Free Blood & Spirits by Dennis Sharpe

walls. This place is meant to impress and intimidate. It is as successful as its owner.
    The room is already occupied, the rest of the council, of course, arrived before me. It’s rare that you have all eight of us in one place. I always stand out in these little meetings when I’m invited. I am the only one like us that has no seat on their little ruling council.
    The others are being surface social, but still obviously in their family pods. Jacobi’s family was furthest from the door, his nephew Marcus Learner was standing and blustering to Preston Warner, his cousin. Preston had the style, the money, and the brainpower Learner lacked. He was actually someone to be feared, or would be in time. He was second to none, in this town, for his taste and his cold fickle way of dealing with people.
    Standing near enough to them to hold conversation but dividing the room down the middle were Serena Carlson and her nephew Steven Carlisle. Theirs was a house divided, over the issue of support for Jacobi’s rule of the area. Serena was a former lover of Jacobi’s, but it was a relationship based on shared control of assets, not any pretense of emotion. Her silver blonde hair and conservative dress, all in white to match, revealed to a degree how ‘off’ she was. Her penchant for the clandestine secret arts was well known to all of us. She was easily the most perverse of the council, while Carlisle cared only for money and power, and all the trappings of it. Social niceties meant nearly nothing to him.
    Closest to the door and talking to Carlisle are Gus Edelmann and his cousin Carson Dwight, not as well dressed, but obviously as wealthy. These were my people. They are too well moneyed for a working girl like me, but they come the closest to understanding what I do, and what it means. They were both working men before being chosen to be one of our kind. They have both aided me several times in the past, but always with the understanding that the council shouldn’t hear about it. I can appreciate that.
    Then I see him, his eyes already on me, sitting motionless on the opposite side of the room. Adrian Jacobi is always dressed sharp as a tack, embodying an immaculate corrupting authority. If I were to be seduced by power, I would be his.
    He allows me to stand awkwardly in the entryway long enough for all the conversations to die off and everyone to turn and gawk at ‘little orphan V’, before standing and announcing that we’d be going to the council table to sit. I doubt they’d admit it, but I think they all secretly love having me around to look down on.
    They all file in around the table, taking their seats as a matter of ritual. Jacobi sits in the center, and has a silver mallet that rests in front of him.
    There are no formal rules for how our kind should gather, but being the eldest he has his own dictated procedure that everyone accepts and follows. He’s earned his position by age, by surviving longer than his contemporaries, and that alone commands respect.
    I know it’s intentional that, when they do actually consent to my presence, I have a chair that sits a good foot shorter than theirs. I don’t get to sit at their table. Just being in the room is gift enough as far as their concerned. I just keep telling myself that doing this is important, and screw them if they don’t like me. I look good.
    Everyone is seated and the room is silent. Jacobi stares into me for a long moment, before banging his toy hammer and rising to speak. “We have all come together because I required it. It has been brought to my attention that Veronica has uncovered some disturbing facts that may well concern us all.”
    They hang on his words, even if they do have little more than contempt for me. “Now, Veronica, what is this matter that so urgently requires our attention?”
    All eyes are on me as I stand before the closest thing I have to my own species, feeling like an insect to be dissected and studied. Their family lines bind