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Kit sucked in a breath, Mircea developed a small line down the middle of his forehead, and the queen . . . laughed.

“I wondered how long it would take you,” she said, rubbing her fingers in the air, testing the very magic that flayed her. “You hold more power than your own, child. I can taste . . . hundreds. Possibly more. All linked to you.”

Kit went very still, while Gillian silently cursed. She’d given herself away, and because of what? Some minor pique? If she couldn’t do better than that, she didn’t deserve her position!

“Gillian?” Kit said, sounding strangled.

“The covens were broken, as I said,” she told him, because there was nothing for it now. “But since obtaining my position with the queen, I have been using it to . . . assist some of those who are left. To help them evade the Circle and go abroad if they wish, or stay here in disguise, walking their own lands under different names. Ones the Circle does not know.”

“And they gave you their power?”

“Who else?” She met his gaze steadily. “I am the only Great Mother left.”

“And this jewel?” Mircea said, gesturing at the paper she still held. He seemed oddly fixated on it. “Did it play a part in any of this?”

“Of course. As I said, the triskelion allows a leader to use the magic of a single coven. The great jewels allow many covens’ power to be linked.”

He still looked confused for some reason, although she thought the inference should be obvious. But this was not a man who valued his dignity over information. “Meaning?” he prompted, his face intense.

“It was how they called the storm.”

Chapter Twelve

“I thought we were going to see your friend,” Kit said, glancing around.

Gillian shot him an amused look. “We are.”

Kit frowned as they passed from a narrow, filthy street into an even narrower and filthier one, which clearly didn’t have a public privy anywhere about, since the local chamber pots had been emptied into the road. It left the badly paved surface slimy and odorous, and made him wish that he’d brought a pomander, not that it would have helped. Vampire senses were hell in London these days.

Especially in sections like this, where three, four, and five-story tenements were occupied by multiple families, with each floor projecting out over a lower one to give the occupants more space. But that had also caused some of the rooflines to almost touch over top of the road, creating a tunnel-like effect that left the place gloomy and airless. It was hours until sunset, but you couldn’t tell it here, with shadows swallowing the few fingers of light that managed to poke their way in before they illuminated much of anything.

Kit’s eyes saw well in the gloom, but it didn’t help his growing unease. The houses lining the street did not have glass in their windows, or even the strips of horn or lattice work that had preceded the glass. There was nothing but shutters over bare openings, and those had been kept small to prevent heat loss in winter.

Yet he could see shapes moving behind them, a few of which paused to look out as he and his companion’s footsteps echoed off of the buildings. Human, his senses told him. But what kind?

He wasn’t sure, but it worried him that they smelled too good.

In noble’s homes, iron or wooden pipes brought water from the Thames for washing, and from natural springs on the north side of the river for drinking. And for the merchant class, watercarriers delivered it in barrels from cisterns fed by the springs, their carts adding to the perpetual mud in the streets by leaking everywhere. But the poor had to make do with fountains and spigots where they could find them, and they often didn’t, preferring to buy a bucket of ale from a local brewer to slake their thirst.

But one couldn’t bathe in ale, meaning that baths were a luxury, obtained maybe twice a year, and that not guaranteed. Of course, the richer members of society also kept their bathing to a minimum, as the old public baths had spread disease, leading to a distrust of water. They nonetheless usually followed the example of the queen, who had famously said that she took a bath once a month, “whether she needed it or not.”

But the rich had clean linen to put on every day, and fine Castile soap made with olive oil instead of animal fat and scented with botanicals to wash their hands and faces, and perfumes to mask any remaining odors. The poor did not, and their stench normally made his eyes water from six paces. And that was before he became a vampire.

Yet these “poor” were clean.

It made his fingers itch. Mages had spells to strip off grime and to purify water, and were savvy enough to know that the latter wouldn’t hurt you. But their damned spells might!

“You’re tense,” Gillian said, shooting him a glance.

“I’m overdressed,” Kit said tersely.

She laughed and it echoed eerily. “You are, at that. Should we have gone back to your lodgings, to let you change?”

“I don’t think I have anything appropriate.”

Something about his tone caused her smile to fade. “Be at peace,” she said. “I know these streets.”

“As do I.”