The Prince's Court — Thursday, January 31, 1991, 5:02 PM

Thu, 31 Jan 1991 17:02:00 +0000

Drake Hotel, 8th Floor / Kaspar & Sons, South Pilsen

Chicago, Illinois

The call came through Brennon’s office line at 7:14 PM, forty-three minutes after sunset. A woman’s voice. Older, efficient. She identified herself as Mrs. Elridge and said one sentence: the Prince would receive guests at the Drake at nine o’clock, and the Primogen council had been notified.

The line went dead before anyone could ask questions.

Darius pulled the navy suit from behind the water heater pipe where it had been hanging since the dry cleaner on 18th Street. Sable chose the black dress with the high collar, simple cut, the kind of garment that made you notice the woman instead of the fabric. Neither of them spoke while they dressed. The basement at Kaspar held the sounds of two people preparing for something neither could name precisely, and the silence between them was not tension. It was the shared grammar of twenty-six days in the same city, the same walls, the same slow understanding that tonight the ground was going to shift under them and they could not control the direction.

Chapter 10 — The Prince's Court on Chicago Chronicles

The Prince's Court — Thursday, January 31, 1991, 5:02 PM