The Deadliest Bite

A JAZ PARKS NOVEL

Jennifer Rardin

www.orbitbooks.net

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

A Preview of TEMPEST RISING

Copyright Page

“The Deadliest Bite is not the one you get from the nest of vipers striking at you from the top of an angry gorgon’s head. It comes from the demon that’s sunk its teeth into your soul, the one that refuses to let go because, oh baby, your blood is like red, red wine.”

—Jaz Parks interview with Jennifer

Rardin, August 2007

CHAPTER ONE

Wednesday, June 13, midnight

I’l say one thing about walking around with a rubber band up your asscrack—it helps train you for torture.

“They cal them thongs,” the girl at Victoria’s Secret had told me, doing her best not to look at me like I’d experienced major brain damage sometime between high school and col ege.

“I know what they cal them,” I’d said as I picked at the flimsy material and tried not to wince. “I just don’t understand why…” I’d looked around the store. They were everywhere, like fluffy pink bunnies that multiply while you aren’t looking and then blow your foot off the second you step on them.

The girl had blinked her silver-lined eyelids and shrugged. “They’re sexy.”

“Uh-huh. Are they comfortable too? Like, am I gonna come home from work al tired and grumpy and say to my dog, ‘I’m crapped out. Time for a warm bath, flannel pj’s, and my thong?’”

“It could happen.” She’d smiled, faintly, just one corner of her mouth rising, which had reminded me of why I was standing in the middle of lingerie paradise in the first place. Vayl. Who was, even now, counting to one hundred, giving me a chance to find a new cubbyhole to hide in before he began hunting the hal s of the red brick monstrosity he cal ed home.

As I padded through neatly arranged rooms ful of expensive furniture and beautiful y displayed antiques, it struck me as hilarious that the vampire who owned them al chose to spend his free time playing strip hide-and-seek with his sorta-human girlfriend. I caught sight of myself in the gilt-framed mirror over the fireplace and smiled. Because I was more than that. Vayl cal ed me his avhar—a Vampere word that described better than any other the infinite number of ties that bound me to him. I also smiled because, after sixteen days of rest and relaxation from a series of missions that had nearly kil ed both of us, I had to admit I was looking better. Eating three meals a day had fil ed out the hol ows. Now I couldn’t count each rib just by looking. My fingernails had stopped flaking. My eyes had brightened until sometimes they reminded me eerily of my father’s snapping green orbs as they cut through us the first day he got home from a tour, inspecting the troops to see how we’d grown in his absence. Even my curls seemed bouncier and redder except, of course, for the white-streaked one that curved into my right cheek like a familiar friend. I didn’t let my glance linger on it. No point in reminding myself of my first trip to hel when this game, like al the others Vayl and I had played, was designed to make the most of the time we had left until I had to go back.

“Fee fi fo fum! My senses are tingling with huuu-man!” Vayl cal ed.

“Crap!” Just one in Vayl’s awesome bag-o-tricks was the ability to pick up on strong emotions.

My little detour down Vanity Lane had given away my position.

One last glance in the mirror. We’d been playing the game for a while. Al he’d left me wearing was a watch, the blue lace Victoria’s Secret underwire I’d bought, which gave me such incredible lift I had actual cleavage (yeah, baby!), the matching dungeons-r-us thong, and a pair of three-inch black heels that made sneaking damn near impossible but did wonders for my legs. Of course Vayl was down to a pair of red silk boxers, so our next encounter promised to be mondo fun. Especial y if I made the hunt interesting.

I snapped the band of my watch. My super-genius buddy Bergman had invented it for me, wiring it to use the kinetic energy it had stored from my movements to shield their sound. Sometimes being an assassin for the CIA comes in handy. Especial y when you get to use cool spy gadgets to play sneak-n-peek with your lover.

I was on the main floor, looking for a decent place to tuck in, listening for sounds of movement above and hearing none. Geez, the guy lived in a ninety-year-old Victorian! Shouldn’t one floorboard squeak? Then I’d know which staircase he was descending, at least. The main one connected the second, third, and fourth floors to the front door. The rear stairs, darker and much narrower because snobs didn’t think servants deserved elbow room back when, only went from the kitchen to the second floor, where al the bedrooms were located, and the basement, where al the creepy, clanky junk had been instal ed.

Though I wasn’t sure I had time, I paused for a second, reached out, and sniffed. My nostrils flared, though the scent that wafted into my brain stem had nothing to do with true odor. It was al mental, and never before had I been so pleased to have had this Sensitivity to others (as in nonhumans) dumped on me. The price, dying twice and then being brought back by a mind-blowing Power with a soft spot for model trains, and me, had always seemed too high. Even though I’d gotten to know Raoul wel enough to think of him as both my Spirit Guide and my friend, it stil did.

But if I could final y get some fun out of the deal, maybe… there! Vayl was definitely sneaking down the servants’ stairs.

I tiptoed toward the front of the house and slipped into a room he liked to cal the conservatory.

Although when I told him Miss Scarlet did it in there with the candlestick he just looked at me blankly and said, “Was the candlestick sitting on the pianoforte?” In some ways the dude is permanently stuck in the eighteenth century.

Some of that showed in the choices he’d made for the room, as wel . A huge window seat spanned the whole length of the front wal . Covered with lace-edged cushions, it gave the lazy lounger a spectacular view of Ohio’s countryside. Because Vayl didn’t live in Cleveland, but had bought a house about twenty minutes outside the city, where if you stood stil long enough you could hear cows mooing across the cornfields.

He hadn’t bothered draping that window, although he had thrown Bergman at it, which meant it was covered by a UV shield that kept perverts (and the worst rays of the sun) from peeping inside. It was also (along with the rest of the house) protected by the most sophisticated alarm system known to man.

Which was probably why when Vayl did chil out in the room, he could feel extra-relaxed in the high-backed white sofa that sat perpendicular to the fireplace. Tal gold tassel-shaded lamps stood at each end of the couch, though he could see in the dark, so they had to be more for looks than practicality. I hadn’t figured out yet if he preferred the couch or the overstuffed blue chair across from it, its round, tufted footstool reminding me of a foofy dog set permanently into begging position. After al , that would give him a better view of the gleaming white instrument sitting at a diagonal in the corner opposite the widely arched entryway. It was, in a fact, a real antique pianoforte. Vayl had played it for me the night before, some classical piece that would be great to fal asleep to. I’d matured enough, in the time I’d known him, not to say what I was thinking out loud. But as soon as I got a chance I’d be taking that guy to a Kil ers concert. He had no idea what he was missing.

I lifted up the window seat, expecting to find boxes of puzzles and old toys like the ones my Granny May had stored in hers. But either Vayl wasn’t into storage or his house was big enough to display al his goodies, because the cabinet under the bench was empty. A perfect hiding place for one five-foot-five twenty-six-year-old who badly wanted to see her vamp shed his shorts.

Unless she had a touch of the Claustrophobia.

I stared at the dark, empty space. Three seconds later I decided it had shrunk in the three seconds I’d considered it. While my competitive streak warred with my fear, I looked around for an alternative.

A round table covered with a floor-length blue satin cloth stood in the corner next to another blue chair, this one less comfy but more elegant than its fireside cousin. Under the table? Less confining, since the cover was flexible. But no. It held too much glass; both an oldfashioned globe lamp embossed with blooming roses, and a figurine of a hummingbird tasting nectar from a red petunia.

However, behind the chair… yup, that’ll work. I’d shucked my shoes and swung one leg over the back of the chair when the doorbel . Fucking. Rang.

Vayl skidded around the corner. “Jasmine!”

Shit, damn, shit, shit, shit, shit! I tried to think of a less graceful position for a woman who’d deliberately set out to look sexy to be caught in. But I couldn’t imagine anything worse than straddling a wing chair with one hand on the wal for balance, one foot on the armrest, and my mostly bare ass stuck halfway between. So I yel ed, “Get out!”

The screen door slammed. Moments later a car peeled away.

“I think I scared off your visitor,” I said.

“It is midnight in the middle of nowhere. Either he had no business being here in the first place.

Or his business would have proved a maddening distraction from my business, which is much more important.” Vayl leaned against the door frame, crossing his hands behind his back so I’d be sure to get a great view of his broad, curlcovered chest. He grinned, his fangs giving him the look of a hungry lion. “But I have a feeling you were not speaking to him to begin with.”

“Wel … no. I mean—” I motioned to myself. “This isn’t how I figured you’d find me. In fact, you weren’t supposed to—Oh shit, there’s no way to get out of this position without looking even more ridiculous. Turn around.”

“I wil do no such thing.”

“But—”

“Jasmine, your body is more delectable than melted chocolate on a sea of sugar candies. And the fact that you wore that lovely confection for me—”

“It’s coming right off,” I warned him as I reclaimed my leg from the no-girl’s-land between the chair and the wal . “Stupid piece of crack-grinding—urf!” Whatever I’d meant to say got lost in the spin as Vayl swept me off the chair and twirled us around the room in a spontaneous waltz. His laugh, a deep-throated sound of such genuine mirth that I always ended up joining him, accompanied us even better than the clinking keys of the pianoforte would have. Which was where I ended up sitting, my hands on the lid beside my hips, pinned there as his arms wrapped around me and he covered my lips, my neck, my shoulders with kisses that grew more passionate with each brush of his lips as they crossed my skin, leaving trails of fire that grew with every indrawn breath.

And just before my claustrophobia kicked in, he loosened his arms so he could feather his fingers up my spine and down my shoulder blades. I shivered.

“Cold?” he murmured into my left breast.

“Nnng.” I laced my fingers through his and brought them up to my mouth, smiling triumphantly as he moaned.

“We need cushions,” he said.

I wrapped my legs around Vayl’s hips and locked my elbows around his neck, which was corded with muscle that had been packed on in the days when heavy lifting meant cutting wood for the family’s fire and hammering horseshoes out of raw iron. I ran my fingers through his jet-black hair, his soft curls springing around my nails playful y like they, too, realized what little time we had left to just enjoy each other.

We were halfway to the couch when I whispered, as I nuzzled his earlobe, “Al I need is a flat surface. Baby, it doesn’t even need to be horizontal.”

Low growl rumbling from his chest into mine as he veered off couch-course. We slammed into the wal , knocking a gasp from me that blew into his ear, making him shiver with delight. His fangs scraped down my neck and suddenly I couldn’t touch him, kiss him, love him enough. I wanted to become a part of him, dive through him and leave the finest part of me inside his heart. And the best part was knowing, by the urgency in his touch, in his moans, that he felt exactly the same way.

Afterward we lay in the doorway, tangled around each other because, final y, we didn’t have to let go. Vayl ran his finger across my col arbone. It stung enough that I looked down, saw the trail his teeth had left. Just scrapes; he hadn’t drunk from me this time.

“Jasmine, I cannot decide how to feel about these.” His finger traced the marks again, a sweet irritation. I looked into his eyes and realized how much I depended on their color to clue me into his thoughts and emotions. They’d faded from passion-bright emerald to stormy blue.

“What are you worried about?” I asked.

His finger came under my chin, lifted it up so he could plant a gentle kiss on my lips. “The temptation to taste of you ful y rises higher each time we make love,” he said. “You feel it as wel .” It wasn’t a question. He’d had a special insight to my emotions since I’d offered my neck to him the first time, during a mission to Miami when his personal blood supply had been tainted.

I said, “Yeah. Resisting has been… tough.”

“And yet we must.”

I brought my hand up to his wrist and squeezed. “You never stop surprising me, you know that?

Not two months ago you were suggesting you should turn me. And now—”

“You know I was not myself then. Besides, I have had time to consider, and so have you. Think what happens to us each time I drink of you. We are becoming more powerful, and yet unlike any other man and woman on earth.”

“Wel . We did start out kinda unique.”

His nod gave me that. After al , the guy was a Wraith, which meant he could freeze his enemies from the inside out. Even among the Vampere that talent was rare. And people who knew me hesitated to even cal me human anymore. Being able to walk in Vayl’s memories had made me wonder sometimes myself, although I thought I’d proven that I stil had it where it counted.

Vayl said, “I have mentioned couples like us to you before. You do remember the reason that sverhamin and avhar are so deeply respected among my people.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

His hand went to my hair. Dove into my curls and brought a bundle up to his lips, as if only they could resuscitate him. His eyes closed as he inhaled my scent. “Woman, you have no idea how close we walk to the edge of disaster.”

“You mean, besides the fact that we assassinate national security threats for a living? Or did until our goddamn Oversight Committee shut us down.”

“Never fear about that,” Vayl reassured me. “The circle always turns. And I believe Martha knows exactly how to spin this particular wheel.”

I had to agree. After learning that our old secretary had actual y been running the department al along, I was more certain than ever that nothing could stop the bul et train that was Martha Evans from getting exactly what she wanted. And since, currently, her two priorities were to reopen our department and catch the clawed kil er of Pete, the man who’d believed in me when no one else had, who’d hired me into the department and paired me with Vayl, I was cheering her on with both fists in the air.

I shook my head. Leave it to me and Vayl to turn a forced vacation, not to mention a beautiful relationship, into an even more potential y lethal situation than offing monsters for a living! I said,

“Okay, so what’s so bad about you taking a sip from me every once in a while? Why is it something that should keep me looking over my shoulder?”

He buried his face against my neck, speaking so quietly that I had to strain to hear.

Maybe he hoped that, if I didn’t, none of it would be true. “I have told you something of the world that paral els yours, the one in which we others walk without pretense but, perhaps sometimes, with even more fear. The Whence runs according to a set of rules you would find both brutal and baffling.

And its Council enforces those rules always with its bottom line in mind—whatever happens, do not attract the ire of humanity.”

“What does that have to do with you and me?” I asked.

Vayl’s hold tightened, becoming almost painful as his breath caught. “I believe because we are avhar and sverhamin we are changing with every exchange of blood and power, but not into anything this world or the Whence has ever seen. Because I am Vampere and you are Eldhayr the eventual outcome wil not be that you become a vampire, but that we both transform into new creatures. Different, powerful species who began our lives as kil ers. Who are, in fact, the most effective assassins on the planet. Do you think the Whence, or even our own people, wil wait around to see if we decide to be friends or foes?”

I couldn’t answer. He’d sealed my lips at the word “species.” He went on. “I believe this is why every avhar/sverhamin couple has disappeared within a year of their bonding. Either they realized their own danger and melted into the night of their own volition, or they were erased out of fear of what they were becoming together.” He drew his face back, showing me eyes that had gone orange around the edges. “This is why we must hold back, though every desire in us cal s for the exchange. Your blood, my power. We must never taste of one another in that way again. It is too dangerous for us now.”

“How do you know we’re not already doomed?” I whispered.

He smiled then, his dimple appearing just long enough to charm me into a stress-releasing breath. “Because we have not yet been visited by a Blank.”

“A Blank? Who’s that?”

“One of our counterparts in the Whence,” Vayl answered. “Except instead of eliminating the monsters who threaten to destroy humanity, they kil others whom the Council fears wil make humanity want to destroy them.”

The doorbel rang. And, yeah, I’l admit I jumped inside the circle of Vayl’s arms. As he chuckled I said, “Speak of the devil.”

“If we ever have to deal with a Blank, believe me, he wil not announce his presence at the front door.”

“So who the hel is it?”

Vayl’s eyebrow raised a tick. “I suspect it might be the visitor you frightened off before.”

“Who shows up at a vampire’s door at”—I checked my watch—“one in the morning?

“Perhaps he is an encyclopedia salesman.”

“Vayl.” I hid a grin. Such a charming trait, this tendency to get stuck in the past. As long as it’s just little bits of him and not the whole enchilada. The thought sent stabbing pains through my chest every time I remembered our most recent trip abroad, which had ended with his nearly losing al sense of the present in Marrakech. I said, “Nobody buys encyclopedia sets from door-to-door salesmen anymore, because they can get al the information they need from the Internet.” His lips pressed together so tightly I’d almost cal his expression a glower. “How can you trust an entity everyone wil ingly refers to as a Web? If it is as large as they say, you must know the spider that spun it is mountainous.”

The doorbel rang again. I said, “I’d like nothing better than to discuss what weapons people use to protect themselves against netbugs. But it sounds like your guest real y wants in.” He pul ed me close. “Do not worry. It is probably a motorist who has lost his way. People who threaten me never ring the doorbel first. Besides, I saw him on the second-floor security cameras the first time he was here. He is an innocent.”

“How could you tel ?” I demanded.

“It is one of my gifts.”

“Fine.” I started grabbing underwear. “But I’m not real y prepared to entertain. Where’s my shirt?”

“I think we left it in the guest bedroom.”

Okay, that meant a run upstairs. But where were my pants? Oh yeah, the library. I’d probably never find my heels again.

“Do you know where your clothes are?” I asked.

“My pants are in the kitchen. And I believe you dropped my shirt in the bil iard room,” Vayl answered as he slipped back into his boxers, his eyes sparkling like newly polished gems at the memory of our latest game.

“Okay, that leaves you to deal with the dude at the door.” I checked the monitor beside the light switch. “He looks nervous. Also tired.”

“He has probably been driving in circles al night. I suggest you take the back stairs. I wil get rid of him as soon as possible, and then let us go shopping for dinner supplies, shal we? Tonight I think we should try cooking spaghetti again. Perhaps this time I can teach you how to boil pasta without clumping it.”

“Good luck with that. Although I’m sure Jack would appreciate a decent meal. He’s probably sick of Purina,” I said as we walked toward the back of the house, the doorbel insisting that we both move our asses because young-and-nervous needed to find his way back home!

“Wait a moment,” Vayl said as he opened the kitchen entrance to the newly fenced backyard.

“Jack wants to go with you.” My enormous gray-and-white malamute stepped inside and brushed past him, nodding his thanks. (Yes, I’m serious. He’s überpolite. Even poops in the same spot so you don’t have to go “treasure hunting” every afternoon.) I hadn’t yet turned toward the servants’

stairs, but Jack divined my intentions and trotted up to the second floor before stopping at the top, grinning at me from white-toothed doggy chops as if to say, See what good shape I’m in? You should never leave me home during a mission again.

I ran up after him, patting his head affectionately as I passed him on the way to the guest bedroom. “You’re right. I missed you like crazy too. I’l try to keep you close from now on, okay?” The door I wanted had been thrown wide during Vayl’s hunt, the puffy pink duvet stil pul ed up to reveal the spot where I’d hidden under the four-poster bed. I crossed to the freestanding mirror where he’d tossed my tailored white shirt over the support structure. I threw it on over my bra.

Stepped across the hal to the big, elegant room I shared with him to grab a pair of cheek-covering panties to slip on. And, of course, the pet that had preceded Jack had to come with me too, so on went the shoulder holster I’d left sitting on the mahogany dresser. Inside it rested a Walther PPK that had once shot only regular ammo. Then Bergman got ahold of it. Now, with the flick of a button, it transformed into a vamp-smacking crossbow.

Jack had spent the time sniffing hopeful y at the sofa that sat at the foot of the bed, its soft gold leather inviting him to jump up and make himself at home. “Don’t even think about it,” I told him.

“There’s a reason your bed’s downstairs. Now let’s bolt before you get into real trouble. I think I hear my pants ringing.”

We ran up the main stairs to the third floor, where I found my jeans crumpled beside the cozy brown suede chair where I liked to curl up every afternoon with a book and a can of Diet Coke. I pul ed my phone out of the back pocket and stuck it between my ear and shoulder while I shoved my legs into my Levi’s.

“Hel o?”

“Jaz? Where’s Vayl?”

“Hi, Cassandra. He’s with me.”

