“That is because the veil of privacy continues to be appropriate after death. Your mahmen was a fine female of worth who did her duty as was appropriate.”

“Wow. You used ‘appropriate’ twice there. Good work. No wonder my father trusted you to plan his parties.” Boone nodded at the butler’s feet. “Watch it. You’re dripping. Better go to Havers’s and get that stitched up.”

The butler glanced at the roast beef as if he were contemplating going back to his work.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Boone shook his head. “You’re not bleeding all over the food, even if that hunk of meat is about to go into the oven. I’ll go get the other doggen, and they will handle everything—as they should have from the very beginning for the ceremony. It was very inappropriate of you to exclude them.”

Marquist’s smile was slow as his eyes grew calculating. “Be of care, young master Boone. I would hate for your bloodline to be sullied by anything untoward. The glymera is slow to forgive even minor slips. A poorly cooked hors d’oeuvre or badly prepared foie gras can be devastating to a household’s reputation. Much less something of far graver import.”

“You’re assuming I give two shits about what any of them think.” Boone dropped his chin and glared from beneath his brows. “And let me point out the obvious—you’ll never get another job on an estate of this caliber if you pull any stunts of indiscretion like talking about your affair with my father. The aristocrats won’t let you so much as wash their cars or clean their gutters if you spread rumors about my sire.”

“This from a male who claims he does not care what people think.”

“I’m just trying to help you out in case you haven’t considered your next job.”

“You’re assuming I haven’t been well taken care of. Which happens to be something I know for a fact I do not have to worry about.”

Marquist did not bow as he went to leave. But considering the breach of protocol he had just confirmed—as well as the one he had threatened—who was counting?

Right before the butler walked out into the staging area, Boone said over his shoulder, “Do not use the front door. You’re just staff here, not family.”

Marquist paused and tightened the bloody dish towel on his sliced hand. “I’m better than family. And as soon as that Fade Ceremony is over, you’re going to learn exactly how much better.”

“I’m not leaving this house,” Boone gritted out.

“Neither am I.”

* * *

As Butch re-formed on the side lawn of Boone’s family’s mansion, he was so not surprised by the old school money routine. The place was big as an embassy and lit up like a ball park. Through the old wavy glass of the windows, he could see antiques and oil paintings, sculptures and vases of flowers. It was exactly the kind of anonymous, venerable luxury that he’d seen in every glymera household he had ever been in, proof positive that intrinsic worth didn’t make shit homey, and when there was only a single standard of acceptability for decorations, all you got was a reductive one-note.

He would take his Pit with his shellan and his two roommates over this showboat every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

“Poor kid,” Rhage said as the brother arrived.

“Not hardly,” V muttered as he appeared. “Boone’s better off this way, true? That sire of his was a motherfucker.”

Butch shot a look at his roomie. “Will you please try to not bring that up at the goddamn ceremony? It’s tacky.”

“I hate protocol.”

“No, really?” Rhage cut in. “Wait, let me get my shocked face on.”

The brother turned away—and then whipped back around with his handsome puss all wall-eyed and O-mouthed.

As he gasped and fluttered both hands by his head, V glared. “Come over here.”

“Why?”

“So I can knee you in the nuts. I’d close the distance myself, but your church bells aren’t worth my two steps to the left—”

“Will you guys quit it,” Butch hissed. “This is a solemn occasion. I need you both to pull your shit together and pretend you can be appropriate for ten minutes.”

V rolled his eyes. “This coming from a male who has a potato gun.”

Rhage put his arm around Butch’s shoulders and leaned in. “Please tell me you’re not trying to reason with the Hunchback of I-don’t-givea-damn over there?”

As Butch considered doing a gonad workout of his own on Frick and Frack, the Smack-It Brothers, Tohr rematerialized and changed the vibe with his presence. With the levity draining out of the group, the bunch of them walked around to the front of the house. Up at the entrance, they stomped snow off their treads on the woven mat and put the brass knocker to good use. A properly dressed doggen in all black—per protocol, natch—answered and then they were inside and checking things out away from the cold.

In a predictably fancy foyer, a good fifty or sixty people were milling about, and as Butch glanced through the crowd, he caught sight of Phury and Z with John Matthew, Qhuinn, and Blay. The group of home-teamers were hanging together just outside the parlor and dagger palms were raised in greeting.

