My name is Luisa Rennesslaer, and I’m ducked down behind a well-manicured holly bush across the nearly acre wide road from the guard who is checking in visitors to the looming De Morrissey mansion that overlooks central Buenas Aires.  Now, why an attractive, you’ll have to pardon my lack of false modesty, young female of the French Extraction, second generation was hiding behind a girl-tall bush in His Majesty’s Ricardo the Fourth’s Greater Kingdom of Brazil is a little more complicated.

My associations with the FE are usually enough to get me, well, that and my looks, which are striking and attractive if not outright beautiful, into any party I wish to enter.  There I can interview my targets for the expatriate paper I work for.  The Renn Clan, that’s mine, like so many others of the Great Families, left France after it fell to the Communists in the late Sixties.  But we still like to keep up with the doings of the French Diaspora around the world.  But De Morrissey appeared immune to my blandishments and the smoke and mirrors I has spun his way about possible commericial contracts with the Diaspora.  We never deal with others, if we can help it, but its useful for the proles to think we might…if they are really nice to us.

So, I stood in softly turned dirt in my high heels, and fumed as less important people than I walked in, including some men I would consider real creeps, and woman who looked like they might be more at home on a two-wheeler than in the back seat of a limousine.  Disgusting.

I’d already been here an hour, and was about to give up.  Only the well-know Rennesslaer stubborness keeping me up this late on a date night with no date.  And then I saw walking up the smooth, just poured last month in honor of the new power broker, the new smooth asphalt carried a man in what looked like an army jacket that hung loosely on his broad shoulders.  On his back, he hefted a duffel bag.

My curiousity was piqued, as the only Army men coming to this party were the type that got a dozen medals for campaigns they oversaw from the capital city.  The Army is where you stuff your talentless relatives so that they can’t harm anything important.  I’ve heard of other nations doing it differently–but here in Ricardo’s Greater Braziliana, this was our way.

And then without effort he stepped up the steep slope just short of the De Morrissey property, and slipped into the woods.  I was further interested, and made my way across the road to the accompaninment of some frantic honking which I ignored.  I paused at the base of the slope, looking at the couple tracks I could see in the dirt at the edge of the road.  The man was very tall, much taller than the average five foot five inches of the typical Braziliander.  And he seemed strong since I had no desire to climb the slope.

So I waited a minute, and was rewarded by my following my instincts.  You see, usually several Rennesslaers in each generation have ‘gifts’.  I can see the unseen, and can guess very well what hides in the dark, and I always pick up the telephone before it rings.  There’s an old tradition in our family that back before Christ came to Europe, one of our family had been wedded to one of the ancient gods, and thus we all had ‘godsblood’ in our veins, just a drop, but enough to make us ‘different’ than the common sort.

The man shambled, no stepped, out of the edge of the woods, and gave me an uncaring glance as he swept by in his tuxedo, and spats, with a walking cane.

"Thats a nice suit."  He paused and turned to make some non-consequential reply.  "I saw you enter the woods."  He changed his reply I could tell to some sort of brush-off, but I continued on.  "I can help you.  A man with a girl on his arm always looks better entering a party than a man alone."

Suddenly, he stepped closer to me.  He towered over me, and I could see his arms were thick with muscle.  His face was strong, not quite handsome, but with a noble beard covering an enormous jaw, and a shock of yellow hair crowned his head.  Piercing, dark eyes quizzed me, and then he smiled faintly.

"No…If I say no, you’ll just tell the guard won’t you?"

I tried to look like I was looking innocent while I was actually trying to look guilty.  Of course, I would have done that.  No one insults a Rennesslaer and gets away with it.  He seemed to find this simple rationality objectionable.

"You don’t want to be around me, little darling."  Ooh, the condescension in his tone.  "Besides, I have an invite."  He showed me a piece of paper which was blank although I could almost see words on it.

"Cute trick.  I thought Swedes were as mind null as rocks."  I said, and he gave me a much closer second look.  I could tell I was being evaluated in ways that I did not understand.  However, I stood there and took it.  I could see it was his way, no matter how rude it was.  Besides, he was not unattractive in a rough sort of way.

"I’ll let you come with me provided you follow my rules." He said, conceding, and then he stepped up into my face, and whispered. "My rules.  They are meant to keep you safe, and in one piece, Luisa Rennesslaer."

The sheer menace pouring off him had me willing to confess to almost anything as long as he would crank it back, and for a second I considered finding another way in, but no, it was this or nothing.  I wondered as I offered him my left arm if I saw a faint trace of dissapointment in his eyes.  This was humiliating for a girl, one could get the feeling one was not luscious.

We walked arm in arm up to the guard, who took the plain peice of paper, pretended to scratch around on the board crossing out our nonexistent names, and then fell asleep as we walked away.  I leaned into the shoulder of Mr. T. Smith as his ‘attending friend’ and whispered.