“He’s al right then?”

“What?” I felt my fingers go numb. Usual y I reacted faster. It was my job to make sure my emotions didn’t cloud my judgment. Even for the two seconds it took me to realize my psychic friend was freaking out about my lover. “What did you See?”

“There was a mix-up in Australia. I accidental y packed one of your T-shirts in my suitcase. So I was folding it back into my luggage because Dave and I are coming up to visit you and Evie. It was supposed to be a surprise—” She swal owed a sob.

“Tel me now, Cassandra.” I tried to keep my voice calm. No sense in shouting at the woman who’d already saved my brother’s life with one of her visions. But if she’d been in the room I’d have shaken her til her teeth rattled.

“When I touched your shirt I saw you, leaning over Vayl’s body. He had a stake through his heart.

The blood—oh, Jaz, the blood.” She started to cry for real now.

“Anything else? Come on, Cassandra, I need to know everything you Saw.” I’d zipped into my pants. Run to the stairs. Managed to make it to the second floor without breaking my neck. Jack was way ahead of me.

“I don’t know. There’s this explosion, but not like the kind you see in movies. It’s more… ripply.

And at the middle is a young man. Younger than you. Tal er, even, than Vayl, with ful brown hair that keeps fal ing onto his forehead. He’s snarling, which makes two deep dimples appear on his cheeks. He’s standing in front of a tal oak door above which is hanging—”

“A pike with a gold tassel,” I finished.

“Yes!”

“Shit! Cassandra, that’s Vayl’s front door. And you’ve just described the kid who was ringing the bel .”

“Did he answer?”

“I don’t—”

A shot rang out, tearing my heart in two. Jack growled menacingly, already on his way down the final set of steps. I glanced into the wel made by the turn of the stairs from second to first floor. Yeah, I could jump it. So I did, landing on another one of Vayl’s overstuffed sofas. The impact sent me rol ing into the walnut coffee table fronting it, knocking it across the hal into a case ful of antique knives. I raised my arm, protecting my face from the shattering glass.

Not knowing how far the glass had scattered, I protected my bare feet by jumping back onto the couch. Then I took half a second to assess the situation.

Twenty feet from me, at the other end of the hal in front of the open door, Vayl lay in a spreading pool of blood, the bloody hole in his forehead a result of the .38 Special lying on the floor. There were two reasons the young man kneeling over him wasn’t stil holding it. He needed both hands for the hammer and stake he now held poised over Vayl’s chest. And Jack’s teeth had sunk deep enough into his right wrist that by now he’d have been forced to drop it anyway.

Only a guy as big as this one wouldn’t have been thrown completely off balance by a ful -on attack via 120-pound malamute. Despite the fact that a hundred pounds of the guy was weight he didn’t need, his size had kept him off his back, though it hadn’t al owed him to recover his balance enough to counter with the stake in his free hand. That would change if I didn’t reach the scene in time.

I jumped to the outer part of the stairs, holding the rail to keep from fal ing as I cleared the fal out from the display case. Another jump took me to the floor. Five running steps gave me a good start for a spin kick that should’ve caught the intruder on the temple, breaking his glasses in at least two places and taking him down so hard he’d be dreaming before his head bounced. But unless they’re drugged, people don’t just sit and wait for the blow.

He pul ed back, catching my heel on his nose. It broke, spraying blood al over his shirt and Jack.

His glasses flew off, hitting the wal , but remaining miraculously intact. And it didn’t take him down. In fact, it seemed to motivate him. Desperation fil ed his eyes. He ripped his hammer hand out of Jack’s grip, though the bloody rips in his forearm would hurt like a son of a bitch when his adrenaline rush faded.

Afraid his next move would be a blow to my dog, I lunged at him. I was wrong. He threw the hammer at me, forcing me to hit the floor. I rol ed when I felt his shadow loom, knowing the worst scenario was me pinned under al that weight. But it never fel on me. I jumped to my feet and began to unholster Grief, though the last thing I wanted was to kil the bastard before I found out who’d sent him.

Stil , I was too late. The intruder had retrieved his revolver and was aiming the barrel at my chest.

He’d probably hit me too if he squinted hard enough and held his breath long enough to stop shaking. The only positive I could see was that I stood between him and Vayl. For now.

Jack growled menacingly and began to approach the man, his fur standing on end so that he looked like the miniature bear he sounded most like when he vocalized.

The gun wavered as the man said, “You tel that dog to stop, or I wil shoot it.”

“No, Jack,” I said. “Sit.”

He came to an unhappy stop beside me. Once again I stood staring at my ultimate end.

Because my Spirit Guide had informed me that my body couldn’t take another rise to life. If this scumbag capped me, I’d be done. And I so wasn’t ready.

I said, “I don’t know you. And I thought I’d pegged al of our enemies. You’re not a werewolf.

You’re not Vampere. You’re definitely no pro.”

His eyebrows went up. So. He hadn’t been told about our work. Baffling. Stil , whoever picked him had chosen wel . Amateurs occasional y succeeded where professionals failed because they were unpredictable. And motivated. This one definitely had his reasons for being here. I could see it in the way his eyebrows kept twitching down toward his nose. He was a time bomb ready to blow everyone in the room to bloody bits.

He raised the gun. Uh-oh. While I’d been thinking, so had he. And it looked like he’d made a decision. “You need to walk away from that vampire,” he said.

“No.”

He pushed the revolver toward me, to make sure I understood he could pul the trigger. “I’m not playing. I wil kil you if that’s what it takes to smoke him.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’l die if you do that anyway.”

The remark confused him. Upset him. This isn’t a bad man, but damn, something has pushed him way past his limit. I watched his finger tighten on the trigger. I said, “Don’t. Dude, you’l be kil ing a federal agent. They put you in jail forever for that kind of shit.”

“Jail?” He laughed, his voice rising into girl-land as he said, “I’m already in hel .” Which was when I knew there was nothing I could say to divert him. I looked down at Jack, touched the soft fur on the top of his head in farewel . Glanced over my shoulder at Vayl, only long enough for the pain to lance through my heart.

I could pul on him, make my final moments an epic shootout. But Jack could get hurt in the crossfire, and I’d never forgive myself if that happened. “Get it over with then.”

“NOT SO FAST!!”

I slammed my hands over my ears, though I was pretty sure the voice came from inside my head until I saw that the intruder was wincing and wiping blood from his earlobes as wel .

The floor started to shake. Jack yelped and tried to hide between my legs as the polished pine floorboards between me and the intruder began to splinter and the fiery outline of an arched doorway pushed itself up from the basement below.

“Wel ,” I whispered to my dog. “This is new.”

I was pretty sure the intruder couldn’t see the plane portal rising to stand between us. Most humans never did. But he did get a load of the five-by-six-foot gap developing in the floor. And when Raoul seemed to step out of thin air, I didn’t blame him for needing to sit down. Which he did. On a plush, round-cushioned chair that was currently covered with wood chips.

My Spirit Guide recovered Vayl’s attacker’s weapon so easily I felt a little stupid that I’d ever been paralyzed by it. Maybe I was getting soft in my old age. Maybe seeing Vayl halfway dead had freaked me out more than I should’ve let it.

Raoul reversed the gun and lightly tapped the intruder on the forehead with it. “Wrong choice, Aaron. And I thought you knew better.” He lifted the back of his jungle camouflage jacket and stuck the .38 in the waistband of his matching pants as Aaron tried to get his face to stop twitching. Raoul regarded him quietly for a while and then turned to face me. “Stop trying to get yourself kil ed. Even the Eminent agreed with me on this one. It isn’t your time yet.” the Eminent agreed with me on this one. It isn’t your time yet.”

“I wasn’t trying—it’s not? Cool!” Nice to think that the folks who cal ed the shots upstairs had actual y approved of Raoul’s helping me for once. Especial y since it had involved saving my neck again.

“So what do you and the other Eldhayr think about this dude? What did you cal him, Aaron?” I asked, pointing my chin toward the failed assassin.

Raoul pul ed me aside. “I’m not al owed to interfere there.” He looked hard into my eyes, trying to communicate information I hadn’t known him long enough to decipher. He said, “Al I can say is that it’s good, real y good, that you didn’t kil him. Keep doing that.”

“What about Vayl?” I asked. “What can you say about him?”

“Do you real y need to hear that he’s going to be okay? You already know that, Jaz. A bul et to the head can’t kil a vampire as powerful as him.”

I shrugged. It’s one thing to understand something intel ectual y. It’s something completely different to see your lover looking ful y dead from a head wound. So I reminded myself again, He’s just been knocked out. If you lifted his head you’d see the back of his skull has probably already re-formed. You shouldn’t be trying to figure out how your stomach can manage to clench itself that tight. You should be patting yourself on the back for hooking up with a guy who’s that tough to kill.

“Jasmine? Jaz? Is it over? What happened?”

The voice, smal and tinny, could’ve been mistaken for one of my inner girls, the various parts of my personality that I chat with when I’m überstressed or strapped for choices. But it was real. And hysterical y worried. I suddenly realized I’d dropped my phone during the fight and now Jack was trying to dial China with his nose.

“Cut it out,” I murmured as I picked it up. “You don’t even like rice.” I laid the receiver against my ear. “Cassandra? I can’t believe you’re stil there.”

“He’s important!”

“Of course he is. But he’l be fine. Vampires are—”

“No! I mean, yes, of course. But I’m talking about the young man.”

“WHAT? You can’t be on Raoul’s side in this. This guy Aaron nearly kil ed us both!” I glared at the would-be murderer. He stared straight at me. Raised his chin slightly. But his lower lip was sending out an SOS I figured his mom could hear from inside her local beauty shop’s hair dryer.

Cassandra yel ed, “Jasmine Elaine Parks, you listen to your future sister-in-law, dammit!

Something is making me tingle like I’m electrified. Let me talk to Aaron!” I held the phone out to him. “You have a cal .”

He looked away. “I’m busy.”

“Either you talk to the nice lady or I punch your lights out.” His eyes, suddenly round and uncertain, went to Raoul, so I added, “Oh, don’t look to him for help. He’s like the UN. He’l bitch and whine about my behavior, but he’l sit back and let me do the dirty work because, in the end, he knows I’m the one who’s gonna save the world.”

Raoul growled, “That was a low blow.”

I shrugged. “I’m sorry. I know the Eminent is always tying your hands. I just tend to get pissy when people try to kil the guy I love.” I looked up at him. “But I do appreciate you coming when you did.

Stel ar timing, as usual.”

I shoved the phone toward Aaron. “The threat stil stands, mainly because I’m stil highly ticked off and I wanna hit something. It’d be so great if you gave me an excuse.” Aaron took the phone, staring at me suspiciously as he said, “Hel o? Yes. No.” He listened for a while before his face puckered. But he managed to master the emotion Cassandra had eked out of him before he said another word. Which was “Thanks.”

He handed the phone back to me. “Wel ?” I asked the woman on the other end, who deserved a respectful ear, both because she’d survived nearly a thousand years on this Earth and because she’d chosen to spend the next fifty or so with my brother.

Cassandra took a deep breath. “I can’t be sure without touching the boy, but I consulted the tarot while he and I were speaking. It points to the same signs the Enkyklios has been showing me. I have to do more research, but—”

“What are you trying to tel me?”

“Whatever you do, don’t hurt him,” she repeated, this time in such a sober tone that I looked at him with less anger and more curiosity. Which was why I didn’t shove his head into the wal like I’d been planning to when she said, “I believe that, in another life, he was Vayl’s son.” I stared at the guy, who looked so much younger than me that it was hard not to think of him as a kid. He glared back. And then, al at once, his face crumpled. It was like he’d only brought enough adrenaline with him to get him through fifteen minutes of action. After that the bravado shattered like an old piece of glass. I said, “You’re lucky to be alive.”

He tried to answer. I could tel he wanted to say something smartass and slightly witty. Instead his jaw dropped and he keeled over, his head hitting the floor with a satisfying clunk.

I looked at Raoul. “Cassandra says that’s Vayl’s son.”

Raoul studied the unconscious young man. Then he said, “We should break it to him gently.” CHAPTER TWO

Wednesday, June 13, 1:30 a.m.

I sat next to Raoul on the second-to-last step of the main stairs, watching the boy who would be kil er sponge up Vayl’s blood and squeeze it into a bucket of bleach water between bouts of gagging that never quite turned into a pukefest. Soooo satisfying to see him gross out on an aftermath he hadn’t planned for. But not quite enough to leash the urge to impale him on the lance artful y displayed in the corner next to the front-door topiary and the chair Aaron had previously sat down in before he’d fal en and given himself a goose egg right in the middle of his forehead.

Frankly, I couldn’t wait for him to look in the mirror. I felt it would be the big blue bow on a gift that just kept giving.

So, for now, I kept one hand buried in Jack’s soft fur, and when the rage rose to heights that felt a little too violent for Aaron’s personal safety, I reminded myself to imagine that goose egg at about three times its current size. I also glanced at Raoul every thirty seconds or so. In life he’d been a Ranger, so at his core he was a fierce fighting man. That was why he’d chosen to battle on into the afterlife. Stil , around that core existed a serenity that calmed me. So just rubbing shoulders with him helped me remember that now was the time to live up to the nickname our department’s warlock, Sterling, had dumped on me, and Chil .

“What’s he going to do to me?” Aaron asked, trying not to look down the hal but darting his eyes in that direction anyway. He couldn’t see the kitchen door from where he crouched because you had to go through the dining room to get there. Which was a good thing. Better to spook him with his own wild imagination. Let him think Vayl was sharpening up a set of butcher knives, or cal ing in a whole slew of slavering revenants to tear into Aaron like a Christmas turkey. Unless, of course, he spil ed his employer’s name, address, and current Facebook status.

So Raoul and I just mustered up our most baleful expressions and kept silent on the news that Vayl had taken his massive headache back to the fridge, where he’d found some prepackaged, government-distributed blood to nuke in his favorite coffee cup. Though it would speed healing, what he needed most was a good day’s sleep. Knowing him like I did, I figured that while he ate he’d probably take the servants’ stairs to our room, which had a connecting bath the size of my entire first apartment, where he’d clean up before he came back down. It wasn’t just that he didn’t care to walk around with blood caked behind his ears. Like me, he needed some time to decompress or he would, without even thinking, tear a hole in Aaron’s throat that you could drive a remote-control car through.

I could feel my avhar’s fury even now, burning like the flames I’d seen in the sky the night Raoul and I had traveled to hel . Then it had blazed through anyone who dared to raise their eyes from the ground. Yeah, them and their fifty closest pals. Vayl was just as capable as Raoul of dishing out that kind of damage. Luckily he’d figured out a long time ago the danger he posed to anyone in his vicinity if he let his inner predator take the reins. So as soon as he’d regained consciousness he’d put a hand to his head, taken a long look at the blood on his fingertips, and then raised his icy blue eyes to mine. For a moment they flickered over my shoulder, acknowledged Raoul standing guard over Aaron, then returned to me where I stil knelt beside him, holding tight to his other hand.

If I’d just met him I’d have thought he was some kind of sociopath, his face was such a hardened mask. But by now I knew the blank stare meant he was struggling to keep his feelings from erupting into violence. Cirilai, the ring his grandfather had crafted at his mother’s request and that had, as she’d predicted, once again saved his soul, sent hot stabbing pains through my fingers. I jerked my hand out of his, staring at the golden knots twisting lovingly around each exquisite ruby that sparkled on my finger, wondering which one had zapped me.

“What happened?” asked Vayl.

“Cirilai hurt me. I think that means you’re about to blow,” I said.

He nodded, his eyes fading rapidly to black. “Deal with that,” he said, his finger-flick indicating that if I didn’t do something with Aaron, he’d have to. And it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Absolutely.”

He’d been gone about twenty minutes when Aaron began to show concern. Which was when I told him, “Whatever the vampire plans for you wil be relatively painless compared to what I’m gonna do.”

He paused in his scrubbing to stare me down. “You don’t look that scary.” The dude couldn’t quite get the tremble out of his throat, but he stil managed to meet my eyes. I gave him half a point for effort.

Raoul laughed. “Do you want to know how her friend Cole describes her?” Aaron dropped his head to one side, which was al the encouragement my Spirit Guide needed.

He said, “Cole says she may be a skinny white chick, but she’l kick your ass so fast you’l wonder why your butt cheeks are dented.”

I hid a smirk and reminded myself to cal my buddy, and former recruit, as soon as I had a free minute. Our last mission had been a bitch to him and he wasn’t adapting wel to the downtime. In fact, this situation would probably cheer him up immensely. Give him something to take his mind off the fact that he’d nearly become a demon in Marrakech, and part of him had liked it. I sent a mental message to Teen Me to try to remember where I’d left my phone in al the chaos, while I went on with the task at hand. Which was to get as much information as I could out of the prisoner while Vayl was stil pissed at him. Because as soon as he found out they’d once been as close as two men ever managed to get, that’d be the end of it.

I said, “Raoul here says your first name is Aaron. What’s your last name?” I asked.

“How does he know that?” Aaron demanded.

“It’s his job. Now. You got a last name?”

I watched him consider stubbornness. And then realize it didn’t real y matter. We had him cold.

He said, “Sul ivan.”

I sat forward just enough to cause Jack to readjust his head where it lay on my lap. He moved it to my knees, blinking his eyes from me to Aaron and back again like he truly understood our conversation. “They sent you in blind, didn’t they? I’d almost guess someone wanted you dead, except you nearly succeeded in kil ing Vayl, so I have to believe whoever hired you real y wanted him out of the picture. Would you like to fork over any names before your lips get too puffy for me to understand you perfectly and you have to keep repeating yourself?” Raoul said, “Jaz. Do we have to threaten him with violence already? He hasn’t even stopped cooperating.”

I glared at my Spirit Guide. “I’m itching for an excuse to punch this little creep. Would you stop being so damn nice?”

I turned to Aaron, waiting for his answer. But apparently Raoul’s soft heart had made his decision for him. He sealed his lips shut, shook his head, and went back to cleaning.

I said, “You should know it’s not just me and Vayl you have to worry about. After we’re done with you I’l be cal ing a very select group of government agents who, after hearing you’ve nearly smoked one of the most valuable public servants this country has ever known, wil be only too happy to make sure you disappear forever. But not before you learn how to scream like a little girl. That is, unless you cooperate. You got me?”

Aaron didn’t bother to look up as he said, “I have nothing to tel you besides the fact that I tried to kil a filthy vampire and I failed. Now I’m going to get my blood sucked dry. In fact, by morning I’l probably be one of those leeches with legs myself.” He shook his head, spat with disgust, then wiped it up with a rag I’d be burning shortly.

Rip out his hair and feed it to him, Jaz! It was my Inner Bimbo, teetering on her bar stool because she was balancing a cigarette between two fingers and a rum and Coke in the same hand, and rummaging through her big, black bag with the other hand. I had to chime in, even if it was only in my mind.

Why do you care? He’s so not your type I’m surprised you’re actually able to see him. So far the only upside to his personality I’ve found is that he’s discovered the single kernel of bravery inside his core and he’s hanging on to it for dear life—what the hell are you doing?

After what just happened with Vayl, you have to ask why that piece of shit deserves battery clips and a strong current? As for what I’m doing, I thought I had a book on self-defense in here, you know, just in case one of my lovers gets a little too frisky. When I find it I’m going to read you all kinds of suggestions for how to deepen his dimples. She paused to imitate a bel ows, sucking in and blowing out enough cigarette smoke to give the entire bar the feel of a foggy Hal oween night.

Remember, I’m the one who knows best how to make you lose control.