Rhage took out a cherry Tootsie Pop and unwrapped it. “Where’s our boy?”

Butch nodded past the parlor’s archway. Boone was over by the fireplace, looking like he was on autopilot as he talked to a well-heeled couple standing with him. When he glanced across the coiffed heads, he did a double take as he saw members of the Brotherhood, and he excused himself, weeding through the aristocratic females and males.

“You all are here,” he said softly.

Butch pulled the kid into a hard hug. “Wrath wanted to come as well, but it’s too much of a security risk. And the Band of Bastards also wish they could attend, but they’re guarding the King at home.”

Talk about your knock-down, drag-out fights. With Wrath, that was. The stay-home-sonny discussion had not gone well. After reasonable arguments to the King about being safe from assassination attempts failed, Vishous had threatened to duct-tape the last pure-bred vampire to his throne. Wrath had really lost his shit then—at which point V had mentioned that the sticky stuff worked really well on pieholes, too.

KA-BOOM.

Beth, a.k.a. the Big Gun, had eventually talked some sense into her hellren. Thank God.

“But Wrath’s here in spirit,” Rhage said as more hugs were exchanged.

Besides, apart from the security issues, Wrath’s presence would have been too much of a distraction. Instantly, the gathering would have become all about the King—and given what had happened at Throe’s party with that shadow attack? The last thing anybody needed was a bunch of aristocrats demanding to know what was being done to protect the species against this new enemy.

Especially because no one on the Brotherhood side knew much.

Across the way, the front door opened again, and as the trainees came in with their SOs, Boone took his leave and went to get some support from his contemporaries.

“They’re a good group of kids,” Tohr commented.

“The best,” Butch agreed.

Paradise, Craeg, Axe, Novo, and Peyton—along with Boone—had proven to be so much more than anybody could have hoped for. They were a tough lot, smart and resourceful, too, and they had been really handy as the war with the Lessening Society wound down, and this fresh crop of bad news appeared.

Butch shook his head as he made his way over to where the other brothers were. They had to find out more about those shadow entities—as well as what exactly had gone down at Throe’s house. Altamere’s death had been a line in the sand, a very visible, very widely reported event that had raised the profile of the shadow threat. Previously, the attacks had been one-offs. Boone’s sire’s slaying, on the other hand, had been in front of twenty-three other aristocrats in a private home. And then there had been the secondary death of Altamere’s shellan.

Talk about pieholes getting to work. Undoubtedly, phone lines had been burning up, and sooner or later, Wrath was going to have to say something about the situation.

But here was not the place and now was not the time.

On that note, Butch catalogued the aristocrats he was surrounded by. The fancy-dancy types were taking notice that brothers were in the house, all kinds of discreet pointing and commenting going on, a buzz rippling its way through the parlor. Except it was funny—or maybe not so surprising: Not one person who had been at that ill-fated party where Altamere had been killed was in attendance. Sure, there had been a small number of injuries during the shadow attack, but they had been relatively minor in nature, and with the way the species healed? All of those dandies would be back on their loafer’d and stiletto’d feet by now.

“Not a one of them showed up,” Rhage remarked around his Tootsie Pop.

“You read my mind,” Butch murmured.

“The aristocracy only likes scandal from a distance.”

“Pussies,” V announced. “Every one of them.”

As the trainees came over and greeted the Brotherhood, Butch couldn’t help noticing the two worlds that Boone straddled, his bloodline’s and his working life’s. And given the kid’s tight-lipped affect as he turned back to the aristocrats in that drawing room, it was pretty damn clear which one he preferred. Still, he was a good son for doing this—

When a blast of cold air announced a late-arriving attendee, Butch glanced over. A slender blond female with Jackie O sunglasses was coming in, her fine cashmere coat in its tasteful shade of coffee setting off a spectacular pair of legs and brand-new Louboutins. As she closed things behind herself, Butch could smell her tears.

Single female. Fantastic style. Obviously upset?

Sure enough, Boone was on it, immediately going back over and greeting her with a formal bow that she returned with a gracious nod. And then there was an awkward stillness between them, as if in their heads, they were hugging each other.