12

As we followed the narrow, retreating back of Sheriden the ghoul, I made a hearty effort to observe and memorize absolutely everything. The first observation had to do with their security system: It was extensive, and part of it was new. Very new. It still had the smell of wires unused to warming, and in the corners I heard the digital clicks of unworn lenses shifting to watch us. At the windows I spied the telltale signals of electrical monitors, no doubt routed through some call center in which the Barringtons had the sort of friends who understood discretion in a vampire emergency; and just over the threshold, as the door had shut behind us, I’d felt the almost imperceptible give and shift of a pressure plate. Disabled, I assume. Or else, if I were feeling particularly paranoid (and I was), I’d guess that it was gathering vitals about us newcomers—our weight, maybe height or some other indicator that would set us apart from the regular family members.

I try to keep up on the newest security technology but it moves fast, and there are always private enterprises making exciting new prototypes … the likes of which a wealthy family might pick up on a lark.

This mix of the usual stuff and exciting add-ons told me that they’d recently made some major and expensive upgrades. What had previously been satisfactory had failed them, or else some new threat looked meaty enough to warrant the trouble.

I was willing to bet it had something to do with William Renner’s untimely demise … or possibly Isabelle, if she was still hanging around making trouble. If she was anything like her brother, I wouldn’t put it past her.

Deeper into the house we went, passing by the indoor entrance to the garage. It was wide open, and someone was inside, doing something noisy to a vintage Bentley. Two other cars were parked in there—one red and shiny, one black and shiny. We buzzed past too quickly for me to pin down makes or models.

The home’s interior was posh and leaning in the direction of a televangelist’s favorite set, but again, this might be an attempt to fit in with the neighbors. The carpet was pale, silvery, and plush enough to eat my pointy black boots; the hall mirrors were surrounded with baroque gilt and the occasional sconce. The walls were done in decorator colors—muted wines, grays, and golds. It hinted at someone somewhere with taste—but whoever this someone was, he or she was given too limited a rein to make a dent in the overall Dolly Parton feng shui.

The Barrington clan had assembled in the living room—a spacious, vaulted spot immediately to the left of the front door with its two-story portico. Again I considered the insult of showing us through the back, and I wondered if the pressure plate hadn’t been the goal, rather than a subtle nod to their own perceived superiority.

I didn’t yet have enough information to form a conclusion, so I let it go.

If Adrian had made note of the slight, he said nothing. I wanted to glance back at him, to exchange a look or just see how he was taking this, but I didn’t dare. And I could smell him, anyway—tension, but restraint. Fear tempered with curiosity.

Though I obsessed over it, I didn’t think his pheromones would set off anyone’s alarm bells. His physiological reaction was perfectly normal, in my estimation. Maybe a more seasoned ghoul wouldn’t have felt so ill at ease; but we’d worked his newness into our backstory.

The Barrington family, or those who felt like being present, lounged about the oversized room. They were scattered across a curved, elongated couch and its matching separates, and all the furniture in this particular area was the same bone-pale shade of white, which made some sort of statement, I assume.

Sheriden bobbed her head at the room in general—with a specific flinch of eye contact directed toward a man standing by a fireplace. What the hell he needed with a fireplace in Atlanta I’ll never know, but he stood beside it like Vanna White awaiting a vowel call.

My initial instinct was that this was the man in charge. My second instinct was to override that, and suspect that he was the ghoul’s master or lover. This second instinct gained traction when a woman at the crux of the couch’s arc spoke first.

“You must be Raylene Pendle, or is it Emily Benton? Max’s note was not especially clear on that point.”

“It’s Pendle,” I informed her, not wishing to have them thinking of me on a first-name basis. It’s hard to demand respect, but I could ride on the formality. “Emily Benton is a public identity and a false one. I wouldn’t be so rude to your House as to insist upon it.”

This drew nods of approval, so it must’ve been the right answer.

The same woman said, without getting up, “Welcome to our home. Won’t you join us?” She gestured at a plush white seat next to the fireplace. The obsessive-compulsive in me wondered how they kept from getting ash all over it, and then remembered that this was Georgia, and it surely didn’t see a lot of use.

