23

Lettow isn't a "sword guy," but he's old enough to have handled a szabla—the curved blade of the Polish aristocracy. One of them hangs on the wall between two old Spanish pistols. A similar blade (the same one?) is visible in an oil painting of a family relation on the far wall.

Photographs line another wall. Lettow in a French airman's uniform during the Great War (1917). Pattermuster with two tired-looking exiles at a restaurant in Santa Monica (1942). The Warlock Jasper Knowles and D'Espine the Toreador in Las Vegas, smiling in their tacky outfits (1960). A grim-looking man in a boxy suit—the Ventrue who once ruled Tucson—with a smiling and golden-haired Donald Trump in the foreground, Lettow and Dove half-hidden behind (1987).

A beautiful black-haired woman on the Spanish Riviera, wearing a sun hat under the light of the full moon (1920). That night, you poached blood dolls from the Archbishop of Marbella, hid in crumbling fortifications that no mortal had seen in a hundred years, and you even flew again. And crashed again, but the Nieuport 20 got you safely to Gibraltar and the last secret palace of the Banu Haqim in Europe. And then, under the moonlight…

"Krarr?" It's Lettow. Who else would it be?

"Krarr!" The Prince of Tucson calls you back to the twenty-first century. You grab his desk to avoid falling and look for something in this office, anything, that can recall you to yourself…

Next

"We traveled all over the world in those nights," Lettow says, looking at the photos. "Like foolish neonates. And it's not like any of us were young. But that's all over now. I'm entombed here. Not even Dove drives anymore."

"Dove thinks I'm too merciful as Prince," Lettow goes on, "but I don't punish people for who they are. A friend of mine was Embraced unlawfully in Los Angeles, and the Prince there, LaCroix—I'm sure you know the story. And I didn't destroy my predecessor's childer, you may have noticed." Indeed, those Blue Bloods are always skulking around upstairs. "Well, except for one, after he conspired to consume Invidia Caul. Why he thought I would tolerate him drinking another vampire's soul, just because of his former status…

"Anyway. I allow Clanless into the Elysium and permit thin-bloods to traverse my domain. The problems at St. Basil's in Phoenix are a problem for me, because I want them to find someplace safe. And in my time as Prince, I have never once called a blood hunt. I choose to believe it is because my people respect me and have committed no crimes that make it necessary. My point, Krarr, is that I am not going to punish you simply for associating with Julian Sim."

You step forward, just outside of Lettow's rip-your-throat-out range, and glare at the Prince with your fists balled.

He just smiles. "You're quite ferocious when you need to be, little Blue Blood," he says. Though not impressed, he seems willing to let your defiance stand as proof of your innocence.

The Prince of Tucson turns away from you to study a table littered with mementos: playbills, engine parts, a single cowboy boot, a Quran. A long, curved knife, still in its turquoise-studded sheath. He picks it up, testing its weight, then he says, "Tell me what you know about Aila."

Maybe your sins are about to catch up with you tonight.