Pull in the claws, Sheba. This one gets to live. Although if I decide to slap him around a little you can be my cheerleader.

Stellar! I even have the outfit!

Why am I not surprised?

I’d been silent enough to make Aaron-boy nervous. Stil concentrating on his cleaning he asked,

“What’re you going to do with me?”

Fuck if I know. So I answered his question with a question. “How many vampires have you met?”

“Including yours?”

“Yeah.”

“None. I wouldn’t say we’d been properly introduced, would you?” I stood up and, surprisingly, Raoul didn’t hold me back. He didn’t even protest when I grabbed Aaron’s .38 Special out of his waistband and shoved it against the little prick’s skul . “I’ve had enough of your attitude. Normal y I enjoy smartasses. But not when they’ve just tried to murder the man I love.”

“He’s not a man. He’s a parasite!”

I pushed down on the barrel hard enough to leave a nice round imprint if I ever decided to back off, and Aaron figured out it was my turn to talk. “That vampire has been working for the United States government for eighty years. He’s saved our country from decimation more times than I care to recount. In fact, dumbass, you just nearly destroyed a national treasure.” He looked up at me then, his cheeks jiggling slightly with the nerve it took to meet my eyes. I found myself respecting him slightly more as he managed a firm, “No.”

“In some circles he’s considered to be more important than the president.” Aaron scrubbed for a while in silence. When he had nothing left but clean floor to stare at he threw the rag in the bucket and sat back on his heels. “I don’t believe you.” Stubborn. I should have expected as much from Vayl’s spawn, even this many generations removed from his direct influence.

“Astral,” I cal ed.

I’d left the robokitty Bergman had invented for me upstairs with orders to stay in my room until she heard from me again. Hopeful y she’d function properly now that I real y needed her to pul through for me.

She streaked down the stairs, a sleek black missile on four legs with twitchy ears, a lashing tail, and a tendency to burst into inappropriate songs that had developed only after Jack had surprised her during a reconnaissance, causing her to blow her own head off. The repairs had been more, and less, than a complete success. Considering the latest eccentricity to appear in what had become the quirkiest personality I’d ever seen in a homemade cat, I was voting for less.

Jack greeted Astral by sitting up straight at Raoul’s knee. He knew better than to jump her now.

In fact, most of the time he was wil ing to wait until she approached him or cal ed him over to play. I watched her just as careful y, and let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding when al she did was bob her head at me and say, “Hel o!”

I nodded at her, though I understood that I was acknowledging a mobilized supercomputer, and said, “Show me Vayl’s file. Keep the top secret parts to yourself.” Astral’s mouth ratcheted open and a light clicked on, movietheater style. At the same time a hologram of Vayl’s papers appeared in front of my face even as I heard a velvety-voiced woman reading them. “Vasil Nicu Brâncoveanu. Born in what is now Mogosoaia, Romania, on November 18, 1713, though at the time the area was cal ed Wal achia. Became a vampire in 1751. Current assignment: Agent for Antiterrorism Division of the Central Intel igence Agency commonly known as ATD. Division is temporarily shut down at the request of its Oversight Committee due to the murder of one of its agents, Ethan Mreck, and its director, Peter Huttin.” Of course that wasn’t the whole truth. Our division existed as a subsidiary of the ATD, its name so secret only a few people in government had ever even heard it. And my boss, Pete, had actual y been fol owing his “secretary” Martha’s orders al along. But the rest—way more truth than I’d wanted to deal with today. Damn Aaron Sul ivan.

He said, “Why are you letting me see this?” The whites of his eyes had begun to show. “This real y isn’t a bluff, is it? It doesn’t matter what I know if you’ve already decided to kil me.” He shoved his thumb into his mouth, started to chew the nail, then quickly wrapped his arm around his back with a guilty look, like he’d been caught raiding the cookie jar. I wondered, suddenly, how many times his parents had cracked his knuckles for biting his nails as a kid.

Hiding a sudden rush of sympathy, I pul ed the gun away from his head. “You have pissed me off more deeply than anyone I’ve met in the past six months and you’re stil alive. That reads wel for your future. The fact that I’m explaining Vayl to you at al should give you even more hope.”

“But why?”

“Yes.” Vayl had come through the dining room door. He held a bag of frozen peas to the wound on his forehead. “Why do you give this young man my secrets?”

I felt Aaron do a big swal ow beside me. It’s one thing to attack an unsuspecting victim inside his front door. Especial y when you’re rushing in with your head ful of preconceived notions. It’s a whole other story to mop up the blood you spil ed and then watch your target saunter down the hal , al cleaned up and pissed as hel that you interrupted a fabulous evening, ruined his favorite shirt, and gave him a pounding headache.

I savored the moment, knowing how quickly it was about to change. Dreading the possibilities ahead of me. Vayl’s two sons had been murdered when he was stil human. He had made it his quest to find their re-embodied souls ever since. And now that the reality was staring me in the face, I wanted to annihilate it. So typical.

I stepped back, shoving Aaron’s revolver into the waistband of my jeans to make sure it was wel out of the way when I told Vayl, “Cassandra cal ed to warn me about the shooting just before it happened. Obviously I was too late to stop it, and I sure as hel wanted to fol ow through with the retribution after I’d seen what this dude had done. But she wouldn’t let me.”

“Why not?” Vayl asked, his icy blue eyes tracking every stray hair, every bruise and hol ow of his attacker, cataloguing what he saw for future reference.

I cleared my throat. “She believes he’s your son.”

Vayl went stil . His eyes broke to mine, hope blooming in them like wild daffodils. “Is she sure?”

“Not without touching him, but she spoke to him. She ran the tarot. And the Enkyklios is confirming. She says this guy Aaron is the reincarnation of your boy Badu.” I glanced at Raoul. He was watching Vayl intently, his hands buried in Jack’s fur. I realized he was hoping Vayl wouldn’t be crushed when Aaron rejected him. That, despite his personal problems with vamps, he was quietly supporting the creature he’d tried to boot out of my life a few months ago.

After a minute I realized Vayl hadn’t responded. I looked back up at him and tried to decide if he’d changed in that moment, or if I’d suddenly been given leave to see him more clearly. His hair, stil glistening with droplets from the shower, curled riotously al over his head. His jet-black eyebrows slanted like wings over eyes that had softened to gold with brown flecks dancing in their depths. They contrasted startlingly with the hard lines of his cheekbones and jaw, although when I saw the dimple appear in his right cheek I knew his feelings ran deep to the hopeful side of the bank.

“I cannot believe it.”

“Okay.” And yet, you want to, so damn desperately. Oh, Vayl. I won’t be able to stand it if this little fuckhead breaks your heart. I glared at Aaron, showing him with my eyes exactly what I would do to him if he hurt my sverhamin, in any way, ever again.

Vayl stepped closer to the young man, the intensity of his stare making the boy look nervously for an exit. Like he’d make it that far. Vayl grasped him by the shoulders and raised him to his feet, looking so deeply into his eyes that Aaron winced as he asked shakily, “What do you want?” Then, realizing he might not like the answer, added, “I’m a real y rare blood type. It’s probably al bitter and tangy.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Vayl. He glanced at me. “How sure is she?”

“I’d guess about eighty percent.”

His eyes went back to his would-be assassin. “It is more than any other Sister of the Second Sight has given me in al these decades.” He switched to a different language—Romanian, if I had my dialects right—speaking almost urgently as he pressed his hands into Aaron’s shoulders.

“I don’t know what you’re saying.” Aaron looked to me desperately. “I don’t know! But I swear, my dad is—was—Aaron Sul ivan, Sr. He worked for the power company until he died. And if I don’t kil this vampire”—he lifted his forearm so he could point at Vayl while he talked—“he’s never going to stop haunting me and I’m never going to pass the bar and I’m going to spend the rest of my life clerking for Schmidt, Glesser, and Roflower at a desk the size of a DVD player!”

“Look, kid.” I checked myself. I couldn’t be more than a year or two older than the guy. Even if I’d already survived more than his grandma, maybe I should avoid talking like her. I tried again: “Your ghost infestation is not our problem. Go bag yourself another vamp before we shred you like last year’s bil s.”

“Jasmine.” I turned my whole body toward Vayl as warning bel s clanged so loud in my head that for a second I felt like I’d been transported into a church steeple.

“What?”

Vayl patted Aaron on the arm and said, “Excuse us.” He came over to me. “May I speak with you at the end of the hal for a moment?”

“Sure.” I walked up to Aaron and began to frisk him.

“Jasmine,” Vayl protested. “You have done a remarkable job. Now that we al know he is my son I am sure that is not necessary. Especial y with Raoul right here—” I held up the vial I’d just retrieved from the inside of his calf. “Holy water, no doubt.” I stood.

Folded my right arm around Aaron’s neck, forcing him to stoop to my level. He gasped, al the blood rushing to his face, his eyes bulging in shock as he realized a girl half his size had taken complete physical control of him and he hadn’t even thought to resist.

I said, “Look at us closely, Vayl. One of us just inspired you to ram into the wal so hard the chandelier dropped half of its diamondy doodads on the floor. The other shot you in the head. You’d better make sure, right now, that you’re clear whose side you’re on.” The sides of his lips drooped. “This is not about loyalty.”

“It sure as shit is. Don’t you dare make the same mistakes you made with Badu three hundred years ago. This little fucker—” I looked at Aaron as I spoke, noted his size, and said, “Okay, this big fucker just tried to kill you. He may be the walking incarnation of your murdered boy, but that doesn’t change the facts. And you have to face those facts. Al of them. Now! ” Vayl’s chin dropped a centimeter. Not an agreement. Just an acknowledgment that he’d think about it as he motioned to the end of the hal . I threw the holy water to Raoul and watched resentful y as Vayl moved away, the muscles bunching and releasing in his perfect ass. An hour ago I’d had my hands wrapped around that work of art, and my brain had been so deeply steeped in ecstasy it was practical y rose-colored. Now I wanted to take that same rear and pinch it until the annoyance forced him to realize he couldn’t just instantly forgive the guy who’d tried to kil him, never mind who he’d been two hundred and some years ago.

I took a deep breath. Vayl wasn’t the only one who had to work to contain his violent tendencies. I slipped my feet into a spare pair of shoes I’d left beside the front door yesterday and fol owed him to the end of the hal . We crunched through the glass of the cabinet he barely glanced at and ended up facing each other in front of his grandfather clock between two doorways, one leading left to the dining room, the opposite opening to the guest bathroom.

He said, “I have not lost my mind.”

I realized I’d crossed my arms when I dropped them in disbelief. “Oh?”

“Aaron needs to think that I trust him implicitly.”

“Why?”

“So that he wil believe just as deeply that you do not.”

His dimple made another appearance and I clasped my hands behind my back so I wouldn’t be tempted to grab him. I turned my back so Junior wouldn’t be able to read my lips as I whispered,

“Are you suggesting we pul a little good cop, bad cop scenario on him? And you’re even letting me be the bad cop?”

He bowed his head. “That, my pretera, is how much I love you.”

“You have never been sexier than at this very moment.”

“It is a shame we have so much company,” he agreed quietly.

I cleared my throat. “Okay. So you’re not buying the I’m-being-haunted story either?”

“Certainly not. Those issues are easily taken care of through mediums. The boy has been weaponized. And until we discover by whom, we cannot help ourselves, or him.” I lifted my chin. “So you stil wanna help him?”

“Jasmine, I cannot discount the fact that he may be my son. But my hopes have been lifted too many times for me to embrace him completely until I know for certain. Stil , I cannot let him flounder knowing the chance exists.”

I nodded. “Okay.” I rubbed my hands together. “Damn, I wish I had a doughnut to throw at him.” Vayl smirked. “You enjoy our games, yes?”

I smiled up at him. “You bet I do.”

“Then let us finish this one quickly, because I have just thought of another. And it is definitely limited to two players.”

I let him see the fire in my eyes before I pul ed myself together. When I turned around I’d adopted the expression I’d seen almost every morning at the breakfast table during my childhood. Pissedoff mom is only a half step away from bad cop. As soon as I started talking, I’d be there. A little tidbit for you future operatives. Write it down.

CHAPTER THREE

Wednesday, June 13, 1:45 a.m.

Under Raoul’s direction Aaron had dumped his red-tinged bucket of water outside and dried the floor, and was sweeping up wood chips by the time we returned to the front entryway. I had to work to hide my relief, and it didn’t help to recal why. The last time I’d seen my lover’s blood spil beneath his body, it had been because my fiancé, Matt, had taken a knife meant for me. Though he’d been gone for over a year and a half now, I missed him every day. I never wanted to feel that way about my vampire.

Raoul stil sat on the stairs, scratching Jack under the chin just the way he liked it while Astral oversaw al the action from the top of a fourlegged humidor that bridged the gap between the front door and the entry to the bil iard room to its right. Vayl had once kept a large fern there, but after the cat had planted herself in the middle of it for the third time, he’d taken her hint and moved it. Since then she’d commandeered four other spots in the house. The fact that they gave her excel ent views of the entire floor was, we decided, no accident. Bergman took his security far past the bounds of paranoia, and we had no doubt he’d programmed safety measures into Astral that had yet to be tapped.

Vayl and I approached Aaron with the same purpose, but with polar-opposite attitudes. I reminded myself to keep al my fun on the inside.

“We need to ask you a few questions,” Vayl began. “Please join us in the conservatory.” He motioned to the music room, where several glittering bits of light fixture stil lay scattered on the Persian rug. As Aaron walked into the room he looked at them, glanced up at the chandelier, and back down at the mess Vayl and I had caused.

I pointed to the dropped glass and said, “This is what happens when we’re having fun. Just think what I’m gonna break if you piss me off again.”

He stopped just as he reached the sofa and turned to me, his eyes shuttling nervously between me and Astral, who’d provided the perfect soundtrack for me as she came into the room. Drowning Pool’s song “Bodies” pounded into Aaron’s ears—“Let the bodies hit the floor/Let the bodies hit the floor”—making him shiver as the robokitty sauntered past him, blinking sleepily as she went. She jumped onto the fireplace mantel, placing herself so close to the middle she could’ve been confused for a figurine if she hadn’t chosen that moment to do a test cycle, which made her click like the dial of a washing machine.

“Can’t you make her stop?” Aaron demanded.

I shrugged. “She’s programmed to respond to my mood,” I lied. “And right now…” I let myself trail away, smiling dreamily as the song howled through the room and Aaron hunched his shoulders like he thought somebody was about to jump him. Al the girls inside my head shrieked with laughter.

Raoul was having no problem keeping it serious. He’d stayed at the edge of the conservatory, leaning against the archway, while Jack sat at his feet, both of them content to observe first and judge later.

Aaron had noticed my attention wandering. He asked, “Is that your dog?”

“Why?”

“You don’t seem like the type who’d like dogs. Or… anything… real y.”

“You got that right. The mutt belongs to my boyfriend.” I patted Vayl on the back and said, “He’s such a softy,” as he crossed to Aaron’s side and motioned that they should sit on the couch beside each other. I stood behind the chair opposite them. At my height it’s tough to loom, but I did my best to seem as if I were the kind of person who, having already broken a light fixture and a display cabinet today, wouldn’t hesitate to toss an easy chair into his lap.

Vayl settled into the corner of the sofa, making himself comfortable with his arm across the back and one ankle propped on the other knee as he asked, “This haunting you spoke of. I do not understand why my death would end it. Most ghosts simply need closure. Some require a gifted person, such as a medium, to help them ful y cross over. I have never heard of one demanding a sacrifice in order to—” He stopped, grimacing at me as I pul ed Aaron’s .38 Special out and laid it on the top cushion of the chair. “Must you?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, nodding grimly. “Because you and I both know that Junior here is lying through his teeth.” I waved him off as he started to protest that Aaron was probably under a lot of pressure. I stroked the gun lovingly. “Whoever sent him should’ve told him he’s got the lamest cover story since my brother told my parents he was going waterskiing with his buddies and not one of them owned a boat. Lucky for him our dad wasn’t able to track him down until he’d already enlisted.” Aaron stared, predictably thrown off by my detour into family history. He final y responded by saying, “I don’t have a brother.”

“Yes, you do,” Vayl said.

“No,” Aaron insisted. “My sister—” He stopped, gulping slightly when Vayl set both feet on the floor and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped between them. I felt the familiar cold caress of his power as it swirled away from him. He could’ve rammed it down Aaron’s throat, made him tel us every detail of his life right down to the brand of popcorn he preferred. But the possibility of Badu floated over al our heads, and he’d never mind-blast his own son. So he simply told the truth and backed it up with a press of magical assurance so that Aaron would know in his heart that Vayl’s words were genuine.

He said, “The fact that you are alive and here now proves that your brother’s soul may also be present in this world. The fact that you, of al people, have been sent to kil me, bodes il for whoever Hanzi is in this lifetime. Because if you fail, your handler wil most certainly send him to complete your work. This puts him in terrible danger, both from the people who have trapped you, and from us.” He glanced at me. “We are trained to act first and think second. We may kil him in self-defense before we have the chance to save him.”

“You’re crazy,” Aaron muttered. “Talking about me like I was actual y alive hundreds of years ago. I’m a lawyer. Almost. I deal with facts. Case histories. Precedents. I could never buy some wacko theory like that.”

“Bul shit,” I said. “You’re the one who thinks he needs to kil a vampire to stop a haunting.”

“Nobody needs an excuse to smoke vampires!” Aaron exclaimed. “Ask around! I’d be applauded in the streets for flicking another parasite off the ass of humankind!” Then, as if realizing that he was sitting right next to one of the parasites he’d just insulted and maybe he should’ve just kept his big fat mouth shut, Aaron pressed his lips together so hard they looked like a single entity.

But not soon enough for me.

I picked up the revolver in one smooth motion and took a shot. Boom! Aaron screamed as the pil ow under his arm jumped and a couple of feathers fluttered into the air. I found myself wishing he’d brought a shotgun. Now that would’ve made a big splash!

“Jasmine! You shot my couch!”

“You’re looking at it al wrong, as usual, Vayl. What happened was that I didn’t shoot your kid.

Now, be honest, which means more to you?”

Vayl motioned to Aaron.

“That’s what I thought. So I’l buy you a new couch, which wil , I promise, be a lot more comfortable than that stiff old backbreaker. I also promise, if this little shit doesn’t start talking I wil start taking chunks out of him.” I chambered another round.

“Don’t tel her, Aaron!” The demand didn’t come from any voice I was familiar with. But Aaron knew it wel . He spun in his seat.

Aaron gasped. “Dad!”

I let the .38 drop to the floor and risked a look over my shoulder. A man, or rather what was left of him, floated in the corner behind the pianoforte stool, Vayl’s framed col ection of Picasso pencil drawings showing clearly through his brown business suit. He held his emaciated hands out, his entire expression echoing the pleading gesture.

“What’s he doing here?” I asked Vayl and Raoul. “Ghosts are supposed to be rooted to their homeplaces.” I put a hand to my eye, trying to shove back the pain that suddenly exploded there.

“Something’s wrong,” I whispered, just as a gout of blood gushed from my right nostril.

My knees buckled. Vayl caught me and pul ed me upright before I could hit the floor. Raoul, only a step behind, had pul ed a length of gauze from a first-aid kit I never even knew he carried. He pressed it under my nose and nodded for me to hold it there as I forced my eyes back up to the ghost, who was continuously scratching his forearms like he couldn’t stand the feel of his own skin. I looked up at Vayl as he wrapped his arm around me. “It’s Brude. I can feel him, beating his fists on the wal s of my mind. We weren’t supposed to know that he’s done something to the Thin. He’s made it so ghosts can walk. So they can travel long distances. Of course. If he’s going to defeat Lucifer and crown himself king of New Hel he’s gotta be able to transport his armies. He must be behind this. If he kil s you, he paralyzes me—” I moaned, not so much from fear of that happening.