“Certainly.” Now I had a chance to look toward Adrian. He looked good, and not half so queasy as I felt. “However, you can see that I’ve brought an assistant.”

“Sheriden will see to your ghoul. He’ll be established downstairs, where we have a fully finished basement. It serves nicely as temporary housing, or space for guests of a certain stripe.”

“Understood. Thank you, Adrian, that will be all then.”

I shouldn’t have said it out loud; I should’ve just projected it, or made the attempt. Too late. And probably, not too big of a deal. For all the Barringtons knew, I was only trying to be polite and not “whisper” in front of them.

Somehow, watching Adrian leave this time was harder than the first time, in San Francisco. It wasn’t any great mystery. There, he only had to play along. Here, he intended to play along and investigate his sister’s … disappearance. Here, the risk was greater.

I refused to think about it and concentrated hard on the matter at hand as I took my seat in what did, in fact, turn out to be a man-eating chair of the cushy persuasion. It was virtually impossible to sit with any dignity in that thing; there was no support, only the velveteen pillowing of foam. I did my best, and tried not to feel any resentment at what was likely a deliberate—if admirably subtle—power play.

I do not think it was irrational of me to suspect it. The entering via back door, the cushy and undignified chair … I could call it a coincidence, but all I needed was a third strike to go straight to conspiracy. These people liked to make sure visitors knew their place, and I suppose it’s their House and that’s their prerogative, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

“My name is Theresa Barrington,” the woman in charge said to me. “My husband Paul and I”—she indicated the fireplace lurker—“are chief in this House.”

As if I couldn’t have guessed.

They were dressed to match—something I didn’t notice until I’d had a chance to stare at them from my triangulated position. Not identical-clothes-matchy. More like prom-dates-matchy. She wore a blue dress that cost more than the Lexus we’d parked outside, and he wore a gray pin-striped suit with blue accents.

They didn’t sit together, like one might expect. Several others lingered between them, and beside them.

“Theresa, Paul,” I acknowledged in greeting. “And this is the rest of the House?”

“The important members,” Paul said bluntly. I took an instant dislike to him—not for his bluntness but for something else, some other weird, vague malice. Everything about him screamed bland and cruel. There was nothing good or even useful about him, I could sense it.

Theresa gave his declaration a smear of propriety by introducing the rest. She went around the room, starting with the young man to her left. “These are our children, Gibson, Raleigh, and Marie.” Gibson, at least, was no biological relation to either one of those slick brunette weirdos. He had a Nordic look to him that was so severe it almost made him appear albino. The other two shared a cornfed similarity that could’ve been family resemblance, but might’ve only been regional.

I turned my attention pointedly toward a short, heavyset man who had parked himself by the foyer entrance. “And you?” I asked, making it clear that I did not intend to speak through Theresa at any length.

He answered for himself, and I appreciated it. “Clifford O’Donnell,” he said. And since he did not specify any family relationship, I assumed he was merely an affiliate, not a relation.

Theresa cleared it up by saying, “Clifford is an associate from Macon. He often serves as our seneschal, particularly when we feel the need to send someone out of town.”

“Or when out-of-town trouble comes knocking?”

“Then too,” he said without taking his eyes off me, or even blinking. “They called me here to see about William Renner when he died, and likewise they’ve summoned me now—due to your appearance. I assume you intend to investigate the matter.”

“They dragged you all the way back here from Macon on my account?”

“I came back of my own accord.”

Paul Barrington chose this moment to interject, by way of shifting the subject or simply annoying everyone. “He’s a helpful man, our Odo is. He’s the one who mailed William Renner’s ashes. It’s a good thing, too. Heaven only knows when one of us would’ve gotten around to it.”

I ignored the casual rudeness inherent in his statement, and latched instead onto the nickname. It seemed safer. “Odo?”

Clifford made a face that stopped just short of an eye roll. “A ridiculous contraction, but that’s beside the point. I come when I’m needed, and I leave when I’m not.” He drew a breath like a sigh in reverse, let it out, and told me, “I try to keep the peace—something easier said than done in a climate such as this.”

He blinked, and I knew I liked him—for a relative value of liking anyone. He was telling the veiled and toothless truth, but telling it at the Barringtons’ expense, and right under their noses.

