Chapter 2

The radio chirped once—a sound like a bird swallowing its own song—and then the sirens started.

They came from everywhere at once, from hidden speakers in the ceiling and the walls and the floor, a sound that wasn't a wail but a pulse, a rhythmic pounding like a heartbeat amplified to the size of the room. The chandeliers flickered. The warm golden light went amber, then red, then a deep crimson that washed over everything like blood across water.

The guests moved.

Some of them screamed. Some of them ran for the doors, but the doors were already answering the pulse, huge steel panels descending from hidden slots in the walls with a sound like grinding mountains, heavy and inevitable. They hit the marble floor with a crash that Julian felt through his shoes, and the room went from open to sealed in the time it took him to draw a breath.

The blast doors locked with a series of clunks, one after another, like a rifle being cocked.

Julian stood in the center of the ballroom, his silk trousers wet with champagne, his jaw slack, and watched the crowd press back against the sealed walls like animals in a pen.

"You—" He turned to face the old man. "You can't do this. This is a private function. This is my family's event. You have no authority—"

"Show him," Thomas said.

He wasn't talking to Julian. He was talking to Elena.

The young woman stepped out from behind him, her face blotchy and tear-streaked, but her eyes clear. She reached into the small beaded clutch that had somehow survived the chaos and pulled out a folded document, creased and yellowed, the paper thick and official.