We’d survived this long for a reason. But because my head felt like Brude had ripped it off and rol ed it down Vayl’s stairs.

“That is not going to happen,” he said.

“Just because it hasn’t so far—” I put my fingers to my temples and rubbed. It didn’t help. Then Raoul shoved my hands away and took over. The pain began to subside.

“What do you know about Brude?” Aaron had risen from the couch. He held the pil ow in front of him. Aw. Now I was going to have to put it in Vayl’s third-floor armory along with a little plaque with the inscription MOST PATHETIC SHIELD EVER.

Vayl said, “He is the king of a realm cal ed the Thin. It is a nightmare world where souls sometimes travel, or are trapped, on their way to their final destination.”

“My dad’s there?” Aaron whispered.

Vayl answered, “It seems so. We believe that Brude has engineered this entire scene, except for my survival, of course. Because he wants to render Jasmine helpless, at least for the length of time it would take for him to kil her from the inside out.”

That word “helpless” galvanized me. I stepped away from my nurses, my headache bearable now that Raoul had massaged the worst of it away, my nosebleed on temporary hiatus. It’s gonna take more than that to put me down, suckah. In support, Teen Me did a couple of painful y lame front kicks toward the locked door in my mind behind which Brude paced.

Please stop, I told her. You may think you’re pulling off Jackie Chan, but the only person you’re reminding me of is that skinny dude from Nacho Libre.

Aaron’s nose wrinkled as he stared at me, his lawyer’s mind ticking off new facts that were making his mouth twist with disgust. “He’s inside you?”

“He tried to possess me,” I admitted. “It didn’t work, but I couldn’t boot him out of my psyche either. So I’ve got him trapped. For now. I know how to vanquish him. I was just waiting for this guy to find me the best route into the place.” I nodded to Raoul, who managed to look more anxious than he had just seconds before. As if I needed another reason to worry. Hadn’t his scouts had any success at al ?

“If you beat Brude, what happens to my dad?” asked Aaron. He winced as Senior wailed in the background.

“The Thin existed before Brude and it wil continue after him,” said Raoul. “But once his hold over your father ends, I can save him.”

“You?” Aaron looked Raoul over doubtful y. Now I was doubly insulted. First he dissed my vamp.

Then he questioned my Spirit Guide. That kind of ignorance only came from years of hard work. And I had no patience for such bigotry.

I kept my voice low, which should’ve been a warning to him, as I said, “The fact that you took Vayl down before? That was what we cal a rookie run. It happens to al newbies. Once. Then most of them get cocky and die. You are in the presence of masters, you little shit. Al you have to figure out is whether you want to be standing in the crossfire or watching from the roof when we get down to business.”

While I waited for him to decide I wondered if I’d gone too far. If, maybe, the ghost of Aaron Senior, and Junior’s shocked blue eyes, would cause Vayl to launch into an “Aw, come on, be nice to my wittle boy” lecture. But when I looked up at him, he leaned down and brushed a kiss onto my cheek. “Have I told you lately what a magnificent woman you are?” he whispered, his breath tickling the lobe of my ear.

I shook my head, not trusting my voice to stay steady at that precise moment. I cut my gaze to Raoul, who’d been studying the moaning ghost of Senior thoughtful y. When he realized I was watching, he said, “If you needed any more proof that you’ve got Brude scraping the barrel to save his sorry hide, there it is.” He motioned first to the ghost and then to his son. “My scouts stil haven’t found a clear path to any of hel ’s gates for you yet. But I promise, it’l be soon.” He pointed to my head. “How much does it hurt and how often?”

I tried to shrug it off, but a new, piercing pain forced me to grimace instead. I felt Vayl’s arm slide around my waist as I said, “It’s intense when it comes, which is about every other day now.”

“How long does it last?”

“A few hours. Usual y I can sleep it off.”

“And the nosebleeds?”

I wadded the gauze up in my fist, as if to make it disappear would prevent me from having to answer the question. But when I looked up at my Spirit Guide, he stared steadily into my eyes, waiting, demanding a reply. “Smal ones every twelve hours or so. Big ones every thirty-six.” We both knew it meant my time had wound down from weeks to days. If I didn’t destroy Brude soon, not even Raoul could save me.

I didn’t like his frown. It looked a little too… sympathetic. “I’l be fine. Just find us a way in that won’t get us shredded before we’re even halfway there.”

He held up his hands. “Al the citizens of hel know you have the Rocenz. When Vayl jumped through the plane portal and cut it from the demoness’s grip, he made what you would cal ‘big news’

in the netherworld.” He didn’t add that Vayl had been forced to literal y chop Kyphas’s hands off to retrieve the tool that would save my life. The grisly memory stil woke me up some nights just short of a scream. Raoul went on. “Hel wants it back.”

“Of course it does!” I hissed. “It only turns people into fucking demons!” His eyes narrowed, reminding me to watch my mouth and my temper. Now was no time to lose it, not when actual parts of me were unraveling. I took a breath, tucking in the part of me that stil raged at the memory of Cole, his eyes flashing red, fighting the change as Kyphas carved his name into her heartstone with the Rocenz.

If only she hadn’t clapped the hammer and chisel back into a single fused tool before Vayl set off that grenade. That was the big black raincloud neither Raoul nor Vayl nor I wanted to admit we stood under. Even if Raoul’s scouts found us an unguarded path to one of the gates, we stil didn’t know how to separate the two parts of the Rocenz. Until we did we couldn’t carve Brude’s name on those gates. And it had to be stricken into that blasted metal, because with each blow of the hammer onto the chisel, the magic of the Rocenz, imbued by Torledge, the Demon Lord of Lessening, would reduce Brude to his essence. When we were done with the son of a bitch he would be taken down to the dust from which he’d come. And then, maybe… wel , I hadn’t said anything to Vayl yet. But we’d done some research and figured out that the Rocenz could also separate Roldan, Vayl’s worst enemy, from the gorgon who kept him alive. Split those two, they die, and then you have some sweet revenge on the Were who kil ed our boss, Pete. But I had to survive first.

I took a breath. “So how much time do you figure I have left?” He hesitated, his eyes darting to Vayl before they came back to me. “You’re strong. Anyone else would have surrendered by now. As it is, I’d guess you have four, maybe five days left. Seven at the most.”

I nodded. Crept my hand around Vayl’s arm and slid it down toward his hand until I felt his fingers wrap around mine. I felt better instantly. “Okay, then. Here’s what I think.”

“Um, excuse me?” Aaron was holding up his hand. Geez, did he stil think he was in high school?

“Yes, Aaron?” said Vayl.

“I don’t know if this’l help your plans or not, but I wasn’t just supposed to kil you.” We stared at him so long that he checked to make sure his fly was zipped. Final y Vayl said,

“You were given further orders?”

“Yeah.”

“Noooo, Aaron!” wailed Senior from the corner of the room. Raoul waved at him and the sound muted so quickly you’d have thought he was holding a TV remote.

“Oh, that’s cool,” I said. “You’ve gotta teach me that one.”

“If you survive this ordeal, I wil ,” Raoul promised.

“Deal.” I gestured to Junior. “What were you supposed to do after you’d offed Vayl?”

“They told me to put his, uh, remains in a bag and bring them to their boss.”

“How could you do that? He’s a freaking ghost!”

Aaron shook his head. “No. Look, you keep thinking this guy, Brude, was tel ing me what to do.

But I only heard my dad mention him once. The same way you’d say, I don’t know, Kim Jong-il. Or Bernie Madoff. But he’s not the one who gave me the orders. You know, the one who said, ‘Do this or your dad wil never stop haunting you.’ That was a different guy.”

“Did he tel you his name?” Vayl asked.

“Yeah. In fact, he said it a few times. I got the feeling he wanted me to drop it before I kil ed you.

But that seemed kind of melodramatic. So I didn’t.” He paused. And then when he realized we were waiting for it he said, “Oh! You wanna know—yeah, his name was Roldan.” CHAPTER FOUR

Wednesday, June 13, 2:15 a.m.

Once Aaron had dropped the name of the werewolf who’d become Vayl’s worst enemy (I would’ve said nemesis, but that’s so Sherlock Holmesian), Aaron Senior gave up the fight and faded away.

So did my headache. Most likely a sign that Brude had just fal en back to find a better position from which to attempt a strokeinducing attack the next time I seemed even remotely vulnerable.

Vayl had looked down at me. “You need food. And I could use another bite as wel .” He smirked at his pun. “Let us take this discussion to the kitchen, shal we?” So we’d ended up crowded around his table for two, using chairs he’d brought in from the dining room to make up the difference, staring out the window into the backyard, where Jack had decided he needed more running time.

Astral had taken her customary perch on the mantel of yet another fireplace that sat between the door and the hal that led to the utility room. Between it and the kitchen sink on the opposite wal sat a wide maple butcher-block table with a built-in knife rack along the edge. The rest of the kitchen had been designed in a horseshoe shape around the table, with the refrigerator to its right as you entered the room. It had been covered to match the stained pine cabinets. The gas stove had been designed to look like something out of a pioneer kitchen with its cast-iron shel , though it had modern guts. My second-favorite item in the kitchen, it charmed me only slightly less than the brick floor, which must’ve cost a fortune to lay, but made me feel cozy every time I came into the room.

Aaron’s comment, as usual, kind of pissed me off. “This room doesn’t real y fit the rest of the house. You should have it redone.”

I pressed my lips together. If Junior real y was Vayl’s son, I’d have to find a way to get along with him. And snapping his head off every ten minutes probably wasn’t a good place to start. So I kept quiet and let Vayl answer. “I suppose an interior decorator would find it clashes,” he said. “But I am not so concerned about these matters as I am about surrounding myself with fond memories.” That was al he said, so I didn’t know if the kitchen he’d had such happy times in had belonged to a woman he’d loved. Or if he’d just enjoyed meals from a cook who’d had a similar setup. And right now—I didn’t wanna know.

So I dug into the bowl of cookie dough ice cream that Vayl had dipped for me and grooved on the grossed-out expression that passed over Aaron’s face as he watched his former target sip a second helping of government blood from his favorite mug.

Raoul was the one who final y spoke up. “Does knowing that Roldan ordered the young man who may be the incarnation of Badu to kil you real y change anything? As far as I’m concerned, my mission remains unchanged.”

Vayl’s chin dropped slightly. “I agree that you should continue.” It seemed like he was about to say something more, but he let it go.

I said, “In four days, if your people haven’t met with any success, we’l take the path you think wil most likely get us there successful y. If you can recruit fighters for that journey, we’d appreciate it. But be straight with them, okay? We want them to understand it’l be a battle the whole way in.” I stopped there. No sense adding that we’d be lucky if any of us made it back out.

“What about the Rocenz?” Raoul asked.

I glanced at Vayl. Then I said, “We found out on our last mission that Roldan’s people had been guarding its resting place for a while. I imagine they know the spel that separates the parts, don’t you?”

“How do you plan to get that information?”

“Our psychic is stil working her resources,” Vayl said. “But tonight’s event confirms that Roldan has anticipated our next move. And that he fears its success to such a degree that he is trying to kil us”—he pointed to himself—“or cripple us to the point that we can no longer act.” He pointed to me.

“What I am saying is that Roldan knows that we must come after him, because we believe he knows how to separate the pieces of the Rocenz. It is inevitable that we should meet one more time. And he is terrified of the outcome.”

“So’s Brude,” I murmured, rubbing my forehead even though it didn’t hurt anymore. “They both have so much to gain from our failure that their partnership couldn’t be tighter if it was forged at an anvil. That means we can’t play them off each other. And Brude’s been in my head long enough that, even though he can’t hear my thoughts, he can definitely sense what’s going on in the world beyond my eyebal s. Plus we know, somehow, he’s able to communicate with Roldan.”

“Yes, but how?” wondered Vayl.

“It has to be the gorgon,” said Raoul.

“The who? The what?” Aaron backed his chair up an entire foot as he asked, pushing hard against the table as if he wanted nothing more than to flush his life, once and for al , of a group of people who spoke so casual y of werewolves and demons, and who might actual y put him face-to-face with a demigod who could transform him into a pigeon perch.

Vayl, kind and loving father that he was, patiently explained. “Roldan once attempted to turn a ward of mine named Helena because he felt they were destined to become lifemates. I wounded him fatal y during that fight, but I did not wait to see him die. Instead I threw him into the gutter where he was rescued by a gorgon and her retinue. She offered him eternity—he accepted. Even now, I do not think he understood the price he would have to pay, because gorgons eat death. In a way, she has been consuming him since the day his natural life ended.”

“How can anything be that powerful?” Aaron whispered. To give him credit, he didn’t sound one bit envious.

“There’s a Balance,” Raoul said, somewhat cryptical y. “However, I believe that the gorgon’s power al ows her to stimulate communication between Roldan and Brude. Maybe she’s woven a psychic connection between them, I don’t know.”

“She’s a damn demigod. She can do pretty much what she pleases,” I muttered.

“So we agree that the gorgon is the mediator between Jaz’s enemy and mine, bringing them into a partnership designed to destroy us both,” Vayl said.

Raoul grimaced. “So much for the element of surprise.”

Aaron had crossed his arms over his chest like he needed a big hug and sure as shit nobody else was gonna give him one. Now he said, “Wel , that’s just great. Your enemies have the inside scoop. Which means they probably already know I didn’t kil Vayl. So when I show up at Roldan’s door with a bag ful of dirt and rags, he’s going to kil me. Then I’m going to end up in that freakshow you cal the Thin for the rest of eternity! Because you know that’s exactly where that Brude son of a bitch threatened to send me if I failed!”

I smiled at him. “I like you better when you swear.”

His jaw dropped.

Vayl tch ed. “Jasmine. Do not encourage him.” He set his empty mug on the table. Which reminded me to take a couple more spoonfuls of ice cream. Then he said, “First of al , Brude would have brought you to the Thin regardless of whether or not you succeeded in kil ing me. He is raising an army. He needs bodies. But, while you are alive, you real y should have more confidence in our abilities. Very wel -respected officials pay us to keep people just like you alive and happy every single day.”

“Not lately,” I muttered, thinking darkly of the three senators on our Oversight Committee.

Vayl’s lip twitched as he went on. “So, while we understand that Roldan is expecting us, of course we are not going to appear on his doorstep with a gift basket.”

“I’d like to send a gift basket to—”

Raoul frowned at me. “Jaz, seriously, eat your frozen cookie dough.” I licked some ice cream off my spoon, which might or might not have been interpreted as sticking my tongue out at my Spirit Guide, as Vayl finished. “Roldan has no idea I am stil alive and wil not hear from Brude because we know a psychic who wil help Jasmine block his emanations completely.”

He nodded to me, giving me leave to cal Cassandra, who sure as hel did know the trick. I might’ve been surprised to learn that once, but this chick had ducked a deal she’d made with a demon for five hundred years. Of course she’d studied up on the lore. She gave me a prayer that I memorized within thirty seconds, told me exactly where to splash the holy water (behind the ears, real y?), and I knew it had worked when Brude wailed like a lottery winner who’s just watched his ticket go sailing overboard.

When I came back to the table, grinning widely at my success, Vayl paused in his explanation to say, “I was just tel ing Aaron and Raoul that we wil make a public production of my murder and tomorrow we wil send Aaron to Roldan’s lair with the remains of a vampire in hand, as he requested. That wil get him, and us, through the front door, so to speak. After which point he wil hide in a very sturdy closet until we are finished with my old nemesis.” Hmmm, maybe I should’ve used that word. It sounded pretty cool when Vayl said it just now. He turned to Aaron. “Surely you find that plan preferable to an eternity in the Thin?”

“Where are you going to get vampire remains?” Junior and I asked at almost the same time.

Vayl sat back in his chair almost triumphantly. “A Rogue has entered my territory. I have given him several days to move on because, ah, I have been otherwise occupied.” He didn’t look at me, which was a good thing, because he’d have seen me shoveling Edy’s Slow Churned into my gul et so fast that I gave myself brain freeze.

“Ahh!” I smacked my hand against my forehead.

“Jaz!” Raoul grabbed my shoulder. “Are you al right?”

Vayl lunged forward and half-lifted me from my chair. “What is it? What do you need?”

“Freaking ice cream. God damn that’s cold!” Then I realized what I’d just done. “Oh. Sorry, guys.

No, I’m fine. I was just… yeah, eating too greedily. Won’t do it again, I promise.” They sank into their chairs, obviously debating whether or not to clonk me over the head with Vayl’s ice cream scoop.

I smiled weakly. “So, we’re going to smoke a Rogue vamp? That could be fun.” CHAPTER FIVE

Wednesday, June 13, 2:30 a.m.

I’ve traveled al over the world. But as I stood outside Vayl’s house in the wee hours of that mid-June morning, my dog sitting quietly at my side, I decided nothing felt quite as peaceful as rural Ohio by moonlight. The smel of growing corn and recent rain cleared my lungs and my head. I turned my back to the neatly trimmed lawn that separated Vayl’s property from the surrounding woods and fields, and studied the three men who stood in the shadow of my sverhamin’s stately old house.

Vayl stood talking quietly to Aaron, their dark hair almost melding into one picture. But while Vayl held himself tal and proud, one hand resting comfortably on his jewel-topped cane while the other twirled an old-fashioned wooden stake and managed not to snag it in the pocket of his black jeans or on his longsleeved black button-down, Aaron slouched. It wasn’t even a comfortable I’m-chil in’-

with-the-beats kind of shoulder hump. It was an I’m-out-of-my-league-but-I’m-plowing-through-anyway kind of hunch. And it didn’t ease from talking to the vampire, so whatever Vayl was saying provided no comfort. Raoul couldn’t help himself, he probably had a soldier’s bearing even in true Eldhayr form. As it was, the erectness of his posture could only have been copied by a straight, strong oak tree. And he sure didn’t look like he’d be comfortable if we invited him to rest on the come-and-sit-a-spel front porch that marched al the way around the perimeter of the house, stopping only at its fairy-tale turret that somehow made me feel underdressed.

Like Vayl, I’d changed into darker clothes. I wore a navy blue runner’s pul over with long sleeves, and even darker blue cargo pants. I felt a little guilty for not using every single pocket, but I carried what I needed up top. Grief was ful y loaded with vamp-kil ing arrows. And I’d strapped my vial of holy water to my right arm.

Knowing that Vayl and Raoul were also properly armed, and that between us we’d manage to make sure Junior didn’t become vamptoast, I let my gaze wander. To the right of the house sat the brick garage, which didn’t seem attached when you looked at it from the outside. But when it was storming, or you just didn’t want whoever was outdoors to see you access the house from the car shelter, there were underground passageways. Since we didn’t trust Aaron to keep information about Vayl’s secret tunnels, doors, and bookcases to himself, we’d brought him to the party the oldfashioned way. Raoul, however, had just assumed the invitation covered him as wel . Which was why I said, “Look. You don’t have to come. In fact, kil ing Rogue vamps couldn’t have been on your to-do list today. Why don’t you—”

“You’re not getting rid of me,” Raoul said flatly. “My job is to keep you alive as long as possible.

I’d never forgive myself if some random other kil ed you when you were so close to freedom.”

“See?” said Aaron. “Even he thinks vampires are monsters!”

“That’s not what I said,” Raoul corrected him. “Stop trying your lawyer talk on me, boy. I have no patience for half-truths and hidden lies.”