“Fair enough,” I said, trying not to smile at him. His small insubordination made me a little bold. “I, too, am interested in peacekeeping of all sorts. However, I am here to discuss a violent matter and I hope we can discuss it openly, without delays, evasions, or games.”

The blond wonder said sharply, “Is that what you think we do here? Play games and evade questions?”

“I have no idea how you comport your House,” I lied diplomatically. “This is my first visit to your fair city, and my interest is purely on behalf of another party. If this is a situation that will require a light touch, and some ambassadorial understanding, I hope we can come to an arrangement. I have no wish whatsoever to create any conflict or confusion, so I hope you’ll agree that we should be open with one another to the fullest extent possible.”

Odo coughed. It would’ve been a better cover for a snort if vampires were more frequently congested.

Marie, who was more of a girl than a woman yet, or had been at her death, sat forward in a display of earnestness. “We’re absolutely prepared to cooperate,” she said—prematurely, as it turned out.

Her father did not bother to hide his snort. He said, “Cooperation implies that we’ve done something wrong, and need to account for ourselves. This is no such case. Watch what you offer, Marie.”

“I have nothing to hide,” she said stubbornly.

“Everyone has something to hide,” her mother murmured. “But my child’s impulsive statement of good intent will stand. Ask us anything you like, and we will attempt to be helpful. We wish no ill blood between Georgia and California, certainly not on the eve of the convocation. We only wish to help our West Coast friends. Though perhaps I could ask you something first.”

“Go ahead,” I told her, not that I wanted to leave her in the interrogator’s seat, but I was willing to give a little before I started taking.

“You aren’t part of the San Francisco House, are you, dear? Something about your accent … I don’t know, but it doesn’t say ‘California’ to me.”

“And yours doesn’t say ‘Georgia peach’ to me, but we make our homes where we find them.” Never lie when you can misdirect. Or, um, only lie when you’re reasonably certain no one will call you on it. Take it on a case-by-case basis, that’s my advice. “Regardless of my hometown, I am here with full authority of the Renner Household, and that ought to be enough to place me in fair standing. If you’ve found some problem with the paperwork or the permissions—”

“All was in order,” Clifford—Odo, whoever—said quickly, like he was cutting off a more incriminating response, should anything blurt forth again from one of the children. “You are well within your rights to ask anyone in this House anything about Mr. Renner, whose passing came as a most unexpected and unfortunate event. We have extended our deepest condolences and regrets on the matter.”

I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he didn’t know such condolences and regrets had been submitted via email. “Thank you for the confirmation, Mr. O’Donnell,” I said, giving him a “mister” whereas I’d called the rest by their first names.

It could be written off as a civilized nod between family lackeys, or so I supposed. Just like coming in through the back door and being assigned a man-eating chair could be written off as incidental.

I wished he’d step inside the room and quit hanging about by the exit, as if he’d like to scram at the first possible opportunity. If I was going to meet any real cooperation in that joint, it’d almost certainly come from him—I could deduce that much already. But he stayed where he was, casually leaning his stocky self against the doorway.

“Honestly.” Theresa frowned and shook her head. “I wish I knew what all this fuss was about. There was nothing we could have done; William was a grown man in every respect, and what he did was his own decision.”

“Are you suggesting that Mr. Renner committed suicide?” I tried to keep the astonishment out of my voice. It was a bold fabrication on her part, if she intended to stick by it as a story.

“I’m not suggesting it. I’m telling you outright, the man offed himself from our roof. It was embarrassing for everyone, and if anyone should feel any modicum of obligation or uncertainty, it should be the San Francisco people who allowed him to travel so far without assistance. The poor man was clearly in an unrested state of mind.”

“Unrested?” What a stupid word. I could’ve sworn she’d made it up on the spot.

“You know what I mean.” She gave a lazy hand-flap. “He wasn’t himself the entire time he visited, and when we found what was left of him on the roof one night, it’d be an exaggeration to say that anyone was surprised.”

“Surely you aren’t suggesting that the San Francisco head of House came all this way merely to ‘off himself’ on your premises? If he was feeling that fragile, he could’ve done an easier job at home—and he wouldn’t have left his son in a fraction of his present turmoil.”

