Free Queen of Shadows by Dianne Sylvan Page B

was soup, bread, and a bowl of sliced strawberries.
    “It’s vegetarian,” the Prime said, his eyes still on the laptop screen.
    “How did you know—”
    A smile in his voice. “You don’t smell like an omnivore.”
    For the life of her she couldn’t decide if that was interesting or deeply creepy, so she focused on the food. She’d barely eaten in two days, and it was all she could do not to inhale it.
    “Does someone around here cook?”
    “It was delivered. There’s a kitchen on the first floor but I don’t think it’s ever been used.”
    “What time is it?” she asked around a mouthful of bread.
    “Four thirty in the afternoon.”
    “Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”
    “I had some work to finish.”
    She tried to get a look at the screen, but all she saw was a window full of arcane strings of characters. He appeared to be editing it, and he stopped periodically to consult a notepad covered in precise handwriting.
    She thought of the pen she’d seen earlier and resisted the urge to ask what kind of degree he had, and where from. Best not to admit she’d been poking around in his bedroom. A safer route was, “How does a vampire end up a computer geek?”
    He stopped working and swiveled the chair to face her. “When I first became involved with the Signets, most Primes were still relying on outdated radio technology for intra-Elite communication. Our security system was obsolete, and there was no network among the Signets to share information. We tend to be . . . slow in evolving. I decided that in order to survive as a society we had to adapt.”
    “Why not hire someone to do all the technical stuff, then? Clearly money’s not a problem around here.”
    “I don’t trust anyone else. It only takes one slipped password to bring a network down. I’m the only person with full access.”
    “Where did you get these thingies?” she asked, holding up her arm, where she’d snapped the wristband on earlier.
    “I developed the first version five years ago. This is the third. The original design was more like a wristwatch with a keypad. I reverse-engineered the touch screen technology of the iPhone and combined it with voice recognition software. The fabrication is subcontracted to a private firm via the Department of Defense, which was happy to make the coms in exchange for limited access to my designs.”
    “Um . . . did you go to school for this sort of thing?”
    He inclined his head toward the wall, where she saw for the first time a framed diploma: a doctorate in engineering . . . from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    “MIT? Are you serious?”
    Her amazement amused him. “Of course. My dissertation was on voice recognition technology and its applications in security and defense. That was twenty years ago, though—the research is Paleolithic now.”
    Twenty years ago, she’d been seven years old. He didn’t look any older than she was. “When were you born?”
    His smile faded. “1643. I was born and raised in northern England.”
    After everything she’d been through and heard in the last forty-eight hours, finding out he was over 350 years old barely even fazed her. She just nodded, and commented, “You don’t sound British. Or Jewish. Isn’t Solomon Hebrew?”
    He nodded. “When you live for more than one human lifetime, it pays to reinvent yourself from time to time. When I left England behind, I also left behind my birth name.”
    “What was it?”
    This time the smile was faint and held a bit of an admonishment, and she realized she had no business asking, and that he’d intimated he wouldn’t tell her anyway. “Sorry,” she muttered, trying to think of something less personal to ask. “Where did you go after that?”
    “Valencia, for a while. Then Lyons, Rome, and Edinburgh. In 1920 I moved to the States and lived in California until 1989. I finished my postgraduate studies and then moved here.”
    Her stomach was getting full, and combined with the