As I quietly admired the way Raoul had put the little bigot in his place, Vayl spoke in a quiet voice that demanded the kind of attention that even the crickets had to respect. “Aaron, when you were Rom and your name was Badu, it used to infuriate you when people cal ed you a gypsy. They did not mean the word kindly. And you did not understand why the accident of your birth should pin such hatred upon you that you were once arrested for walking down the street in the company of a local girl.” He paused, looked down at the cane that had accompanied him through much of the past two centuries. The tigers that stalked down its length kept their judgments to themselves as he said,

“The boy you were would spit on the man you have become.”

Aaron’s head reared back as if he’d been hit. But he didn’t say anything as Vayl took his remote from his pocket. A smal black keypad programmed to respond only to his touch, it al owed no one into the house or the garage from the outside once they’d been locked down unless he keyed the entry on the pad, or opened the doors from the inside. Now he pressed a series of buttons and the garage door began to rise.

Jack, realizing a car ride had just entered his future, ran for the garage with his tail wagging wildly. I looked around for Astral. In this light she was nearly invisible, and I’d learned she liked it that way. Suddenly I saw her eyes shining from the front of one of Vayl’s flower beds. I didn’t know what was weirder, that a dude who slept al day surrounded his house with geraniums and marigolds, or that my robokitty’s eyes were silver in the moonlight. Then I saw the sweep of double high beams cross the porch.

I spun back toward the road at the same time that Vayl said, “What have we here?” The car was crawling down the gravel road that led to his drive, hesitating and then jerking forward like the driver had just learned how to shift it into first. It swerved onto the shoulder, nearly hit the ditch, corrected itself, and then trundled into the drive.

By that time we were on our way.

Vayl had released the sheath from his cane’s handle, revealing the handcrafted sword that rode beneath.

I’d pul ed Grief, though I left the safety on for now.

Raoul carried no weapons that I could see. But the Eldhayr had once healed my broken neck with a word and a touch. I figured he had other hidden talents.

Jack and Astral came along too. Maybe someday I’d own cute, fluffy pets without the capacity to harm a butterfly. But probably not, which was why even my cat carried a couple of grenades around in her digestive tract, and my dog knew exactly how to use his teeth to greatest effect.

The car, a rusty white Lumina, made a graceful right turn and came to a stop in a drive-blocking maneuver that I would’ve suspected was the beginning of a ful -out assault on the house. Except that the driver’s side door opened and a man tumbled out, fal ing to his hands and knees on the dew-drenched grass.

Vayl was the first to reach him. Already he’d sheathed his sword. He looked up at me. The tone in his voice chil ed me when he said, “Jasmine. Come quickly.” I holstered Grief and ran to his side, Raoul, the animals, and Aaron right behind me.

The man, practical y curled up in a bal , wore a filthy gray sweatshirt and cutoff shorts. He could’ve been anybody. Except for the red high-tops that made my heart twist inside my chest.

“Cole?” I whispered.

He raised his head and blinked his blood-red eyes. “Help me, Jaz.” I slapped my hand over my mouth to hold back the moan as I dropped to my knees beside him.

Jack, understanding only that something had just gone terribly wrong in Happysvil e, pressed his nose against Cole’s cheek. Cole reached out blindly, wrapped his hand in my dog’s fur, and then buried his face in it.

I swung to Raoul. “What happened? Kyphas only had him halfdemonized when we saved him.

And Sterling purified him afterward.”

“Didn’t the warlock tel you to keep Cole close?”

“Yeah, and we did until he decided to go to Florida to visit his family.” Raoul frowned down at the man who’d once loved me. “Obviously he never left. It’s important after a purification for the victim to stay close to friends and family until he or she has worked through al the guilt and anger. I’m guessing Cole felt so much of both that he thought it best to isolate himself before he hurt someone else when, in fact, that was the worst thing he could’ve done.”

“But he didn’t hurt anyone back in Marrakech,” I protested.

“I doubt he sees it that way.”

Vayl had knelt beside me by now. He put a hand on Cole’s shoulder and pul ed him back. “Talk to us, son.”

The gentleness in his voice brought tears to my eyes, because it meant Cole was doing even worse than I’d feared.

Cole pul ed away from Jack. When he ran his hands through his wild surfer-boy hair I thought I saw the nubs of two horns shoving their way through his skul . “She’s pul ing me back,” he said, his voice hoarse and dire.

“Kyphas is dead,” I reminded him. “Vayl blew her to bits—”

He shook his head. “No. No. No. I can feel her.” He thumped his hand against his chest. “And I want it.” His crimson eyes bored into mine. “Make it stop. One way or another. Jaz, I’m counting on you. Don’t let me go over.”

I shared a doubtful look with Vayl. “You kil ed Kyphas. Right?” He shrugged. “I could not imagine her surviving that blast. However, Cole is tel ing us differently.

Perhaps the sea creature that was attacking her at the time took more of the damage than I anticipated it would. Or maybe hel pieced her back together just so it could have the pleasure of torturing her.”

I wanted to deny the possibilities, but bizarre was pretty much Lucifer’s domain. And I had Cole to worry about right now. I looked up at Raoul. “Please. There must be something you can do.” I could tel he wanted to leap back through the nearest plane portal by the way he held himself, stiff with denial, reminding me with his eyes that his office stationery had NONINTERFERENCE

imbedded within the weave of the paper itself. “I’m not his Spirit Guide, Jasmine—” I said, “No. Maybe you could’ve jumped and run back in January, when you were just a scary buzz fol owed by an earsplitting voice in my head. But not now. You’re my friend. And he’s my friend.

Which makes you his friend by default. And friends save each other’s souls.” There was a lot I didn’t say that I let him read in my eyes. That if he let Cole slip away I’d never fight for him, or the Eldhayr, again. And that there was every chance I’d come after them for letting him down—providing I survived the massive revenge I’d attempt to visit on the demon who’d broken my pal in the first place.

Raoul swiped off his hat and threw it on the ground. “You owe me.”

“Absolutely. We both wil .”

He glared at Vayl, like he’d had something to do with my uppity attitude. “Guard us.” The request struck me as weird, until he grabbed my arm and wrapped the fingers of his free hand around the back of Cole’s neck. “Oh,” I whispered, dizzy with the rush of separation as he swept me out of my body.

CHAPTER SIX

Wednesday, June 13, 2:45 a.m.

I immediately relaxed. Never had I broken from my physical self so wilingly, even though I knew the return trip would feel like a fal into thorn-covered bushes inhabited by army ants and kil er bees.

I flew up and up, the rush of flight so extreme I nearly forgot why I’d forced Raoul to yank me off this edge to begin with. He obviously hadn’t, his spirit form even more forbidding than his physical one as he pul ed Cole and me toward a distant star.

I looked back, reassuring myself that, yes, the golden cords that signified every relationship binding me to life stil stretched from the world to my spirit. Dave was safe, wherever he wandered.

Albert, too, along with Evie and baby E.J. I savored every connection, but most especial y Vayl’s, because it meant he hadn’t given up everything, or maybe that he’d earned something back, by creating a relationship with me.

I couldn’t see Cole’s cords, which wouldn’t have been alarming, except that he seemed to show no interest in them either. “Raoul? Has he lost everything?” I asked, motioning to my own lifelines.

“They’re fading,” Raoul said shortly. When I realized he was done talking, I slipped my hand into Cole’s, such as they were, and whispered, “I’m here.”

He didn’t look at me. Only nodded and kept his eyes glued to that star, which was growing brighter as we approached it. Soon we could see it was a plane portal, similar in shape to the ones that seemed to appear near me wherever I went. But instead of being wreathed in flames and black at the center, this one shone with light so bril iant that human eyes would’ve been blinded by it.

Raoul began to chant as we jetted toward the light. Everything in me said to turn away before my brain fried, but the light had begun to sing. And I’d spent enough time with Sterling, who wanted nothing more than to become a bard, to realize I was staring into the source of the old guild’s power.

We burst through the doorway accompanied by a chorus of voices so utterly beautiful that tears would’ve streamed from my eyes if I’d had them. Cole and I looked at each other. And smiled. How could we not? We stood in a meadow of wildflowers beside a stream so clear we could see the fishes’ shadows. Music stil echoed in our ears and now we knew the source—it was the combined orchestra of al the cords that touched our souls to those of the people we loved.

Raoul said, “Cole Levon Bemont, hear me and know the truth of my words. Your futures lie before you.” He picked a ripened dandelion and blew the white seeds into the air. Suddenly we saw Cole in twenty different places. But al of them shared one common denominator. A flame-swept sky covering a landscape of mutilated creatures who’d once been human.

Cole staggered backward, shaking his head. “No. No. There has to be another way.” Raoul came to me and whispered in my ear. I jerked my head away from his. “Are you serious?”

“You asked for this,” he said.

I hesitated, watching the man who had taken beating after beating for me, who’d fol owed me into this career after his business had been burned to the ground because of me, fal to his knees as his eyes darted from one hel -scene to the next, searching, searching, and always finding the demon he would become marching among the forsaken, a blood-drenched whip clutched in his hand. And I did as Raoul asked.

I strode to the newest golden cord to be added to my col ection. It was only four months old, but its beauty outshone that of the others in this place like a rose among the clover. I strummed E.J.’s cord, playing the song my niece had begun to sing for me, and with me, since the moment she was born. I’d heard it before, when I battled a demon cal ed the Magistrate. Then it had sounded out pure and fine as a fresh snowfal . Now, in this place of wonder, her song had changed. Become ful of interesting harmonies interspersed with drumbeats so intense I half expected an army to take the field. Instead the cord began to vibrate against my non-hand so painful y that I backed away.

“Raoul?”

“Behold,” Raoul said to Cole.

He turned away from the nightmare spread out before him just as the cord seemed to separate and rebraid itself into a new shape, that of a woman whose dark brown hair swept in ringlets down her back. When she looked up, as if in amazement that a sky so blue could exist anywhere in the universe, the sun glinted off her red highlights.

“I’ve never seen eyes so green,” Cole whispered. His hands had dropped, palms up, into his lap, as if he were a beggar pleading for her mercy. “What’s her name?” Raoul looked at me. “Her name is Ezri…”

I finished it for him. “Ezri Jasmine. E.J. for short. She’s my niece in, what, twenty years?”

“Twenty-three,” Raoul told me.

Cole didn’t seem to have heard. His jaw had dropped slightly, as if he’d been hit by an armored truck. He whispered, “She’s an angel.”

“You could say that,” Raoul agreed.

I riveted my eyes to his. But he avoided my gaze. Suddenly random events in my life clicked together in new ways. I understood why the Magistrate had gone after E.J. during that battle back in Tehran. Why the part of her that connected to the cosmos was able to resist his attack so wel for so long. And maybe even why her father did his best to avoid me during those rare times that Evie blackmailed me into attending a family event.

Cole stretched out his hand as if he wanted to touch her but knew the museum guards would kick his ass if they saw him defiling the fine art. He said, “Ezri? She’s—”

“Your destiny, if you choose to embrace it,” said Raoul. “You won’t seem old to her when you final y meet, because having most of your name chiseled to the demon’s heartstone has slowed your aging process by decades. But be warned. Even if you decide to wait for her, you’l have to endure tortures in the space between. As I said, the Rocenz has changed you. But its marks aren’t clean and precise, like a carpenter’s tool. They leave the scars of a brand. For some the dark fire becomes so al uring that they choose it despite the fact that it burns away everything that made them human.”

Cole touched the horns that had almost completely receded back into his skul . “She’s just a baby now? How do I fight it for twenty years?”

“Twenty-three,” Raoul corrected.

Cole’s eyes drank her in. He knew he wouldn’t see her again for decades, and I could see him trying to memorize every feature, right down to the beauty mark high on her right cheekbone. Final y he said, “You saw how wel I made it through the first couple of weeks. How am I going to pul off years?”

Raoul reached into his pocket as he said, “Soon Vayl wil decide that you need to travel to Romania, which has just recently embraced its roots as the country that birthed vampirism. Perhaps you wil find a use for these?”

I couldn’t see what he held at first. He did a little turning motion with one hand, set the object down with the other, then stepped back and watched with us. A pair of ruby-red lips smiled up at us as its blinding white wind-up vampire teeth chopped up and down so fast they looked to be stuck in the middle of the Antarctic without a hat or scarf to keep them toasty warm. The vamp mouth walked around in circles with the help of a pair of pointy-toed black dress shoes.

Cole’s chuckle started somewhere near his belt buckle and by the time it emerged from his throat he was doubled over and slapping his thigh. Which isn’t easy when you’re mostly spirit.

“Excel ent! I can just see Vayl looking down his nose at those, going, ‘Those are not in the least bit amusing. Also, you cannot get a good anchor into your victim when you are gnawing at him like some kind of jackal.’ I’l take two!”

Raoul handed him the teeth. “They’l take form for you as soon as you reenter your body.”

“Magical!”

Raoul smirked. “Just don’t lose them.” His eyes sent the bigger message, or your sense of humor.

Cole nodded. “Gotcha. Thanks.”

Raoul clasped his hands behind his back. “Anytime,” he said, his faint Spanish accent suddenly a little easier to detect. By damn, he is getting attached to us! “We must leave soon,” he said, nodding to the golden cords that surrounded us. They were beginning to fade. “Perhaps you’d like to say goodbye?”

“Can she hear me?” Cole asked.

“At some level.”

Cole went up to E.J. Wow, she was tal ! Her eyes were nearly at the same level as his. I felt tears prick my eyelids. To see the child I’d give anything to or for standing, al grown up, beautiful and healthy, blew me away. The man who’d decided to spend the next chunk of his life hoping she’d save his soul walked to within a few inches of her. Her gaze, uplifted and thoughtful, flew far past his tired blue eyes. But he didn’t seem to mind.

“Ezri, it’s Cole Bemont. Remember that name, okay? It’s going to be a big deal to you someday.” My hand flew to my mouth when his you-real y-should-hug-me grin appeared. I hadn’t seen it in so long I’d almost forgotten how happy it made me when it came out to play. “I’m not the man that you’re going to need me to be yet. But I’ve got a while to get myself straight. And, I promise, by the time you’re ready for me, I’l be set to sweep you off your feet.” He leaned forward to murmur into her ear. Her eyes came to his face, sparkling as they found a new focus. When he pul ed back she was smiling straight at him. The breath left him in a long sigh. He blew her a kiss.

And then he turned to Raoul.

“Okay, dude. Take me back to my so-cal ed life. I’ve got work to do.” CHAPTER SEVEN

Wednesday, June 13, 3:15 a.m.

Raoul dropped us into our bodies so fast it felt like faling from a plane without a parachute. And the pain of reuniting sum and substance—wel , my brother, Dave, wrestled in high school. One Saturday morning, somewhat miraculously, I didn’t have to work. So I went to his tournament, where I saw one of his teammates throw a guy onto the mat. Happens al the time, but this snowy day in January the kid tried to catch himself—and failed. His arm broke so severely that I could see the bone shove the skin out of place. His shocked scream reminded me of the sounds Cole and I made now as every one of our nerve endings fused back to the source of their existence.

“I wish you would stop doing that,” Vayl said as he helped me to my feet. His lips pressed into a straight line as he continued, so quietly I thought only I could hear. “Every time you leave I am more certain than ever that you wil not be returning.”

I realized I was wrong about how the sound carried into the velvety black countryside when Aaron said, “Roldan told me you were a badass.” He stood on the gravel drive with his fists stuck deep in the pockets of his bleach-stained jeans, most likely so we couldn’t see his hands shaking. When he realized he had Vayl’s attention he went on. “He warned me to kil you quick, otherwise you’d shred me like grass clippings. But there you are, kissing up to some chick who’s been impersonating a blackout drunk for the past half hour. How am I supposed to believe you’re going to save my skin when you’re just another whipped—” He gasped, stopped in mid-sentence by the whirlwind of movement and coiled violence that ended with Vayl dangling him in the air by the throat.

My sverhamin’s voice seemed to rise from a place guarded by iron bars and rusted chains as he said, “You are stil the same sharptongued coward who let your brother take the blame for every foolhardy escapade you ever attempted, including the theft of the wagon that led to your deaths over two hundred and fifty years ago. But I have changed. I wil no longer countenance disrespect from you.” He set Aaron back on his feet. Dropped his hand and watched him rub the red spots away from his neck. I couldn’t find a single speck of regret on Vayl’s hard-lined face. Just twin flares of rage flying out of his deep black pupils as he said, “I have had a great deal of time to think of how I might put right what went wrong during our lives together. Do not tempt me to turn you so that I might have eternity to teach you how to behave like a decent man. Because my first lesson wil be to teach you that only the strongest can truly, deeply love. And if you have no woman in your life, you wil understand the reason why.” Vayl was at least kind enough to turn away, so the stark and sudden pain in Aaron’s eyes was an emotion he didn’t have to hide or, later, be ashamed of.

But if the son had been stricken, the father was pained as wel . I could detect a note of longing in his voice, the kind I’d heard before when he’d suggested we could be a great Vampere couple. I’d refused then, and now I saw the same terrified denial on Junior’s face. But suddenly it was like I’d stepped up on a platform where I could observe Vayl from a total y new angle. And I realized how lonely he’d been al those years with no family to get him through the empty days or share the laughter with. Not that he’d found much to cal humorous, much less entertaining, in his early years as a Rogue. Even less so when he’d entered into a Vampere Trust. In fact, when we’d first started working together I’d become convinced pretty quickly that the dude had completely forgotten how to have fun.

I stepped up and slipped my hand into his. When his eyes dropped to mine I put al the love I felt for him in my smile. The black bled from his pupils like a healing bruise, replaced almost instantly by honey gold with flecks of the warmest amber. “I’m so proud of you,” I whispered.

“Way to represent,” agreed Cole. He stil sat at Raoul’s knee, his hands flopped between his legs like he didn’t even have the strength to cross them. He winked at Vayl. “We attached guys gotta stick together.”

Vayl’s eyebrows practical y shot off his forehead. “What happened up there?” He took a threatening step forward.

Suddenly Cole found the energy to raise his arms in protest. “I promise you, I am over your girl forever. Although she’s awesome, I’ve got my eye on the prize now.” He nodded so definitely that Vayl instantly checked himself. Cole’s eyes danced. “Hey, Jaz. I just realized. Someday, if it al works out, I’m gonna be your nephew. You know what that means, right? Magicians at my birthday parties, and trips to the zoo, and—”

“Stop!” Holy crap! He’s back—and here I am without my beat-themoff umbrella! I thought fast and then said, “You might jinx it.”

“Right. You’re absolutely right.” He made the zippy-lippy motion. However, he pointed from me to him and back again a couple of times and then mouthed the word “relatives” before subsiding into happy-grin land.

Oh. Man. Could I deal with Cole at Thanksgiving? Giving Albert shit over the turkey and making veiled references to the “adventure” we’d shared in Scotland while Evie sat in barely concealed shock at his impudence, E.J. looking around the table in absolute confusion, while I tried desperately to think of an appropriate lie to explain how very well I knew him? Or would they all be so flipped out that I’d brought a vampire to dinner that it wouldn’t matter?

I was suddenly readier than ever to go kil the Rogue Vayl had targeted. Stil under the assumption that we’d only encountered a slight detour in our original plan, I asked Cole to move his car to one side of the drive so I could back mine out.

“Where are you going?” he asked as he grabbed the open door to help himself to his feet. As Raoul fil ed him in, I strode toward the garage, assuming Vayl would fol ow with the rest of the group trotting more or less cooperatively behind. That was usual y how it worked. Except I’d taken half a dozen steps when I realized nobody was fol owing me. Not even Jack. I turned around.