Paul said drolly, “Suicide is selfish.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said, struggling to keep my disbelief in check. “It also feels …” I started to say “unlikely,” but checked myself before I wrecked myself, as the kids are putting it these days.

“It feels sudden, I imagine.” So said Raleigh, I believe.

He was a smallish man with cold eyes and a pinched shape to his face that would’ve implied nearsightedness if he’d been alive. As it was, he just looked like the kind of guy who’d shoplift for kicks.

I seized the word. “Sudden, yes. There was no indication in San Francisco that he was unwell in any manner, much less—” I stopped. I was about to ask if anyone else heard what I was hearing—a thin, high-pitched beep coming from deeper within the house.

I didn’t have to ask it. Everyone sat up straight at the first chime, rigid with varying states of alarm and discomfort. Odo immediately vanished, with Raleigh and Gibson dashing off in different directions—all but bouncing off each other in their haste to vacate the premises.

Marie cringed and clutched at her “mother.” “Not again,” she gasped. “Mother, do something!”

Theresa’s response was swift and direct. She rose up off the couch and backhanded the girl hard enough to have broken the neck of an ordinary mortal.

Marie grasped at her face in shock. Blood oozed from between her fingers, via a crushed nose or busted lips, I assumed. To my surprise, her eyes hardened above those bloody hands, and in an instant she was on her feet and lunging at Theresa—who shoved her back onto the couch. Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought the little milquetoast thing had it in her.

“You’re too fucking weak, dearest. Get in the safe room if all you’re going to do is cry!”

“I won’t!” she burbled, and when she removed her hands I could see that yes, her nose was tweaked in a bad direction and there was blood on her teeth. “I won’t hide with you, not anymore!”

Theresa bent forward and hit her again, hard enough to engage the girl’s rage or defensive mechanisms—and within the batting of an eye, they were tumbling together on the floor, wrestling and biting like kindergartners, flinging blood all over the weird white furnishings. Paul finally left the fireplace, where he’d been standing with one foot on the slate frontispiece like it was first base, dove into the spinning pile, and kicked them apart. “Not now, you dumb bitches! Get up—get moving! And you.” He directed one long, waxy finger at me. “Do your fucking job.”

“My … my fucking job?” Pleasantries at an end already?

“Seneschals keep the peace, and you’re here under our auspices. Go keep some goddamn peace.” He swung out a leg to clip his wife but she caught it and threw him—hard—right up against a window on the other side of the room. He crashed into the curtain-covered portal. It didn’t smash, but it crunched strangely.

Shatterproof glass, as I could’ve predicted.

“Keep the peace?” I damn near shouted at all the melee’s participants. “I don’t even know what’s breaking it!”

“You’re an investigator. Investigate,” Theresa sneered, and now there was blood all over her face, too, and on her hands. It was also all over the couch and the carpet, and since this brawl didn’t look like it was excessively out of the ordinary, I shuddered to consider their cleaning bills.

Paul crawled out of the curtains in time to chase the two women from the room, leaving me alone and very confused about what had just happened. The tweeting, pinging chime of the alarm still dinged through the premises undaunted by the scattering of all the occupants. I didn’t know what had tripped it, and I didn’t know where to turn it off.

Adrian? I sent it as hard as I could. Adrian?

What’s going on?

No idea. Can you get back up here?

His answer was a garbled negative, and no matter how hard I listened or pushed, I couldn’t get anything more. I told myself that he’d sounded fine—concerned, but not threatened—and I should leave him wherever he was, in Ghoultown downstairs. Whatever wanted inside (assuming something was attempting to get inside) was trying it at night. This meant that it (a) was willing to take on real, live, awake, and pissed-off vampires, so therefore it (b) probably didn’t have much interest in the staff.

Why was he/she/it trying to get inside now, anyway? I wondered it in a flash, and then jumped to a conclusion that was not at all reassuring, but somewhat logical: The intruder had seen us come in, and welcomed us as convenient distractions.

Well, I had to tell myself something. Otherwise I’d barge downstairs (providing I could find it) and rip the doors off the hinges to get Adrian out, while swearing about how this was all a preposterously bad idea in the first place and vowing never to let him out of my sight again.

Hey, the Barringtons wanted to act crazy?

