The penthouse was enormous and absurdly so; it was built less like an apartment at the summit of a tower and more like someone had taken a private palace, lifted it into the sky and wrapped it in glass. Yet with so many people gathered inside tonight, the place somehow felt smaller than usual, every couch, open stretch of polished floor and broad space near the windows occupied by someone who had found an excuse to be here.
Still, silence had become something of a unanimous decision they had all agreed upon without a single word.
Nobody had asked everyone to stop talking. There had been conversations when people first arrived, scattered laughter, occasional arguments and the usual little clusters forming among those who naturally gravitated toward one another, but those sounds had gradually died as time passed.
What remained was an anticipation so thick enough that even the enormous penthouse seemed to have quietened around them.
They were waiting for Phei.