“Jasmine,” Vayl said tiredly. “She is doing it again.”

The four men had gathered in a circle at the front of Cole’s Lumina. Al of them had riveted their attention to the ground at their feet, as if they couldn’t believe Kentucky bluegrass managed to thrive this far north of the state line. Jack trotted around them, occasional y sticking his nose between their legs, but he didn’t like what he saw enough to stay in one place for long. He’d pul his head back, sometimes jumping like he’d been startled, and begin his rounds again.

Dammit. We do not need this right now. And the worst part is, it’s all my fault. Or, more specifically, Jack’s fault. Which makes it mine. Dammit!

I joined the circle, Vayl and Raoul moving back to give me room. As expected, Astral lay in the middle, flat on her back, waving her feet in the air while she cackled like a drunken hen. “Cluck, cluck, hic-cluck.” From the mini-projector in the back of her throat a startlingly realistic hologram replayed a series of images just like the ones we’d seen the last time she’d pul ed this stunt. I’d come in in the middle, so I missed the skier flying off the cliff and the painter fal ing from the ladder.

But I did make it in time for skateboard-crashing-off-the-garage-roof guy and hang-glider-dumping-into-the-ocean dude.

“Cluck, cluck, hic-cluck,” said Astral.

“Do you think it’s worse?” I asked.

Vayl crouched for a closer look. “It seems about the same to me. But then, this has been going on for two days now. How did she get so much footage?” he asked as six kids went tumbling off a toboggan.

“Wel , she does have access to al the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security databases. Plus she’s an Enkyklios, and who knows what those Sisters of the Second Sight have recorded while they were globetrotting, trying to get al the info they could on the world of others. Or, now that I know, I should say the world of the Whence.”

“So that’s what it’s cal ed,” murmured Aaron as he watched a figure skater blow a triple axle.

“But…” Raoul motioned to Astral, whose clucking was so convincing I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d laid an egg. “Why?”

Vayl glanced up. “I think perhaps Bergman missed a wire or two the last time he reattached her head.”

They al looked at me. I raised my hands. “Hey, I feel terrible about that incident. But honestly, Bergman shouldn’t have made her self-destruct button so sensitive.” They gave me the point and went back to Astral watch. Final y Vayl said, “We cannot let this continue. What if she chose to emit some vital intel igence in her video feed instead of some fool slipping off his roof while trying to anchor his Christmas lights?”

“I agree,” said Cole. “You should cal Bergman.”

Al eyes came to me. Again. “Yeah, but he’s…” I sighed. “Fine. But if he cries, I’m handing the phone to one of you.”

I left the circle as I dug out my cel and dialed his number. The series of clicks that preceded the ring lasted for at least thirty seconds, signaling the fact that even though he was stil staying in Morocco with his new girlfriend, Bergman’s paranoia hadn’t slipped a notch. Our cal would be encrypted as thoroughly as if the President of the United States were sharing the line.

I thought Bergman had probably been born with a suspicious nature, but it had been sharpened to its current razor edge in col ege when a classmate had stolen his research and tried to use it to create a brand-new energy source. The fact that he’d blown himself to smithereens instead hadn’t given Bergman much comfort. After that he’d put five deadbolts on the door to his room and informed the rest of us that if we entered without permission there was every chance that we’d be impaled by a jungle spear.

I wasn’t sure what it said about me that I continued to share an apartment with him until I graduated from col ege, or that he remained one of my closest friends to this day. Except that his mind unfolded before me like a work of art. And his inventions gave me happy tingles right down to my toes. Before Matt, and then again before Vayl, hardly anything else in life had done that for me.

Final y Bergman answered the phone, which was when I thought to check my watch. Had I just woken him? Naw, it was already about nine-thirty in the morning over there. He said, “Jaz! It’s you!”

“Yes. Hel o.” Oh man, how do you tell an inventor his cat is on the fritz? Is this a good news/bad news scenario? Wait, I can’t think of any good news. See, this is what Evie means when she tells me I need to work on my attitude. Something good has to have happened lately. I mean, besides the mind-blowing sex with Vayl. And all the other fabulous moments in between, which you can’t really explain to your old buddy. And that’s not his good news anyway.

“Jaz? Are you stil there?”

“Yeah! Hey, Miles, how are you?”

“Great!”

Did that sound fake, or was it just the thousands of miles standing between our cel towers?

“Excel ent! How’s Monique?”

“Great!”

Huh. “Super. That’s good news.” Hey! That’s the good news! Now for the bad news. “Uh, Miles, why I’m cal ing… Astral’s kind of acting up.”

“What’s she doing?” Total professionalism in his tone now, except for that thread of frantic worry he was trying hard to suppress.

I described the problem. He wanted every detail. I had to go watch her some more so I could describe what era I thought the stuntman had been living in when he tried, and failed, to jump a canyon the size of Rhode Island. “What do you think?” I final y asked him.

“Her self-recalibrations may have jogged something loose,” he said. “I’l need to do some tinkering to be sure, but I think I can fix her.”

“So I should, what, shut her down? Box her up and mail her to you?”

“God, no! She’s a member of your team! You can’t function without her!”

“Wel , I wouldn’t—”

“She needs to be repaired immediately, Jaz. I’l be on the next plane out of Marrakech!”

“Bergman! Seriously, I can—”

“I won’t hear of it! I’m booking my ticket online right now.”

“Miles. What’s happening?”

“What do you mean?”

I let a few seconds of silence stretch between us. Then I said, “When Vayl, Cole, and I left Morocco, you and Monique were so lost in Cuddleland you barely said goodbye. Now you can’t wait to leave her?”

“It’s not her, exactly. It’s her kids. They came to visit. And, wel , one of them is only a year younger than me!”

“So?”

I could almost hear Bergman’s gears turning as he considered and rejected reasons he knew I wouldn’t buy in the first place. Final y he said, “I guess I knew it couldn’t last. She’s twenty-three years older than me and—”

“Stop.” This couldn’t be a coincidence. I turned to Aaron. “You’re twenty-three, right?”

“Yeah, how did you guess?”

I didn’t answer him. I was too busy trying to keep up with my racing mind. Raoul had said that E.J. would be twenty-three when she and Cole final y met for the first time. And now Bergman had let slip that Monique was exactly the same number of years older than him. Somebody was trying to send me a message. And considering the sources of the numbers, I had to think that same somebody wanted me to survive this ordeal. I tucked the idea away until I could bounce it off Vayl and went back to my cal .

“Listen, Miles. You’re my best friend. I’l back your play, no matter what you decide. But I’m just saying that’s a pretty ridiculous reason to dump the only woman I’ve ever met who wil cheerful y put up with your bul shit. If it’s something else that you can’t get past, fine. But if al you’re worried about is the age difference, then grab on to this—Vayl is two hundred and sixty-eight years older than me.”

“Damn.”

“Yuh-huh.”

Long silence. “I need to come there. Just for a little while. To think.” My throat closed. More than I wanted my own happiness, I wanted the people I loved to find peace and love in their own lives. Eventual y maybe I’d accept my startling lack of control over their decisions and just let it be. But I knew that at some point I’d probably try to talk him into going back.

The French innkeeper was too good a fit for him, dammit! For now I said, “Okay. Text me the details of your flight and I’l pick you up at the airport.”

“Make sure it’s an unmarked car.”

“Holy shit, Miles! What, did you think I’d be riding up in a parade float?”

“Is Cole with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Possibly.”

I promised him to keep it on the down low and we hung up. At which point Astral ran out of disaster video, rol ed over on her side, and farted out one of her grenades.

“Take cover!” Vayl bel owed as he snatched up the explosive and hefted it as hard as he could into the field that fronted his house. He grabbed Aaron’s arm, I whistled to Jack, and Raoul slapped Cole on the back of the head to snap him out of his bemused daze. We booked to the back of the garage, making it just in time for the explosion, which sounded so much like a fouled firework that Aaron checked out the sky.

Then he looked at Vayl. “Does this kind of stuff happen to you al the time?” Vayl considered his question. “Only since I met Jasmine.” He smiled at me. “She makes life incredibly exciting.”

“But you’re not alive… are you?” Aaron asked. For once he just sounded curious. Was he final y learning?

Vayl leaned his shoulder against the rough brick of the garage wal . In the dim light of the moon the shadows covered his entire face, so that al we could see was the glitter of his eyes when he lifted his head. “I have watched humans move through their entire existence without ever truly testing the limits imposed upon them by their families, their cultures, and their own minds. They have wil ingly traded love, risk, adventure, and knowledge for a safe haven from pain. If those humans can choose undeath, I can choose life.”

“Hel o.”

Aaron shrieked as Astral joined us, sitting quietly beside Jack, who panted over her happily, both of them acting as if nothing potential y deadly had just happened. Animals. So charming of them to poop and forget.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Wednesday, June 13, 3:45 a.m.

We wandered around to the front of the garage, though only Vayl and I could see the devastation the grenade had caused to the cornfield. He could probably read a map in the dark, and my sight had radical y improved each time he’d taken my blood, to the point where I barely needed to use Bergman’s see-in-the-dark contact lenses. Which, I could tel , Cole wasn’t wearing tonight.

“So,” he said. “You guys were already outside when I got here, and the garage door was up. Jaz sure seemed eager to take off just now, so where were you headed?” Vayl had been checking his watch. He slid it back into his pocket and said regretful y, “We did have plans. But now it is too late for us to make a round-trip to Cleveland and be assured of completing our mission successful y before dawn. We wil have to wait until tomorrow to smoke the Rogue.”

Cole held up a hand. “Wait a second. Your Trust stretches al the way to the city?” Vayl said, “Our Trust includes the city.” He stared hard into Cole’s eyes. “And you, as wel , if you would like to rejoin us.”

I held my breath as Cole considered his offer. I’d only observed the inner workings of a single Vampere Trust—the one Vayl was attached to for most of the 1800s. So it had been pretty twisted.

Plus, he hadn’t given me a lot of detail as to how ours should work since it was stil mostly a show-car organization, put together for the sake of certain observers inside the Whence. Formed to protect those of us who were most obviously attached to Vayl from his enemies, who’d flout human law but would never risk trial in other courts, our Trust didn’t even have its own letterhead. I mean, if you’re gonna be official, shouldn’t you at least have a logo or something? So, while I wasn’t sure what a nod from Cole would provide him specifical y, I knew that when he’d left Vayl’s protection in Marrakech he’d opened himself to attack from Kyphas. Which meant that if he accepted Vayl’s offer he’d be taking a solid step away from her.

Cole ran a hand through his sun-drenched hair, pul ing it back from a face that could easily have taken him into the spotlight, onto the big screen along with the rest of America’s pretty people.

Instead he’d chosen dark shadows and cold rooftops. “I stand by the demand I made in Australia,” he said, his old charm lighting up his face as he reminded Vayl. “I want to be the secretary of social events.”

“Of course.”

“Then I’m in.” Aaaahhh! Inside my head, Teen Me was jumping up and down, screaming at the top of her lungs, and trading high fives with Granny May, who’d taken a break from some new project she’d started at the dining room table. For once I agreed with my inner adolescent. This was worthy of major mental celebration. Especial y when Cole said, “I’m gonna need a party fund.” Vayl sighed. “Fine.”

“So tel me, how far does our territory real y run? And if it includes Cleveland like you said, what happened to the three nests I heard about last time I was in town?”

“I wil show you a map,” Vayl said. “We are responsible for the city, its suburbs, and several miles of surrounding countryside. As for the nests”—he looked at me—“Jasmine and I have been busy.”

Cole stared at us. But he didn’t say anything as we led him, Raoul, and Aaron into the house.

We’d decided Astral couldn’t be trusted near people until Bergman fixed her, so I’d ordered her to secure the perimeter until further notice. As a result Jack seemed slightly bummed. So I took him to the kitchen. To my surprise, al the other guys fol owed as wel .

“What do you want?” I asked my dog as I opened the fridge. “Cottage cheese? Baking soda?

Oh, I know.” I pul ed out a covered dish and, when I noticed him looking up at me suspiciously, said reassuringly, “Don’t worry. Vayl cooked it.”

I pul ed out a couple of brats and set them in his dog dish. “Don’t get used to this,” I warned him as he dove into them with the snorting noises that signaled deep satisfaction. “You’re back to that hard square stuff for your next meal.”

The guys had settled around the tiny table, Vayl and Aaron on one side opposite Raoul and Cole. They al looked pretty wasted. But I could tel Vayl had more to lay on them. He motioned for me to join them, so I pul ed the desk chair over and sat at the end of the table. Then he said, “I have a bad feeling. It is near to making me il . Hanzi—or rather the man he is today—is in terrible trouble.

The longer I think on it, the more certain I am that Roldan wil have cornered him just as he did Aaron here. We cannot wait for him to make his move. We must find him first.” Cole, Raoul, and I traded helpless looks. They left it for me to say, “But, Vayl. You’ve been searching for him for… ever. What makes you think we’l have any better luck now?” Vayl leaned his head toward Aaron. “My younger boy is with me now. I believe it is inevitable that I wil be rejoined with the elder. But fate seems determined to reunite us in violence. If there is any way we can stop that from happening, we must try.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Raoul. “And don’t look at me. This is one area where I absolutely can’t step in for you.”

“Cassandra,” said Cole.

“She has read me before, and failed,” Vayl said.

“Yeah. But you said yourself times have changed. You have to bring her here. The sooner the better, I think. Let her touch you and Aaron. I’m betting she’l have a mega-vision that’l head you straight to Hanzi.”

Vayl turned to me, his eyebrows raised a notch. “She’s coming this way anyhow. Family visit before Dave’s leave ends,” I explained.

“Cal her,” he said. “Tel her I wil charter her and David a plane if they wil agree to come tomorrow.”

And just like that I knew my crew was going to be whole again by the time the sun set on the fol owing day.

Raoul had agreed to take the first watch over Aaron, who protested that it was ridiculous to imprison him until we reminded him that he was, according to his own law, an attempted murderer.

At which point he quietly fol owed my Spirit Guide to the guest bedroom, his head clearly so ful of new thoughts to ponder that he didn’t even protest the company of Jack, who stil felt like being social after his last trip to the backyard. Cole, who was just as exhausted as Vayl’s attempted assassin, took the green room, which also contained a guest bed and bath in addition to an indoor sauna that made our newest Trust member fal to his knees and pretend to kiss Vayl dramatical y on his nonexistent ring.

“I wil be your vassal forevermore, me lord,” he said in a horrible Cockney accent, bucking his front teeth so far over his bottom lip as he talked that it completely disappeared. He rol ed onto his back. “Do you want to rub my tummy to make it official?”

“Would you get up?”

“Okay, but I’m warning you, I may have slightly obscene thoughts about you while I’m sitting in your sauna. I’l try not to, but it’s probably inevitable, I’m just that grateful.” I grabbed him by the cheeks, reminding myself forceful y not to pinch as I pul ed him forward and kissed his scar-free forehead. “Just get some sleep, you doof. We’re going to need you fresh tomorrow.”

He brought his hands up to wrap around my wrists so he could pul my hands down and kiss the back of each one. His eyes held depths I never would’ve imagined the day we first met in a ladies’

bathroom in the house of a terrorist sympathizer. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.” A light seemed to go on from his heart, and I had no doubt whom he was talking about when he said, “You’l take good care of her for me?”

“Of course.”

He nodded and dropped my hands. “Then I’l be in your debt forever. Anything you want, anytime, you just have to ask. Except for right now, when I suggest you run, don’t walk, out the door, because I’m stripping down for my first of many sweats in that sauna in five, four, three, two—” Vayl slammed the door on Cole’s laughter and together we closed ourselves into the room we’d shared since we’d gotten back from Marrakech.

It reminded me of its owner. Large, masculine, with a preference for life’s luxuries. The wal s, papered in ivory with a hunter green stripe, each held a single memento from his past that, I hoped, someday he’d feel comfortable explaining. On one hung a glass case that displayed a British heavy cavalry saber that I dated to around 1800. On another hung a framed program and two tickets to Don Giovanni. The third wal held a black-and-white photograph of two men, one of whom was Vayl, standing arm in arm in front of Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. The fourth I had demanded an explanation for, because preserved behind a long glass frame was a beautiful y tailored wedding dress that had gone yel ow with age. The moment I’d seen it, the fact that I carried my dead fiancé’s engagement ring around in my pocket didn’t matter a damn. Vayl was gonna fork over a reasonable explanation or I was out the door.

He’d touched a finger to the frame with a tenderness that nearly broke my heart. Then he’d said,

“Helena wore it when she married John Litton.” And I’d wrapped my arms around his waist. I didn’t care how pretty that dress was, if I’d had a long-dead adopted daughter, anything that reminded me of her would’ve had to be buried in a trunk and stored in the attic. But Vayl had preserved this piece of her happiness so he could always remember those few years when they were a family.

I felt her now, like an old friend at my shoulder, as I walked to the dresser and looked down at the items I’d arranged there. In a strange way she was responsible for their presence. If Vayl hadn’t discovered her back in 1770—an eleven-year-old orphan cowering in a deserted mansion about to be attacked by Roldan—that same Were would never have tried to give him permanent amnesia.

Because Roldan had become obsessed with her, and the fact that Vayl had saved her from him made them bitter enemies. And if they hadn’t been enemies, we might never have discovered that Roldan’s pack was guarding the Rocenz, which sat on the dresser, a silver hammer magical y glued to a chisel, looking like nothing more than an extrafancy paperweight.

Next to it lay the map we’d stolen, which had led us to its hiding spot in Marrakech. We’d kept the dusty old leather because on it was written a clue related to separating the hammer from the chisel. Natural y it wasn’t in English, but the translation read, “Who holds the hammer stil must find the keys to the triple-locked door.”

I picked up the map and curled up on the couch while I watched Vayl prepare his room for the coming day. He pressed a button beside the balcony doors that activated light blockers within the window glass, turning them pitch-black. But Bergman, whose middle name was probably Redundancy Plan, had also instal ed a massive canopy above Vayl’s bed that was made out of the same black material as the traveling tent that he slept in when we went out of town. It could descend from the ceiling and spread over the intricately turned wooden frame that towered feet above the gold silk bedspread. During the night Vayl kept the canopy raised almost to the top of the frame so it looked like a regular bed. Now he flipped a switch on the wal and the curtain lowered to the floor.

I hadn’t been able to bring myself to crawl under that enclosure with him yet. For a kinda-claustrophobic like me it al seemed a little too cave-like. So when I final y decided to hit the sack I’d scooch the curtain toward him until I literal y tucked him in, flip the covers back, and settle in. Kinda weird, I know, but so far it had worked okay. And I loved waking up beside an emerald-eyed vampire who couldn’t wait to see what I’d decided to wear to bed that morning.

Vayl sat down beside me to shuck off his shoes. “Have your researchers had any luck deciphering the clues?” he asked as he nodded to the map in my hand.

“Nothing new,” I told him. “You know, when Cassandra cal ed and said she’d found a reference to the triple-locked door I thought my hair was actual y standing on end. But it’s been a whole week and I stil can’t figure out what it means.”

“Wel , at least you know that the triple-locked door is, literal y, the Rocenz. That is progress,” Vayl said comfortingly. He bal ed up his socks and threw them in the corner right next to a rattan hamper.

Sometimes he was such a guy.

