I looked at Michael and blinked. "Wow," I said. "Color me impressed."

Michael looked vaguely embarrassed. "It happens like that sometimes," he said, apologetically.

I nodded and took that in stride. I turned my gaze back to the vampire twins. "Let that be a lesson to you. Hands off the Fist of God."

Kyle shot me a murderous look, his face rippling.

My heart sped up, but I couldn't let the fear show. "Go ahead, Kyle," I dared him. "Start something. Break the truce your own leader set up. Violate the laws of hospitality. The White Council will burn this place down so fast, people will call it Little Pompeii."

He snarled at me, and picked Kelly up. "This isn't over," he promised. "One way or another, Dresden. I'll kill you."

"Uh-huh." I flicked my wrist at him, my hand right in his face. "Shoo, shoo. I have to mingle."

Kyle snarled. But the pair withdrew, and I turned my gaze slowly around the courtyard. Everything in the immediate vicinity had stopped while people, black- and red-clad alike, stared at us. Some of the vampires in scarlet looked at Michael, swallowed, and took a couple of steps back.

I grinned, as cocky and as confident as I could appear, and lifted my glass. "A toast," I said. "To hospitality."

They were quiet for a moment, then hurriedly mumbled an echo to my toast and sipped from their drinks. I drained my goblet in a single gulp, hardly noticing the delightful flavor of it, and turned to Michael. He lifted his glass to the mouth of his helm in a token sip, but didn't take any.

"All right," I said. "I got to touch Kyle. He's out, too, though I didn't expect him to be our man. Or woman. Or monster."

Michael looked slowly around as the scarlet-clad vampires continued to withdraw. "It looks like we've cowed them for now."

I nodded, still uneasy. The crowd parted at one side, and Thomas and Justine came to us, blazes of pale skin and brilliant color amidst the scarlet and black. "There you are," Thomas said. He glanced down at my goblet and let out a sigh. "I'm glad I found you in time."

"In time for what?" I asked.

"To warn you," he said. He flicked a hand at the refreshments table. "The wine is poisoned."

Chapter Twenty-six

"Poisoned?" I said, witlessly.

Thomas peered at my face and then down at my goblet. He leaned over it enough to see that it was empty and said, "Ah. Oops."

"Harry." Michael stepped up beside me, and set his own glass aside. "I thought you said that they couldn't try anything so overt."

My stomach kept churning. My heart beat more quickly, though whether this was from the poison or the simple, cold fear that Thomas's words had brought to me, I couldn't say. "They can't," I said. "If I pitch over dead, the Council would know what happened. I sent word in today that I was coming here tonight."

Michael shot Thomas a hard look. "What was in the wine?"

The pale man shrugged, slipping his arm around Justine once more. The girl leaned against him and closed her eyes. "I don't know what they put in it," he said. "But look at these people." He nodded to those black-clad folk who were already stretched out blissfully upon the ground. "They all have wineglasses."

I looked a bit closer and it was true. The servants moved about the courtyard, plucking up glasses from the fallen. As I watched, another young couple, dancing slowly together, sank down to the ground in a long, deep kiss that faded away into simple stillness.

"Hell's bells," I swore. "That's what they're doing."

"What?" Michael asked.

"They don't want me dead," I said. "Not from this." I didn't have much time. I stalked past the refreshments table to a potted fern and bent over it. I heard Michael take up a position behind me, guarding my back. I shoved a finger down my throat. Simple, quick, nasty. The wine burned my throat coming back up, and the fern's fronds tickled the back of my neck as I spat it back out into the base of the plant. My head spun as I sat back up again, and when I looked back toward Michael, everything blurred for a moment before it snapped back into focus. A slow, delicious numbness spread over my fingers.

"Everyone," I mumbled.

"What?" Michael knelt down in front of me and gripped my shoulder with one arm. "Harry, are you all right?"

"I'm fuzzy," I said. Vampire venom. Naturally. It felt good to have it in me again, and I wondered, for a moment, what I was so worried about. It was just that nice. "It's for everyone. They're drugging everyone's wine. Vamp venom. That way they can say they weren't just targeting me." I wobbled, and then stood up. "Recreational poisoning. Put everyone in the party mood."

Thomas mused. "Rather ham-handed, I suppose, but effective." He looked around at the growing numbers of young people joining the first few upon the ground in ecstatic stupor. His fingers stroked Justine's flank absently, and she shivered, pressing closer to him. "I suppose I'm prejudiced. I prefer my prey a little more lively."

"We've got to get you out of here," Michael said.

I gritted my teeth, and tried to push the pleasant sensations aside. The venom had to have an enormously quick absorption rate. Even if I'd brought the wine back up, I must have gotten a fairly good dose. "No," I managed after a moment. "That's what they want me to do."

"Harry, you can barely stand up," Michael objected.

"You are looking a bit peaked," Thomas said.

"Bah. If they want me incapacitated, it means they've got something to hide."

"Or just that they want you to get killed," Michael said. "Or drugged enough to agree to let one of them feed on you."

"No," I disagreed. "If they wanted to seduce me, they'd have tried something else. They're trying to scare me off. Or keep me from finding something out."

"I hate to point out the obvious," Thomas said, "but why on earth would Bianca invite you if she didn't want you to be here?"

"She's obligated to invite the Council to witness. That means me, in this town. And she didn't expect me to actually show—pretty much everyone was surprised to see me at all."

"They didn't think you'd come," Michael murmured.

"Yeah. Ain't I a stinker." I took a couple of deep breaths and said, "I think the one we're after is here, Michael. We've got to stick this out for a little while. See if I can find out exactly who it is."

"Exactly who is what?" Thomas asked.

"None of your beeswax, Thomas," I said.

"Has anyone ever told you, Mister Dresden, that you are a thoroughly annoying man?" That made me grin, to which he rolled his eyes. "Well," he said, "I'll not intrude on your business any further. Let me know if there's anything I can do for you." He and Justine sauntered off into the crowd.

I watched Justine's legs go, leaning on my cane a bit to help me balance. "Nice guy," I commented.

"For a vampire," Michael said. "Don't trust him, Harry. There's something about him I don't like."

"Oh, I like him," I said. "But I sure as hell don't trust him."

"What do we do now?"

"Look around. So far we've got food in black, the vampires in red, and then there's you and me, and a handful of other people in different costumes."

"The Roman centurion," Michael said.

"Yeah. And some Hamlet-looking guy. Let's go see what they are."

"Harry," Michael asked. "Are you going to be okay?"

I swallowed. I felt dizzy, a little sickened. I had to fight to get clear thoughts through, bulldogging them against the pull of the venom. I was surrounded by things that looked at people like we look at cows, and felt fairly sure that I was going to get myself killed if I stayed.

Of course, if I didn't stay, other people could get killed. If I didn't stay, the people who had already been hurt remained in danger: Charity. Michael's infant son. Murphy. If I didn't stay, the Nightmare would have time to recuperate, and then it and its corporate sponsor, who I thought was here at this party, would feel free to keep taking pot shots at me.