"You shouldn’t throw your esper mojo out to the wind.  Blow too much of it, and you’ll be toast for days."

He laughed quietly in reply, and then as an afterthought, thanked me.  So I drove my fingernails into the palm of his hand which he affected not to notice.

The long walk up the driveway took us to the De Morrissey mansion, a brightly lit up pink and white doughnut.  It was disgustingly cutesy and I was about to say so when T muttered something.

"Blood and bone." Pink and white…I wondered, and shivered in the tropical night.  We have our stories of voodoo, and necromancers, and the dark lords of the night.  And it was true that tonight was Deadnight, but under Ricardo’s rule, no one celebrated this since he was devoted to ‘rationalizing’ the population, and his courts had firm things to say to people who ‘climbed back into the muck of ancient superstitions’.

I stepped inside, still hanging on to T.’s arm, and was glad for his presence since outside the door were a number of men of the type I do not associate with.  Oh, they wore suits, and smoked cigars, but you could tell they were not fit companions for a nice girl from a good family.  However, T. just quietly asked for some room, and they stepped back, except for one who suddenly stepped back very quickly and apologetically, even holding the door open for us.

I’d sensed some vibration of fury from T., and looking into his eyes, I caught the faint glimmer as it descended back into his depths, and I wondered what sort of man he was.  Several times already, I’d tried to brush him with my perception, but came back with nothing for my efforts.  Nothing except a mild headache.  I hoped they had good booze tonight at the bar instead of that German bilgewater they call beer.

We walked through upper hallways dotted with drinkers and talkers and flirters and I saw a few friends, but T. Smith was not in a mind to wait, and in fact seemed eager to ditch me.  So, I air-kissed and headed onward.

The glass elevator had the loveliest brass fittings, and we took it down to the butterfly room gave me a great view of the bulk of the party that was indoors anyways.  I saw powerful people from all over Braziliana and even a few from the underdevelped Northern Hemisphere which suffers under misrule, and snow.

"Butterflies. Hmm, yes, I can see how that would work." T. muttered to himself, but I have excellent hearing.  Easily good enough to be a sonar operator in a sub, if such a plebian task was possible for one such as I.  Still, just because I heard the words, didn’t mean I understood them.

"I’ll get you drinks from the bar." I offered.

"Really?"

"Oh yes." I bobbed my head in an excess of school-girlishness.  I hoped he would be taken in, perhaps imagining that he had impressed little ol’ me with is power and presence.

"But how will you find me?"  I pointed out that he was the tallest man in the room, and he nodded as if it had been some sort of test that I had passed.  As I went to get the drinks, I decided to dump him.  He really was too infuriating for words with his attitude of massive superiority.  After all, from his looks, he couldn’t be more than ten years older than me.

And then it struck me.  I was letting him control the situation.  I reacted because of his insulting attitude.  What I needed to ask was what I wanted from the situation, and what was the best way to get that.  What I wanted was an interview with De Morrisey himself, and increasingly with T. Smith too.  Come and spill all your juicy secrets to Luisa!  She won’t tell more than ten or twenty million people worldwide!

And then it was like a blinder had been removed from my head.  I turned and saw T. Smith walk into the next room, and vanish from my sight as curtains and a wall got in the way.  I hopped down from the bar stool, and raced over to the doorway hoping to get entrance.

My instincts warned me, and at the base of the wall, I saw runes carved into the stone tile flooring.  By putting my mind at ease, and just contemplating them, I gathered they were just barriers to entry.  And with a mental twitch, I made myself someone who had the right to enter.

So, I slipped in, and saw T. and De Morrissey talking on the far end of the room.  Me, I dropped into a wing chair facing away from them, and focused on listening to the fullest of my rather uncommon ability.

"I thought this was The Party."  T. seemed humble, polite.  That was odd.

"No, no, thats later."

"Ah."

"But Mr. Smith, do you have the credentials to enter this party?"  An unfriendly laugh went with that question.  But De Morrissey waited at ease, the lord in his castle interviewing some sligtly impertinent baker for the job of chief baker.

"Oh, I think so." And then I heard T. mutter a phrase.  And for a second, I felt sure that something moved in the fireplace, and that mists rose from the floor.  Then I shook my head, and it was gone.  It did not have the feel of a pschyic whammy, but thats what it had to be, right?  Some sort of illusion.

"Very well, Mr. Smith, Come at midnight then. We shall have a revel that will make this world bow down in abject style when they realize the power we hold."

T. thanked him, and wandered about the room until De Morrissey got bored and left.  Then T. came over to me, an started peeling my hide with his cold  and cruel jibes.

And then like an angel, a man put his hand on T’.s arm and spun him around.

"You don’t talk like that too a lady."  He doubled up a fist, and T. caught it.

"Luisa, get to the front door, and in public right now. Stay there."  he then threw the man onto his back. "Move Luisa!" He barked.  I ran as the man roared from the floor, and sprang to his feet.