Capitol Magic Read Free

been revealed to me, before I discovered I was a sphinx. As a sphinx, I was bound to protect vampires, to serve them.
    â€œJames,” I repeated, forcing my voice to stay steady. “This woman is with me. She’s not a threat.”
    And she wasn’t. I had a good six inches on the librarian, and I ventured to say I had a bit more training with regard to self-defense. James himself had undertaken my instruction—and I’d fallen a few thousand times before I’d learned how to use my opponent’s strength against him. Given the way Jane was frozen, it was pretty clear she was still at the falling stage, nowhere near ready to fight back.
    In fact, she seemed to be at the petrified-senseless stage.
    â€œJames,” I said one more time. “You’re safe. The Old Library is safe. There is no threat here.”
    I took a step closer, knowing that he was already aware of me, that his entire vampire body was attuned to my presence as a sphinx, as a creature who had drunk his blood, who had been healed by the dark power in his veins.
    For that matter, my own body was pretty conscious of his.
    As usual, he wore a suit, the impeccable tailoring only emphasizing his height. His conservative tie was perfectly knotted, and the creases in his trousers were razor-sharp. If he’d kept to his usual routine—and when didn’t he?—he had left his sanctum an hour after sunset. He had driven his luxury Mercedes to his coveted space in the courthouse’s underground parking garage. He had stalked past the security guards he managed, strode into his office, sat down at his desk, and turned on his computer.
    And when he had sensed an invading presence in the Old Library, he had stormed down five flights of stairs, ready to attack an intruder so that he could keep secret the existence of vampires and griffins and sprites, of all the supernatural creatures that submitted to the justice of the Eastern Empire Night Court that met in the chamber far above us.
    James blinked, and then he swallowed hard. By the time he took a step back, he had absorbed his fangs. Nevertheless, the flash in his cobalt eyes made it clear that this matter was far from resolved.
    I sighed. “James Morton, I’d like to introduce you to Jane Madison. Jane is a consultant I’ve hired to help us organize the Old Library.”
    I had to give the librarian credit. She extended her hand, as if she met vampires on a regular basis. I could tell that James was surprised—he almost forgot to shake. As I watched the ordinary social exchange, I wondered again at the feeling that had stolen over me when I’d heard Jane speak in the bakery.
    Certainly her words had been interesting—the fact that she was trained as a librarian, that she was building a business as an independent consultant for situations just like mine. (Well, not just like mine—how many collections of supernatural legal materials could there be?)
    But it was more than that. It was the tone of her voice. Not the ordinary pitch that any human could hear. Rather, there was a resonance behind her words, a reverberation that struck something deep inside me.
    She wasn’t a sphinx. Even though I had yet to begin my official training, I knew I would have recognized another member of my rare race. And she certainly wasn’t a vampire—we had met in broad daylight. She was too lithe to be a griffin, too grounded to be a sprite. But there was something about her….
    Something that James obviously didn’t sense. Or, if he did, he didn’t care. I watched as he slipped steady fingers inside his breast pocket, and I wasn’t the least bit surprised when they emerged holding a metal flask. He unscrewed the cap and offered the container to Jane. “Perhaps we should drink to new beginnings?”
    She glanced at me, as if to ask whether this was normal behavior for my boss. Unfortunately, it was.
    â€œJames,” I said.