.

“So you know Rowan Pierce,” I say.

“I know of Rowan Pierce. Which is worse.”

“Why?”

“Because he isn’t a monster.” Victoria rests her fingers on the folder. “That’s what makes him a problem. A blackmailer you can pay. A zealot you can frighten. A cruel man wants something, and once you know what he wants you can negotiate. Rowan Pierce only wants the truth, and he’s convinced himself—with total sincerity, which is the dangerous part—that the truth is owed.”

“Owed to who?”

“Everyone. He believes that a truth about the world belongs to everyone in it, and that a person who keeps it to himself is taking something that isn’t theirs to keep. He’ll be perfectly kind to your face, Penny. He’ll bring you coffee. He’ll listen when you talk. And he’ll explain exactly why Julian’s four faces are interesting in front of millions of people and call it shining a light.” She tilts her head. “He’ll sleep beautifully.”

“The audience does the rest.”

“The audience does all of it. He doesn’t have to send anyone to Julian’s gate. He only has to be interested out loud.”

The fire pops. Julian hasn’t moved.

Victoria tells me about two people The Veil has identified over the years. One left before the audience arrived and has not returned. The other stayed because there was nothing illegal about what he was, because there were laws protecting him, and because he believed being known was survivable.