I hid a smile and said, “Yeah, Bergman should probably get a medal for discovering that little nugget in the archives. But it’s what Cassandra dug up, you know? What am I supposed to make of the phrase ‘Cryrise cries bane’? Okay, I know Cryrise was a dragon. And the hammer was forged from his leg bone. But I’ve been running that info around in my head every waking moment and the only conclusion I come to is that Cryrise is a pussy.”

Vayl laughed.

“I’m not kidding!” I insisted. “What kind of respectable dragon goes and gets himself kil ed by a demon in the first place?”

“Perhaps it was not that simple,” Vayl suggested as he undid his shirt, slow, the way he knew I liked it.

“Jasmine?” he murmured as he leaned forward to slip his shirt off, his shoulder muscles and biceps bunching and releasing with fascinating results.

“Uh?”

“Are you panting?”

I licked my lips. Realized my breath had started coming a lot quicker. I put my hand to his chest, sliding my fingers into the thick curls that covered it as I threw my leg over his hips and sat facing him. “I like this couch,” I told him.

“You do?” His fingers, free of the responsibility of his own buttons, had begun toying with mine.

“Yeah.” I brushed my cheek against his as I leaned forward to nibble on his earlobe and say, “It’s got great handgrips.” I reached past his arms and buried my fingers in the soft leather cushions of the back.

And then neither of us talked anymore for a long, long time.

CHAPTER NINE

Wednesday, June 13, 8:00 p.m.

I woke up beside Vayl in his huge, comfy bed the night after Aaron’s attempted assassination, amazed I’d slept the day through as I picked up the curtain to wish him a good evening.

“What’s up?” I asked. “You look like somebody just cal ed off your birthday.”

“The Rogue has left our territory,” he said. “Now we have no evidence to plant on Aaron.” He held up a hand. “And before you try to comfort me, just imagine if we sent him in with faked remains. His description last night was not far off. Roldan could injure or even kil him before we were able to intervene. We must save him. You know he cannot do it himself.”

“He’s a dead man and you know it,” I said bluntly. “That Were never had any intention of leaving either boy alive once he figured out they were connected to you. Not after they’d served his purpose anyway. Now quit being so emotional—” I stopped. What a weird thing to have to say to the man whose expressions had to be read with a magnifying glass. But by now I knew that under that tightly wired exterior boiled passions that could leap out and destroy whole cities. I said, “Okay, that’s not fair. Just, you know, try to back off and think. That’s what’s going to help the most here, and you know it.”

He took a deep breath. “Al right. We can eliminate a Rogue vampire after we make the flight. It would have been difficult to explain a bag ful of remains to airport security at any rate.” I nodded. Not impossible, because we stil carried our department IDs, but since our status was official y inactive it could’ve stil been problematic. So we spent the rest of the night trying to get more information from Aaron about his contacts, shuttling Cassandra, Dave, and later on Bergman from the airport to Vayl’s house and preparing for our psychic’s reading. Which failed on nearly every front.

Al she got from Junior was more of his dad’s tortured pleas. And when she touched Vayl she couldn’t see the other son. Not his face. Not his location. Al she sensed was audio. A revving engine and the horrifying sound of crumpling metal. Afterward she sat back in her chair, swept her long black braids from her regal face, her big brown eyes so ful of sympathy I nearly cried myself as she embraced Vayl with her gaze. “I’m so sorry,” she told him. “Definitely Hanzi is here, I can feel that. But the sense of violence and impending death is so strong it interferes with every other image.” She smoothed the skirt of her bright orange sundress, her elegant black hands hesitating at her stomach a moment longer than was necessary, making me wonder if the reading had left her nauseous.

Then Dave stepped up with his amazing admission.

“I think I can find him.”

We were sitting in the coziest room in the house. Tucked at the back behind the bil iard room within easy reach of the kitchen, it seemed to reflect more of the Vayl-who-was than the ass-kicking Vampere he’d become. I’d seen his den before we’d become a couple, but then I hadn’t been in the mood to take in much more than the country-gentleman squares of gleaming brown paneling that gave the area a warmth that was backed up by the chocolaty leather couch, matching love seat, and two burgundy wing chairs with matching footstools. They huddled around a sturdy square coffee table that looked like it had been crafted from railroad ties and ceramic tile painted with the most colorful horse-drawn wagon I’d ever seen. Usual y books covered the design, but since I’d come Vayl had gotten better about putting them back onto one of the three black floor-to-ceiling shelves against the wal s.

Most of Vayl’s rugs had been imported from the Middle East. Beautiful Persian designs that seemed to reveal a new picture every time your eye fel on a different section. Underneath the rugs the floors were wel -maintained, deeply stained pine. But in the den he’d chosen a hand-woven rag rug in al the colors of the rainbow that stretched nearly the length and width of the room. The colors were muted just enough that they lifted the spirit when you walked in, rather than making you want to bang your head against the wal .

The rug stopped at the black marble fireplace. Covering the opening was an iron grate in the shape of a dancing woman, her skirt twirling and her hair flying as she spun in front of the flames.

One night he’d confessed that she reminded him of his mother. Not that he’d ever seen her. Just the picture he’d built in his mind, gathered from watching his grandma and his aunts working through the day. But at night they always seemed to have the energy for at least one dance. That was when I’d asked him about the wagon on his table.

“I painted it,” he’d told me. “It was my first home.” And that was al he’d say. But I spent every moment I could spare staring at it, memorizing the red mini-caboose shape of it that was highlighted by gold-painted slats, a four-square window, and a green roof, al of which rode on ridiculously spindly tires with red spokes. Every time I saw it I thought I understood a little better the motherless boy who’d traveled so far inside that tiny, beautiful rig.

I’d been gazing at that wagon when my twin had said, “I think I can find him,” had risen from the love seat, and left his fiancé’s side to stand beside the mantel. He’d real y caught my attention when he grabbed the mantel with both hands, like he needed the help to keep from fal ing.

“Dave?” I asked.

He stared at the single white earthenware pitcher Vayl had set above his fireplace, like if he eyebal ed the wedding party marching across it long enough he might be able to make the flower girls dance right off the container. When he turned around everyone in the room went stil .

My brother is a commander. That alone causes people to sit straight and shut up. But as I looked around the room, at Vayl and Cole on the couch beside me, at Bergman and Raoul in the wing chairs and Cassandra on the love seat, at Aaron uneasy in a chair brought in from the dining room, even at the animals curled up beside the cold fireplace, I knew they shared my dread. It wasn’t just the fading scar on Dave’s throat, an unwelcome reminder of the fact that he’d spent time in the service of a necromancer. It wasn’t only the no-bul shit gleam in his piercing green eyes, or the fact that his time in the desert had hardened him into a lean, muscular warrior worthy of the utmost respect. It was also the haunted look in his eyes, and the way his lips pul ed against his teeth, like he could barely stand the taste of his thoughts.

Cassandra stretched her arm over the back of the love seat, her gold bracelets clinking musical y as she reached for him. He nodded to her. I’m okay. Then he said, “If I have to talk about this I only want to say it once. So listen up.” I watched his broad chest rise with the breath he scooped into his lungs. “Ever since I was a zombie—”

Cassandra jerked toward him, every one of her ten pairs of earrings shivering in alarm, but he held up his hand. “No. I’m not gonna put pretty words on it. My soul might not’ve been al owed to move on, and that’s why Jaz and Raoul could ultimately save me”—he stopped and bored his eyes into each of us, like he could bury his gratitude so deep we’d feel it every time we woke up—“but basical y I was just a slave with skil s. Anyway, ever since then, some weird things have been happening.”

Suddenly he couldn’t look at any of us. His eyes skirted the room and final y landed on the window, where Vayl had used a couple of bright red shawls in place of curtains. He went on. “I talked to Raoul about it, and he told me it’s a function of my Sensitivity. How, when people agree to serve the Eldhayr, the circumstances of their deaths burn themselves into their psyches. And that they often develop special talents related to that.”

I thought about some of my own abilities—to sense violent emotion, to cause sudden and deadly fires—and immediately understood his point.

He went on. “During my last mission we were tracking an imam who’d reemerged from hiding after fifteen years and was, yet again, recruiting suicide bombers. We had a pretty good source in the area, but when we went to him he told us the guy was dead. We said that was impossible. Our psychics insisted that he’d been active as recently as the previous month. So he showed us a picture of the body. He even said he could take us to where it was buried, because it had become a local shrine. So we went.”

Dave realized his hands had started to shake, so he clasped them behind his back. At that moment I realized how much he resembled our father, Colonel Albert Parks, the ultimate marine.

Strong. Determined. And wounded. Why is it you never recognize the pain in your parents until it’s too late?

I wanted to cal my dad. And, more urgently, go to my brother. Lend him a shoulder. But I knew he needed to stand on his own. Just speaking, knowing I heard without judging, would push him closer to healing than anything else I could do at this moment. So I sat without blinking as he said, “The grave had the right name, and the date of death lined up with when we’d last lost contact. But our psychics are the best in the country. So we dug for proof. Halfway to the body I started to feel sick.

Because the corpse was talking to me. Whispering foul suggestions from inside its rotting skul . It patted my head and kissed my cheeks like a loving father, and then told me how if I kil ed al the men in my unit I’d live forever in heaven with seventy virgins at my service. At the same time I felt like the sound was coming from outside the corpse. So I fol owed it, you know, mental y. I traveled through every dead donkey and half-eaten carcass I could find along the path it took until I saw a fifteen-year-old boy preaching in this imam’s name.”

“Instant reintegration of the soul into a new body,” Raoul murmured. “That never happens. Unless the dying imam cal ed upon some powerful y foul magicks.”

“I have no doubt about it,” Dave replied. “This kid knew he was the reincarnation of the old imam.

He was able to access this guy’s wisdom and direct his evil plans without admitting it to anyone. You wouldn’t think older guys would listen to him, but his charisma was already off the charts.” Dave nodded. “I’ve convinced my superiors to let us go after him next.” Cassandra’s hand clenched into a fist. An instant of intense worry aged her face by twenty years.

Then it passed and she smiled up at him proudly as he said, “I think I can do the same sort of thing for you, Vayl. If we visit your son’s grave and I can reach down to his body, I’l be able to communicate with what’s left there. It should be able to lead me to its new form.” Bergman spoke up. He’d maintained a stoic silence since arriving to find Astral displaying a new symptom at the edge of the front lawn. He’d given her the ability to transform so that she looked like a little black blob. That way she could slide under doors and into air vents when the situation cal ed for extreme secrecy. Except now she’d begun morphing randomly, sliding into molehil s and snake holes, kil ing the inhabitants and piling up her prizes at the front door like UPS packages from Stephen King’s nightmares.

Now he said, “I’m not sure it’l be that easy, Dave. I mean, I’m sorry to bring up a painful subject, Vayl, but when were your sons kil ed?”

“Seventeen fifty-one,” he said shortly.

“Nearly two hundred and sixty years ago,” Bergman said, doing the mental calculations so quickly I’d have wondered if he’d inserted a computer chip in his brain if I hadn’t heard him whine about wanting one on a regular basis since col ege. “Plus we aren’t general y aware of our connections to our past lives. That would make Dave’s search even harder.”

“Dude, you have a way of crushing a whole room and then promising us Disney World,” said Cole.

Bergman raised a finger. “But there’s an unless.”

“Unless what?” Dave asked.

Our theorist started playing with the hem of his sweater, stretching it nearly to his knees (which, I realized, might be why he was the only guy in America who wore sweaters in mid-June) as he said,

“Wel , I’m just throwing this out there, okay?”

“Go on,” said Vayl.

“You said Astral had organized every scene she could access that involved a fal , or someone flying through the air, right?”

“Pretty much,” I said.

“She’s overloading, probably getting excess stimulation somewhere in her temporal lobe.”

“Wait a second.” I realized I’d raised both hands. “You gave the robokitty a brain? With lobes?” Bergman grimaced. “It’s so close there’s no point in splitting hairs. Or, in this case, subatomic particles. Which would lead to a real y beautiful but destructive explosion. Which is kind of what I think wil happen with Dave. Too much information at such a speed that he’l never be able to process it. So what I suggest is that I program Astral to act as his filter. Her Enkyklios contains Vayl’s file. What if I tinkered with that? Made it into more of a sound barrier that Dave could listen through. Hopeful y it would muffle al the lives Hanzi has lived in the years since his death as Vayl’s son, and Dave won’t get lost in al the decades that he’s lived between then and now.”

“That’s not possible. Is it?” It was Aaron, leaning forward, looking from Bergman to Dave and back again like they’d just thrown off their disguises and revealed their superhero costumes.

Bergman’s face took on that pinched look that meant he didn’t want to explain anything, including why he continued to wear extralarge sweaters and ripped jeans when he was easily pul ing in a six-figure income. But for once, maybe because of the mix of cynicism and hope in Aaron’s voice, he bent his cardinal rule. “The Enkyklios is more than a library. The Sisters of the Second Sight are born with special powers, and when they record the stories, they can’t help but imbue those records with bits of their own essence. Combine those with a catastrophic event like blowing Astral’s head off, and you end up with something unique. So much so that cal ing her a robot would be like referring to the pyramids as a col ection of stone coffins. So yeah.” He turned his concentration to Dave now. “I think you might be able to use her. Especial y if—” He stopped now, every drop of color draining from his face as his eyes darted to Vayl and then dropped to the floor.

My little buddy had built himself an actual spine over the past few months. But I’d seen psychopaths grovel at Vayl’s feet, and al he’d had to do was take one menacing step forward.

“What is it you want of me?” he asked.

Bergman’s words came out strained, like he’d just gotten over a bad case of laryngitis. “It would help if you fil ed in the blanks in your file where Hanzi is concerned. Just, you know, talk about what was important to him. What he enjoyed. Also what scared him and even what he hated. Strong emotions are the most likely to fol ow us through our lives. And…” Bergman licked his lips. “I don’t know if it’s in there. But you should talk about how he died. I understand it was violent, and from what I hear, those are the memories that come back to haunt us most.” Vayl sat back so slowly it became obvious that he was forcing himself not to leap out of his seat and turn the coffee table on its side. I realized I must’ve been the only one in the room who knew that his sons had been shot by a farmer while they were returning a wagon they’d stolen from him.

I watched the memories leap behind his eyes, as new and raw as if they’d happened that morning, and said, “Vayl.” I put my hand on his arm. His muscles were so tightly coiled I could feel every ridge and outline. “It’s over.” His eyes, the black of a funeral carriage, met mine and understood that I knew his pain, because sometimes I stil walked that path reliving Matt’s death. I nodded to Aaron. “I know how hard it must be for you to turn the corner after spending most of your life running toward the same goal. But you’re here. You made it. Now it’s about him.” I pointed to Astral. “And it’s about Hanzi, whoever he’s become. These are innocent people caught up in our disaster because a couple hundred years ago they happened to know you. We’ve gotta dig them out.”

Vayl looked at Aaron like he’d never seen him before. “I wil do everything I can for you.” Junior sat back, his hands fal ing away from each other like he wanted to beg for an explanation but knew he wouldn’t understand. Stil he said, “But. You’re a vampire. Who I just tried to kil .” Cole sat forward and slapped him on the knee. “Don’t feel too bad about your big fail, dude.

People try to kil Vayl al the time. It’s kind of a cult project that nobody’s ever been able to complete.

I hear they’ve designed a patch for the winner and everything.” He grinned at Vayl, who responded with a smile that made Aaron’s eyes pop.

Raoul nodded toward me as he told Vayl, “Just because we prevented Aaron from fol owing through doesn’t mean you’l head off the next assassin. Which means you’l need good people around you until this whole issue is resolved. I think I should stay until this story has spun itself out.” Vayl raised his eyebrows so high that his eyes actual y widened as he gazed at my Spirit Guide.

“You—want to help me?”

Raoul shrugged a shoulder. “You’ve earned it.”

That was al . But coming from an Eldhayr it meant more than a thousand words because it pointed so directly at one: “Redemption.” Vayl reached across the table and leaned forward enough for Raoul to meet him halfway and give him a powerful handshake that was as much an affirmation of Vayl’s future as it was a contract.

Raoul sat back, relaxing into a smile as he added, “Besides. I’m probably in so much trouble already that by the time I get back they’l have demoted me to a desk piled with charts and raw data.”

“Is it that bad?” I asked.

He shook his head, but he said, “There’s a reason some of the Eminent cal me an interfering old hen.” He held up his hand when I started to apologize. After al , I was the one who kept demanding that he get his ass front and center before my world swirled back into the crapper. “I’m a big boy, Jasmine. I make my own choices, and I stand by every one of them.”

“Then I hope you enjoy flying.” Everyone stared at Vayl. Especial y Jack, who’d rather spend the day getting rabies shots than take another ride on one of those gigantic birds whose wings never ever flapped.

Vayl nodded decisively. “We must go to Romania. That is where the bodies of my boys are buried. Once we are there, David wil try to reach the soul of Hanzi.”

“What about me?” Aaron had leaped to his feet, his arms outstretched in one of those how-dare-you-forget-me gestures that always made me want to kick people in the ribs.

Vayl’s eyes glittered so brightly that Junior immediately dropped his hands as his former father said, “I have a plan for you as wel .”

CHAPTER TEN

Saturday, June 16, 8:45 p.m.

We are expert travelers. Together Vayl and I have hit so many different countries our passports look like a little girl’s sticker book. We’ve flown over oceans, deserts, mountains, and swamps.

You’d think a little trip to Romania would pul itself together in a matter of hours. Um, no.

Romania is not so simple to reach from America. You’ve gotta fly into a much more popular destination first. Say London or Paris. Then there’s the train. And, after that, even more transportation to arrange, since not everybody would fit into my shiny black 1963 Ford Galaxie. And I was damned if I was going to leave my baby home after Vayl had promised me I’d never have to drive a shit-sucking rental again.

Also we had a huge group to deal with. I felt like a damn travel agent keeping track of Dave and Cassandra, who needed privacy whenever possible, and Bergman, who demanded special dispensation for his electronics. Cole and Raoul were easygoing enough, but Aaron flipped out at the idea of eating “foreign” food, which was when we learned of his long list of dislikes. This seemed to include everything but peanut butter and chocolate. No wonder he looked like somebody had stuck an air pump under his skin and inflated him to double his natural size. And then there were the animals, who absolutely refused to travel in cargo. Vayl final y gave up, chartered his own plane, arranged for a tour bus to meet us in Bucharest, and shipped the Galaxie via some top secret transport the details of which none of us were privy to because that’s how shit gets done in DC.

Although Raoul made Jack jealous by doting on Astral, Bergman accidental y caught Dave and Cassandra in the sauna, which grossed him out so much that he threatened to go home, and Cole made Aaron scream like a little girl by slipping his clanking vamp teeth into his shower, Vayl final y herded us al onto the plane two nights later. And after traveling so long that I considered shooting every single member of my party, including those I loved the most, we final y arrived in the brightly lit city that had once sparkled like a gem among the mountains and hil s that surrounded it.

Bucharest had style, it just couldn’t decide what kind. An eclectic mix of classic French architecture, modern skyscrapers, and decrepit old hulks ready to tumble into the street during the next big earthquake, it couldn’t seem to shake the shadow of Communism that had tried to hammer it senseless for so many years. And yet I loved the place. Because it, and its people, had figured out how to survive. And more, because they’d final y stood up to their twisted government and yel ed,

“Bul shit!” So whenever I saw a couple holding hands or a family sauntering down the sidewalk, I waved respectful y as I drove down wide black boulevards that reminded me bizarrely of streets I’d navigated in St. Louis. That is, except for the metal fence that marched down the median. And the sad lack of shapely automobiles to keep mine company. (Note to European automakers: Square sucks. Pass it on.)

