Night's Honor (Elder Races #7)(2)

Tess winced. Sanchez was breaking several of the rules that had been handed out on cards to those candidates who had been lucky enough to get a ticket and now stood in line, waiting for their turn on the stage. All medically based petitions must go through the visa application process at the Bureau of Nightkind Immigration.

The annual Vampyre’s Ball on New Year’s Eve was an occasion to make a different kind of petition altogether, a kind of massive job screening process where Vampyres of standing might choose to take on human attendants to add to their households.

Supposedly the relationship between a Vampyre patron and his human attendants was a mutually beneficial arrangement. The attendants assured the Vampyre a steady blood supply in addition to working to support the household as a whole. In return the Vampyre offered his protection and assured that the attendant would have a safe, secure place in which to live, and a long, healthy life. There was even an outside chance that a candidate might become a Vampyre himself one day.

Both opportunities were rare. According to the website FAQs that Tess had read, the Nightkind demesne in the United States received over ten million visa applications a year from humans hoping to be turned, while the number of newly created Vampyres each year was the tiniest fraction of that and strictly controlled by the Nightkind demesne working in coordination with the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

Probably Sanchez had already applied for a visa for his daughter and had been turned down. Clearly desperation had pushed him onto the stage.

Just as it would push Tess, when it was her turn.

The next few moments were excruciating, and not just because of the rawness of Sanchez’s pleading, although that was bad enough.

The worst was that the Vampyres did nothing.

Nothing.

Nobody moved to interrupt Sanchez. The emcee did not order security to remove him. Nobody turned to look at the pleading man or raised a bidding paddle. They all acted as if he did not exist.

A sickened anger tied her stomach in knots. This was horrendous, degrading, and it didn’t matter that cold logic said there could be no good way to handle candidates like Sanchez, or that his petition had been doomed from the start. The number of visa applicants was overwhelming to begin with. If the Vampyres gave into one Sanchez who broke the rules, they would never be able to stop the flood of others.

She didn’t know what was worse—their show of indifference or the humans who chose to abase themselves onstage.

And I’m one of them, she thought. She wiped her face with a shaking hand. How in God’s name could I have ever thought this might be a good idea?

Scratch that, I never thought it was a good idea. It was my only idea.

The reason was simple. When you pissed off the devil, you ran out of options real fast.

The buzzer sounded. With agonizing politeness, the emcee escorted Sanchez off the stage, and the next candidate came on.

The person behind Tess elbowed her with a hiss, and she eased the stage door closed to step into the wings. Her blood pounded in her ears, and her shaking breath caught in her throat. This was far worse than any kind of normal stage fright, magnified as it was by anger, revulsion and fear.

As if from a long distance away, she heard the buzzer sound. And again.

When it was her turn, she stepped forward and waited just behind the curtain for her cue. If she held herself any more rigidly, she felt like she might break into pieces.

The emcee walked toward her with a practiced smile and a sharp, disinterested gaze. Holding out a hand, he beckoned to her. She walked forward into a flood of hot lights, stopped at the X taped on the floor and faced the crowded hall. Her cold fingers curled automatically around the microphone when it was shoved into her hand.

The lights on the stage had turned the Vampyres into shadowy figures that made them seem even more menacing. She wanted to scream at them, or laugh at the absurdity of the whole scenario.

Instead, the intolerable tension fractured and she iced over with a clear, clean anger. None of them would listen to anything she might say anyway.

Not bothering to raise the microphone, she said in a calm, flat voice, “My looks are entirely forgettable, and I’m smarter than almost anyone here.”

Screw them, if they weren’t able to see what advantages there could be in any of that. Screw all of them.

•   •   •

On the mezzanine floor, one of the Vampyres turned from his conversation to look down at her.

He raised his paddle.

•   •   •

Blinded by the bright lights shining in her face, Tess couldn’t see if her words had caused any reaction. She only knew she wasn’t going to stay on the stage for one more moment. She had to go somewhere quiet to try to figure out her next move. Pivoting, she strode to the emcee “Where’s the exit?”

Giving her a strange look, he walked with her to the opposite edge of the stage, where another young woman in an aide’s uniform waited in the wings. Plucking the microphone out of Tess’s hand, the emcee moved on to the next candidate.

Despair weighed down her limbs until she felt as if she were moving through water. She asked the aide tightly, “How do I get out of here?”

Like the emcee, all of the servers and aides at the Ball were human. The woman gave her the same strange look as the emcee had, incredulity mingled with envy, and darkened with the faintest tinge of resentment. “I know candidates can’t see it when they’re on the stage, but you’ve been selected for an interview.”