I would give them crazy.

But not yet. I tried to be logical and treat this like any other case of me being inside a place with an alarm going off.

Mind you, it’s not often that I’m sloppy enough to set off any alarms during my acquisitive activities. It’s happened a few times, I confess, but only a few. And there are protocols in place, things you do to minimize the damage and regain control over the situation.

First things first. An alarm was going off. Something or someone had set it off. What or who? Couldn’t say.

No sign of any assault on the grounds, not yet. I mean, no firebombs were going off and no windows were breaking. If anything, the place was eerily dead except for that beep, beep, beeping of the distant alarm.

So, all right. The alarm.

Where was it coming from, and how did I shut it off?

Both of these questions could likely be answered if I could track my way to a central control room. There had to be one. Anyplace as huge and guarded as this most assuredly had some command central deep in the house, likely in—or close by—this “safe room” … into which I had not been invited, not that I was crying about it.

Frankly, I’d rather be running free with an alarm going off and someone trying to get inside than trapped in a room with that loopy bunch. Again I felt a pang of concern for Adrian, but I talked myself off that ledge by recalling that the ghouls were bunked elsewhere, segregated as a class.

No self-respecting vampire in his or her right mind would hide with a bunch of ghouls. They’re worthless, except during the daytime when there’s nobody else to watch you. At night, we’re better off watching our own backs. Only the most desperate and feeble of vampires would use ghouls as pawns or cannon fodder.

And just like that, I was back to being worried sick.

But it wouldn’t do me any good. Finding a control room, that would do me some good. It might even have cameras showing me what was going on in the basement’s Ghoultown, if I was lucky. All I had to do was find it.

Unaware if I was now effectively all by myself in this ludicrous McMansion’s tacky corridors, I dashed through them with all my wimpy psychic sensors thrown open like a net, trawling the place for signs of previously undisclosed inhabitants. I didn’t find any. I found overturned tables and chairs that had been knocked askew; I saw a kitchen with gleaming steel pots and pans hanging from a center rack, and these pans were swaying gently like they’d been recently touched. I found two spare bedrooms that were furnished as lightly as a hotel room, and I breezed past a home gymnasium proving that yes, these people would do anything to look like regular … um, people.

Then I snared the sense that someone was close, up ahead, to the right.

I veered that way and nearly collided with Clifford O’Donnell, whom I was determined not to call “Odo” anymore. His wide, square face was set in grim lines, but he didn’t look particularly frightened. It was something else I saw in him, and something else I felt radiating off him. Not fear, and not protectiveness. Not even a grudging awareness that self-defense might be called for at any moment.

No.

When I drew up short to keep from face-planting into his collarbone, I saw his face very clearly, very closely, and I realized that it was contempt. Not for me, I didn’t think—for his expression changed when he realized I was the one who’d nearly smacked into him.

“Ms. Pendle,” he said. “They abandoned you up here with me, did they?”

“Up here? Their safe room is underground?”

“It’s more of a safe compound, really.”

“What about my ghoul?” I asked, not even caring if it gave too much away for me to be so concerned.

“Oh, they don’t stay with the ghouls. Their hideaway is underneath the backyard, all the way back to the pool.”

“Wait. There’s a pool?”

“Behind the freestanding garage.”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.

“I’ve never seen any of them swim in it, that’s for damn sure,” he said.

The beeping went on patiently, persistently … more loudly, now that I was closer to the home’s dense center. It called unceasingly from somewhere nearby.

I asked Clifford, “They must have a control room—someplace where the security cameras, feeds, and sensors converge.”

“Yes, it’s this way.” I got the impression he had just come from it, and this impression was verified when he said, “I was trying to figure out how to turn it off, but they’ve changed so much since the last time I was here … I have no idea how it works. I need a goddamn tutorial, I swear.”

“No you don’t. You just need me,” I said with a forced smile.

The room felt claustrophobic and rounded, stuffed as it was with control panels, keyboards, screens, wires, and buttons, but not a window in sight. It was the size of a huge closet or a small bedroom, take your pick, and its lights and signs were going bananas.

“You know how to deal with this kind of thing? Because I won’t lie, it’s well above my pay grade.”