Vayl sat in the front of the car with me, listening to the Galaxie’s engine thrum like the bass of our favorite song. Cole and Bergman lounged in the back with Jack draped across their laps as if he’d decided they might get cold without his kind assistance. Their heads were bent over Astral, whose fur was split from neck to ears so Bergman could see better as he tinkered, using the miniature tool set he stored in his front pocket. None of us discussed the sights as we headed out of the city, north toward Peles Castle and the woods surrounding. Because we knew that somewhere inside the trees on the distant horizon, Vayl had buried his sons. And how do you make smal talk about a minaret-roofed museum with that thought dangling at the front of your mind?

Eventual y I’d be there for Vayl. Maybe even figure a way to talk to him about it. But for now I had to concentrate on getting my old girl through traffic that didn’t seem to include a single trained driver who cared if he or she survived to get to the dance club. Except, maybe, for Dave, who was piloting the monstrosity behind us.

I touched the tiny plastic receiver stuck just inside my ear. I’d be able to hear anything going on in the vehicle behind us because Bergman had provided enough of the Party Line sets to go around the whole group. The microphones, which looked like beauty marks, rested on different parts of our faces. Mine was just to the right of my upper lip. Vayl said it made him want to nibble on me, so I had sworn never to wear it anywhere else. The rest of the crew wore theirs near their mouths as wel , except for Cole, who insisted that his should rest on the inner curve of his nose until he could find a nymph to pierce it, and then it could become part of the nose ring. Nymphpiercings, he’d said, were lucky, but I hadn’t been able to ask him why at the time. And now didn’t seem quite the moment either, so I put it off again. But I suddenly realized that somebody needed to say something. The silence was diving too deep.

I glanced at Vayl, wondering if he understood that, as in every other mission with potential y dire consequences, we needed this downtime to unclench if we were going to operate on al cylinders when it mattered most. He’d lived a long time. Surely he understood why people needed to banter, tease, and, yeah, laugh. Sometimes even when they were at wakes.

As he had so often in the past, Vayl touched his eyes to mine, sensed the direction of my thoughts, and turned slightly so my brother could see his half-smile as he said, “David? The quiet is disturbing in that children-are-up-to-no-good sort of way. Is everything going al right back there?”

“So far so good,” my brother replied. “Except I think Raoul is chafing. We may have to stop for baby powder.”

“I don’t need powder!” Raoul exclaimed.

I looked in the rearview mirror at the vehicle fol owing us and shook my head yet again. Where Vayl had scrounged the 1968 Volkswagen bus I didn’t dare ask. But I did make a mental note never to let him near the Internet again. It had come equipped with a microphone because it actual y had been a touring vehicle. Which worked for our cover. So we’d dressed Raoul in a party big in little paris T-shirt and stiff new blue jeans and informed him he was our guide. Then we’d had to tel him to at least try to look relaxed. For his sake I regretted the necessity of asking him to shuck his uniform, but it’s kind of tough to pul off the whole tour group disguise when the guy who’s supposed to be showing you around Romania is dressed like a commando.

Despite the difficulty of steering the hefty vehicle through streets as busy as midtown Chicago, Dave managed the time to say, “Relax, Raoul! You look fabulous.” He switched to the fashionista voice he used when he real y wanted to make Albert crazy. “Those pants make your tush look like two ripe cantaloupes. Just so squeezable you’re gonna make al the boys swoon.” I grinned as Cole broke into peals of laughter behind me. I heard a clunk, which I imagined was Raoul dropping his head against the window as he moaned, “You people are insane. Even you, Cassandra. No, don’t sit there trying to look innocent. I know sooner or later you’re going to open up that giant bag of yours—what is it made of, Christmas beads?—and something alien is going to pop out that you’re going to expect me to kil .”

Cassandra chuckled. “Wel , I have noticed things seem to be moving around in there on their own.” Squeaky sound as she moved in her seat. “What do you think, Aaron? Is my lovely beaded purse haunted?”

“If it’s not now, it probably wil be before this is al over.” Gah. Leave it to Junior to spread dread al over the happy moment.

“That’s not necessarily true,” said Cassandra. Her voice, calm and smooth as a lake at sunrise, soothed me even from this distance.

But Aaron said, “Don’t touch me! I know you’re a psychic—hey! I thought you said you were engaged. That’s a wedding ring on your finger!”

Silence. The kind you get after you’ve stood next to the speakers at a rock concert. Ear-ringing, head-shaking silence.

Now, I know I’m supposed to be supah-spy. Damn near invincible because nothing gets past my eagle eyes. But I’m giving myself a pass on this one. I’d been a little distracted with Aaron’s assassination attempt, Cole’s big news, and the arrival of my entire crew within the fol owing twenty-four hours. Plus, Cassandra wore jewelry like at any minute she might be asked to trade it for food.

Gold studs lined her ears, fol owed by hoops so huge that smal bunnies could use them for col ars.

So many chains hung from her neck that I couldn’t imagine how she kept them from tangling into a huge gold coil. And each finger held at least two rings. Sometimes three.

So I instantly forgave myself that I hadn’t noticed before as I said, “What the hel ? Cassandra? Is Aaron right? Are you wearing a wedding ring?”

I wished I could look into her eyes. Her skin is so dark I can never tel if she’s blushing, but by damn, if she’d ducked her head so that her braids fel across her fine, high cheekbones I’d have known the score. When she didn’t instantly reply I snapped, “Daz, you tel me the truth, dammit!” Using my old nickname on Dave worked. My twin said, “We were going to tel everybody when we came north. You know, throw a little party? But every time we see you you’re in the middle of some crisis.” His voice dropped. “Seriously, Jaz, you need to consider reprioritizing your life. You know, before you can’t outrun the fire anymore.”

“Hey! Don’t try to deflect this on me. You got married and didn’t tel me!” I paused. “Or invite me!” Cassandra said, “Oh, Jasmine, I’m so sorry.” I could hear her tears even from this distance.

Which was kinda weird. Usual y she had better control of her emotions. I looked at Vayl, who nodded, and I suddenly realized how much my opinion of her mattered. What the fuck? She’s, like, 975 years older than me!

Doesn’t matter, said Granny May, as she flipped over her project and took a step back to admire how it looked lying there al nicely framed on her dining room table. I was so shook I barely glanced at the tapestry she’d been sewing for the past several weeks. You saved her from Kyphas.

She’s in love with your brother. She respects you. So quit acting like a douche before you break her heart!

Gran, stop talking like Teen Me. I mean it. It’s just disturbing when you say words like

“douche.”

I wondered if al granddaughters had to put up with this kind of shit as my granny, stil cackling, hung the tapestry on the wal above her gleaming mahogany buffet. And then I forgave her everything.

Gran?

She glanced at me over her shoulder, her eyes gleaming with the wisdom that only seems to come with age and daily doses of Geritol. What?

We both looked up at her needlework, a project so detailed I could pick out the shadowy form of the earthbane that the cowboy Zel Culver had vanquished reflected in his clear brown eyes. She’d added details I hadn’t picked up the first time I’d seen him as a hologram playing from Astral’s projector. Then he’d been part of a report detailing everything she knew about the Rocenz.

Now he wore a tooled leather band around the rim of his broadbrimmed hat, a plain brown longsleeved shirt, and worn leather chaps over dark brown work pants stained with blood. Blood spattered his worn work boots, but they looked comfortable rather than ratty. His plain silver buckle closed on a gunfighter’s rig, but the holsters hanging from its belt were empty. His hands hung at his sides, each one holding half of the tool that had destroyed his monster and would, I hoped, someday kil mine. I suddenly felt like a tool myself.

Gran, I whispered, mental y pointing at the picture. Zell Culver knows how to separate the pieces.

Yes, she said. I know.

But Astral said he was taken back to hell the day after he won.

How convenient that you have to go there to beat Brude anyway.

Silence. Not golden. But at least, final y, hopeful. Because now we didn’t have to force information from Roldan that he would never, even on pain of death, reveal. We had a source. A man who would, no doubt, happily share what he knew—if we could just find him.

When I tuned back into Dave and my new sister, I didn’t have to fake the happiness in my voice as I said, “I’m just giving you guys a hard time because it’s so easy to do. Seriously, I just wish I had a big fat present to lay on you. Because we should be celebrating right now. And it sucks that I can’t do more than tel you how the rest of my life wil be happier because you two are together now.” Now I could real y hear Cassandra sobbing, and Dave tel ing her to get up here so he could give her a hug, and Raoul demanding that they both take care because these old buses didn’t drive themselves.

Bergman leaned over to Cole. “Is she going to cry this whole trip?”

“I heard that, Miles,” Cassandra warned him.

“Sorry. I was just wondering. Because it upsets me when you cry. In fact, I liked it better when you were yel ing at me al the time.”

Cassandra laughed. “Then that’s how I’l deal with my stress from now on.”

“Good.”

Vayl spoke up. “Now that we have that settled, we must attend to another problem. We are less than thirty minutes from our ultimate destination and we have not decided yet how the team is to be divided.”

Another silence, this time more thoughtful than freaked.

Raoul spoke up. “I think that’s because no one is perfectly clear on the details. Al we know is that Dave is supposed to try to find Hanzi through contact with his remains. And you have a plan for Aaron that requires us to split up temporarily.”

“Yes,” said Vayl. “I have thought this out careful y and discussed it at length with Jasmine. We believe one group of us can rescue Aaron Senior from the Thin while the other half accompanies David on his mission. Because we know time is of the essence now, for Hanzi’s sake, we can imagine no better way to do it.”

I cleared my throat. “I think they want to know exactly how we mean to get it done.” Vayl turned clear blue eyes on mine. “We need at least one more person to join us in the Thin.”

“We?” Raoul sounded slightly pissed. “What makes you think you can travel beyond?” Vayl said, “I already have.” His silence gave Raoul the chance to recal the time he’d al owed Vayl to enter into his realm. But even before that he’d come into the Thin with me. He’d gotten there through my dream, pul ed by my wil the same way I had been yanked there by Brude in the first place.

I said, “Raoul? Can you send us there?”

He said, “No. It’s not as easy as going through a plane portal. We always need scouts in place to help us find the holes to enter where we won’t be caught and instantly annihilated. It takes time and people, neither of which we have.”

“So we go in guns blazing,” I suggested.

He made a familiar sound, one that let me know he’d raised his hands to his head and shoved his walnut-tinged crew cut even more upright than usual. “I wil go with you. But you have to believe it would be suicide to enter that way. We need to find another route. And, of course…” He paused so long that I realized he was trying to send me a silent message.

“What?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t go. Brude is trapped inside your head right now. What happens when you take him back to his base? I would expect him to gain strength. Maybe even enough to break free.” I considered the alternative. Let this part of the plan ride until after we’d found Hanzi and figured out how to extricate Aaron without any risk to me. Which meant, I had no doubt, that he’d try to kil Vayl again. Because there was something about the way his eyes shifted from his former father’s when they were together that told me he hadn’t revealed his whole story. He kept trying to distance himself from Vayl, and us, because he stil believed the vampire needed to die.

I said, “I have to go.” And not only because of that. Vayl and I knew one more detail about the Thin we hadn’t shared with the rest of the crew. One truth Brude had let slip during his incarceration in my mind that I didn’t even think he realized I’d latched on to, because only recently had I realized its significance. Besides his little fiefdom there were twenty-three other realms in the Thin ruled by strong-wil ed souls such as himself. None of them had yet made plans to build their rulings into mini-hel s and eventual y dethrone Lucifer. Most of them, in fact, preferred to keep their nasties to themselves. But a few had already figured out Brude’s plans, those close enough to observe the growing menace that could only mean the eventual demise of their own kingdoms. And they had begun to fight him.

I figured that’s why somebody upstairs had kept pounding the number twenty-three into my head.

Because they were my potential al ies, not only in this plan, but in ways I couldn’t yet fathom.

Unfortunately, of those twenty-three, the ruler who was most accessible to us right now might also be the least likely to help us.

Stil studiously ignoring Vayl, Aaron asked, “If you rescue my dad—”

“Make that a ‘we,’ Junior,” I said sharply. “You want this to happen, you’re taking the trip too.” To give him credit, he didn’t shy from the news. Just nodded and wiped the sweat off his brow as he finished his question. “Say we break him out of the Thin. What happens to him then?” Raoul said, “If you can rescue Aaron Senior, he’l fly free.” Which should’ve been a relief to Aaron. So why could I sense his anxiety like it was a black and wriggling disease in his bel y?

Because I didn’t want him to catch on that I was catching on to him, I moved my attention back to my Spirit Guide. “Okay, so you have no scouts in the Thin. And it’s obvious you don’t want to drop in blind. So how the hel —”

Vayl said, “Do not worry, Jasmine. Raoul wil know exactly what to do when the time comes.

Now, I believe our friends were asking for a detailed plan. Shal we let them know what we have decided?” When I nodded reluctantly, he held up a brochure. On the front was a picture of a palace that looked like it had been influenced by a German architect.

“Pelisor Castle is situated quite close to Peles.” He turned the brochure over and displayed a map that Cole and Bergman managed to catch a glimpse of by leaning forward and holding on to Jack so he wouldn’t flop to the floor. “One of its former residents returns, from time to time, to remind its caretakers whom it real y belongs to despite the fact that she has been dead for nearly seventy years. Jasmine and I are hopeful that she wil help us find Aaron Senior.”

“Assuming she spends time in the Thin at al ,” Bergman said doubtful y. “How do you know she hasn’t hooked up with Brude?”

Even Miles could detect Vayl’s smile when he replied. “This ghost was once the queen of Romania. A political y bril iant woman, Marie wil not have lost her desire to rule. We believe she wil have found in Brude an opponent, not an al y. In fact, we are quite certain of it.”

“And you think she’l want to help us?” asked Cole.

Even Vayl couldn’t put one hundred percent certainty into his voice when he said, “If we can convince her it is in her best interest, yes, we believe so.” Dave spoke up. “So the four of you are going to jump into the Thin. That is, if Raoul can figure out a travel plan that won’t get you kil ed en route. Beautiful. And at the same time Bergman, Cole, Cassandra, and I are supposed to go ahead with plan B. You real y want us to do that without you, Vayl?”

My sverhamin stared at his clasped hands. “I believe it would be for the best.” Which meant, while he was al for Dave’s attempt, he wasn’t sure he could stand idly by while my brother defiled a sacred spot, even though his intentions were pure. Best for Vayl to make sure he never knew exactly how that scene had gone down.

Dave got it too. I could tel by the way his voice had roughened when he said, “Good enough.

You don’t even have to give us an exact location. Al you have to do is get us close and—” He paused, and I heard Cassandra whisper something in a comforting tone. “Yeah,” he went on, more definitely. “I can find the grave sites. I seem to have a way of homing in on cemeteries now.” I thought Dave was done then. He’d spoken words that were so hard for both Vayl and himself to hear that I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear nothing but his breathing the rest of the way to Pelisor. Then he said, “You’re sitting very stil inside that car, Vayl. Do you trust us to do the right thing?”

Vayl’s hands tightened around each other. Then he turned so he could see my twin, driving remarkably wel behind us despite the fact that minis kept insisting on darting between us. He said,

“You are the brother of my heart.”

If I’d tried a line like that Cole would’ve slumped to the floor, passed out from laughing so hard, leaving Jack flustered and confused as Bergman rol ed his eyes in disgust and Dave tried desperately not to wreck the bus from his own inability to control his hysterical response. But since it came from the vampire, everybody understood. He’d just handed over half of his life’s quest to Dave because he considered him family. And that’s what brothers do.

Dave held his fist up and pushed it toward Vayl. “We’l find your boy,” he vowed.

“We’l find him,” confirmed Cole as he steadily scratched Jack’s head. “But where exactly are we starting?” He glanced away from Bergman’s tinkering with Astral to peer down the rutted asphalt road, which was now far enough from the city for only sporadic traffic, al of which seemed to be passing us.

“We wil stop at Peles Castle first. Your group wil begin its mission from there,” said Vayl. “The castle was not yet built when my family and I traveled this area, but it works as a fine landmark. Walk into the forest directly north of the tal est spire. The pines are quite dense around the castle, so it wil not be easy to find the path, but I was here a month ago and cleared it myself. So once you find it, rest assured it wil lead you to the spot.”

“You can count on us,” said Dave.

Vayl inclined his head slightly as he said, “Just be careful. I would hate for this entire mission to fail because someone”—he raised his eyebrow a bit at Cole—“decided to see how the local security detail felt about chattering vampire teeth.”

Cole crossed his heart solemnly as he said, “I wil keep my fake fangs in my pocket until the deed is done.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Vayl. “Now you try to do the same, okeydokey, sweetie pie?”

I’d never thought I would see the day when Vayl rol ed his eyes like an irate ninth grader, but then Cole manages to bring out the juvie in al of us sooner or later. Which was probably why we were al stil relatively sane. Cassandra rescued the conversation by asking, “What wil you be doing while we’re trying to find Hanzi?”

Vayl explained how he and I, plus Aaron and Raoul, would be driving my Galaxie back to Peles Castle. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he sat back and let his arm fal into his lap. “Best of luck to al of us. And please remember, I am trying to save my children. I would be eternal y grateful if, this time, you helped me succeed.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Saturday, June 16, 10:30 p.m.

After doing another Party Line sound check at Bergman’s insistence, we separated at the car park of Peles Castle. Since security would come to investigate us within two to three minutes, we pul ed out of the lot together, but Dave parked on the shoulder of the road just outside of Peles, turned on his emergency blinkers, and left the bus open in case somebody decided to investigate.

I drove the Galaxie to Pelisor so quickly I barely had time to wonder what the rest of our crew was doing, or why Astral wasn’t feeding me any video. Then I realized she was, she just happened to be looking at the grass as she walked, because every once in a while I could see one of her paws step into the picture. Then a huge pink tongue slurped across her nose. Way to go, Jack! Keep that robokitty on her toes—not to mention all the humans who sometimes need to be reminded that the most important things in life are big, wet kisses.

I glanced at Vayl, wondering if I should lay one on him. Definitely soon, I decided, as I brought my car to rest in a smal park where, during the daytime, visitors might stop and have lunch before returning to the nearest city, which cal ed itself Sinaia and catered to skiers, hikers, rock climbers, and people who’d convinced themselves the mineral springs were actual y the Fountain of Youth.

Tourists got a huge kick out of the castles, of course, and in the daytime Pelisor’s little nook of Romania looked like it had been peeled off a painting, with bright green grass and dark green pines forming a smal break in the endless rol of the Carpathian Mountains. Pelisor itself was kinda homey for a castle, which had been the intent of its first owner, King Carol I. The main reason, I decided, was the hodgepodge of materials that had been used to build the place.

The foundation was formed from traditional gray castle stone. It was topped by German-cottage-style gables, with medieval church archways and turrets that looked pink in some lights and sandy brown in others pinched between. Topped by so many russet-colored roofs that it seemed as if the place had been built in sections and superglued together, it confused the hel out of my white-siding senses. And yet it worked.

I almost regretted getting past the caretaker so easily. Despite Raoul’s tour-guide costume, the slope-shouldered old gent hadn’t fal en for our American-VIPs story at first. Then Vayl had laid a gentle arm around his shoulder, looked deep into his eyes, and spoken to him in his own tongue while shoving hypnotic suggestions down his throat. He’d instantly dropped a handful of castle maps into our hands and shuffled away, twitching like he was trying to shake a persistent mosquito. I found myself wishing he’d fought Vayl’s push a little harder. Then I wouldn’t have had to face the gilding so soon.