Page 79 of Redline Communion

The cars have European plates, and one bears a small gold emblem near the rear window: a circle crossed by three vertical lines.

I’ve seen it before on Nico’s cufflinks.

I stop halfway up the steps.

Helena opens the door before I touch it, her gaze traveling past me toward the distant bus stop before returning to my face.

“You took public transport.”

“Congratulations. We solved our first mystery.”

“Mr. Vale was meant to collect you.”

“He did. Then he discovered consent.”

Helena’s expression suggests consent is an administrative inconvenience she would prefer not to discuss before dinner.

“There are guests,” she says. “Your mother asked that you change before coming down.”

“Why?”

“Dinner.”

“That word keeps doing a lot of unpaid labor in this house.”

She steps aside, and I enter.

The foyer smells different: incense, but not the kind used at church. This is sharper, all resin and smoke with something floral caught beneath it. Voices carry from the formal dining room, French and English and another language I don’t recognize overlapping in low conversation.

My pulse speeds, and there’s no coke and no flower to blame.

Good to know I can still manufacture bad decisions naturally.

I should go upstairs and change.

Instead, I follow the voices.

The dining-room doors are open a few inches. Through the gap, I can see Alistair at the head of the table and Dominic seated to his right. Nico sits farther down with one hand around the stem of a wineglass he isn’t drinking from, while Cassian stands beside the sideboard with a cream folder open near his elbow.

Three strangers occupy the opposite side of the table: an older man, a woman with silver hair, and someone around my age whose back is turned to me.

Nobody notices me at first.

The older man is speaking.

“—the French branch has already agreed to the sequence. Ravello will accept the transfer after Liore signs.”

Transfer.

My hand tightens around the edge of the door.

“Marazul will not move until her standing is confirmed,” Alistair says.

“Her standing was confirmed at the Offering.”

“No. Her local standing was confirmed.”

Local.