“Oddly enough, it falls right within mine. At least, my usual pay grade.”

“San Francisco checkbooks must be more generous than Atlanta ones.”

I scanned the equipment, looking for the master panel and finding it. “I’m not a seneschal by trade, only for travel purposes.”

“And for your usual gig …?” He let the question hang as he watched me flip switches, press buttons, and turn things on, up, and off.

“I do something else.”

The system was an epic mess in every direction—a Frankensteined work of artlessness combining at least four different security systems without a central mainframe. Whoever installed it ought to be dragged into the street and shot. I had a feeling the Barringtons thought they were being clever when they hired four different companies to do the installation.

It wasn’t clever. It was certifiably retarded.

“What are you doing?” Clifford asked, now genuinely interested.

“See those split screens over there?”

“The ones that go into four quadrants, or two?”

“Four,” I specified. “Something tripped the system that watches those areas—I can’t really tell what it was. I can see in the dark, but you need better infrared than this if you want to guard property without good exterior lights.”

He squinted at the monitor. “That’s the northern edge of the lawn.” He poked at one square. “That’s the southern edge, and these two are the property behind the garage. Did you park at the small lot by the back door?”

“Yeah.”

“Then if you tilted the camera a bit, you’d be able to see your car in this square.”

“That’s useful to know, thanks. You don’t see anything there now, do you?” I asked, my fingers still flying over the controls like they were Braille and I was reading the ever-living shit out of them. It sounds like hyperbole, I know—but I was very close to flying blind. I know what these systems look like and how they work, sure. However, that doesn’t mean I can magically parse a clusterfuck such as this without taking some time to get to know it first.

“No, I don’t see anything. Whatever set it off is gone now.”

Over to my left, something lit up with a squeal. A green light flashed. I swatted it like a Whac-A-Mole. “Gone, but not far. What’s this monitor showing?” I pointed at a split-screen with one side lit up, and one side in near darkness. Who the hell puts a camera in the dark when it doesn’t have infrared? Idiots, that’s who.

These people weren’t crazy, they were morons. There’s strength in madness—I knew that better than anyone, and I was pretty sure my new tenant Elizabeth Creed would agree with me there. But this … this feigned insanity? It was a paper mask, a fragile thing worn for show.

But it didn’t fool me. Not anymore, now that I’d seen it up close.

Clifford indicated the dark half of the screen. “That’s the yard by the gate. And the front yard outside it, where the street is.”

“Got it.”

“What does that mean?”

I said, “Someone’s checking the perimeter—moving back to front, skirting the edges.”

“Dammit, I think you’re right. Look, there!” he said, jamming his finger at a screen so hard he nearly cracked it. “Did you see that?”

“No, but I’ll take your word for it.”

“A fast-moving sucker won’t show up for shit on these things.”

I grinned. “Oh, I know. Keep your eyes on them anyway, will you? All the monitors you can watch at once, just … watch. And don’t blink. We need to know how many intruders we’re dealing with.”

“I’ve only seen the one blip so far, but that might not mean anything. If only these stupid screens were closer together.”

“I know, right? Wait, hang on.” I examined the farthest screen, realized it wasn’t hooked up to anything that couldn’t be unhooked for the purpose of moving it, and yanked it off the wall. “Here,” I said. “Prop it up there, for easier watching.”

The connecting lines now ran across the panel, but that was okay. I was getting the hang of this.

“Okay,” I declared, and I began to narrate. “I was confused at first because the screens and the sensors aren’t lined up with their controls, but I think I’ve got it now. This screen here is connected to that panel there; those screens answer to these keys; that screen ties to this section.”

“It’s like this was designed by monkeys.”

“No shit. This slate over here handles the windows, I think—they’re on an electric current system, a little old-fashioned but perfectly serviceable. This same section of buttons and levers probably also handles the doors, and … and … this.” I found the newest slab of electro-tech, which had an LED readout but not a black-and-white screen. “This is for the pressure pad in front of the back door. I’d bet money on it.”

“There’s a what-now?”

“A pressure-sensitive sensor. It—”

He cut me off. “I know what it is, I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I had no idea they’d put one in, that’s all. How did you know about it?”

“I felt it when we came inside.”

“You must have very sensitive feet.”

