Settling In

Heathrow Airport / Mayfair London, England — October 1969

They landed at Heathrow at 7:14 AM. October light – thin, watery, apologetic – slanting across wet tarmac. The ground crew directed the Learjet to a private hangar, a long building with high windows that turned the morning into a weapon. Sunlight poured through the glass and puddled on the concrete floor in pale sheets.

The crate sat in the cargo area. Brass fittings catching the light like coins at the bottom of a fountain.

A man named Harvey walked in carrying a clipboard and the expression of someone who’d been awake since four. Mid-forties. Thinning hair. Tie knotted against the early hour. He introduced himself and informed them that he would be conducting a customs inspection of all luggage and personal effects. Metal detector first. Then the bags. Then everything else.

He said it the way a dentist says open wide.

Amber went down first. Roarke caught her eye – the look that sixty-one years teaches you to send without moving your face – and she understood. Her breathing changed. Her hands started shaking with something that looked real because she was remembering something real to fuel it. She grabbed the edge of the detector frame and her knees buckled and Harvey turned and everyone turned and Roarke jerked his chin at Derek and the two of them carried the crate into a maintenance alcove on the far wall while Natasha blocked the sightline.

Concrete walls. No windows. The brass fittings stopped catching anything.

Harvey came back. Five suitcases for four visible people. He opened them one by one and asked who they belonged to. Lodin’s was the blue one – wrong size for everyone here. Roarke said it was clothes Amber packed for her father in Kensington. Amber, still catching her breath on a folding chair, nodded. Dad’s hopeless about shopping for himself, she said. Harvey checked the manifest. There was a large wooden chest listed. Where was it?

Roarke lied. Harvey didn’t buy it. He started walking toward the alcove.

Roarke stepped into his path and caught his eyes. The borrowed power in his blood reached out – not warm, not cold, just there – and something behind Harvey’s face loosened like a knot pulled from the wrong end. The clipboard lowered. The pen stopped tapping.

Right, Harvey said. That’s all in order. Welcome to England.

They rented a Ford Transit from Hertz. White, smelled like cigarettes and the ghost of a dog. Roarke navigated from Lodin’s map and watched the mirrors at the same time. London through the windshield looked nothing like Chicago – older, smaller, buildings that had been standing since before the country Roarke worked for existed. Red buses and black cabs and people carrying umbrellas they hadn’t opened yet.

Nobody followed them from Heathrow. Every car behind them accounted for over twenty minutes.

The hotel was in Mayfair. Cream stone, brass revolving door, a doorman in a grey coat. The kind of place that doesn’t print prices because if you’re asking you shouldn’t be here. Roarke brought the crate in through the service entrance – a freight corridor, a porter who didn’t ask questions, a narrow lift that smelled like brass polish. Twenty-second floor. Suite. Blackout curtains drawn before the crate entered the bedroom.

Roarke called the Queen of London’s people from the room phone. Two rings. Three. A warm British voice: Your business, please?

He gave his name. Lodin’s name. Chicago. Formally requested acceptance on the Camarilla’s best terms and feeding permission prior to the evening’s meeting with Her Highness.

A pause – the kind where someone is choosing between several available responses.

Her Highness gladly extends such permission to her very welcome guest. One stipulation. Please do not feed in the theatre district.

Roarke hung up. Briefed the others. They ate and showered and slept because that was the job – rest when you can, because you can’t choose when you can’t. Roarke set the alarm for five.