“Outrageously so, yes.”

“Or,” he said drily, “you have a very interesting primary career back there on the West Coast.”

“That, too. But don’t jump to conclusions just because I know what to look for.” Though for real, his conclusion-jumping was on base as likely as not. I’m not sure why I bothered to attempt a disclaimer, but with that, I flipped the switch to silence the beeping. The immediate quiet startled us both, even though I, for one, knew it was coming.

“Now …” His eyes were locked on the screens, now conveniently positioned more or less in front of him.

I withdrew from the console and went to stand beside him so I could watch, too. “Now what?”

“Now we see what our visitor is getting up to. Can you tell if he’s breached the house itself yet?”

I checked the panel and saw that the circuits were still unbroken. “Not yet. So far, he’s staying outside. Maybe he’s just looking.”

“Like hell he is. He’s back, and God knows what for this time.”

“Back?”

“Yes, back. For you. Me. Them. I don’t know. But this same thing—all this scoping, swooping around, and sneaking—it happened the night William Renner died, too.”

“Were you here that night?”

“Yes. They were nervous about him. They didn’t want him here, but stood to lose a lot of face if they didn’t extend the hospitality. They were so damn desperate to keep anything from interfering with their Chicago merger that they had to put up the show. But they invited me to help keep an eye on him.” He delivered the last sentence with a dash of ironic disgust.

“And I guess we all know how that worked out.” Then I caught myself with a mouthful of foot, and said, “Not that I’m saying you had anything to do with it. Just that whatever happened—”

He shook his head and waved a hand at me. “No, it’s all right. It wasn’t my job to protect him. It was my job to protect them. Still, it’s hard not to feel a little egg on my face.”

Together we scanned the screens, and I kept one eye on the console lights. We were waiting, anxious because we didn’t know what we were waiting for. But it was out there, and it was coming, and we both knew it.

I noted, “You said he got himself killed.”

“As if you bought the line about his suicide.”

“No, you’re right. That was a bullshit pizza, and any idiot could smell it a mile away. How did he really die?”

“I’m not positive, but I can guess.” He hesitated.

“But you’re not supposed to tell me, I get it. All that stuff about transparency, cooperation, yada yada yada—we all knew it was just for show. I understand if you’re tied up with them, or tied to them, whatever. You’ve got lots to lose if you go against their wishes.”

“I suppose.”

Something about his tone made me not quite believe him. “Look, I don’t know what your arrangement is, so I can’t hold it against you if you don’t want to share. But it’s worth pointing out that I’m here with the specific intent of preventing something really bad from escalating up to the level of international incident.”

“International?”

“ ‘International’ sounds more dramatic than ‘interstate,’ don’t you think?”

“I do.”

After a long moment wherein we both pretended to dedicate our full attention to the screens, he finally spoke. “Let me ask you a question first, and if you answer it honestly, I’ll respond likewise. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“How powerful is the Renner House? Strong enough to knock down the Barringtons, should it turn out to be worth their time?”

“That’s hard to say without knowing more about the Barringtons. How many others are there—inner-circle-wise?”

“Not many. Two or three not-quite-children who have been orphaned from other places. It’s strange, how the Barringtons have chosen their kind for the last … I don’t know how long. As long as I’ve been acquainted with them, so let’s say forty years or so.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Theresa got this idea that the line had become inbred, which wasn’t a far cry from the truth. She wanted to bring in new blood, reinvigorate the House with new people.”

“A worthy goal.”

“Yes, but the way she went about it … that’s the odd part. She was obsessed with the idea that her children weren’t devoted enough—that they’d leave her, or overthrow her one of these days. And Paul wasn’t too far behind her. He’s more arrogant than she is, and even happier about the prospect of control. She wanted it because she’s insecure; he wanted it to feed his ego.”

“But how do you guarantee loyalty?” I wanted to know. “Money won’t always do it, and money is the glue that holds civilization together. Makes the world go ’round, or that’s how I hear it.”

“I heard it was love, but maybe we listen to different radio stations. You’re right, though. Money wouldn’t do it. She didn’t want people on her payroll. She wanted addicts to be controlled. So she hooked up with this chemist from the east side, about twenty years ago. Between them, they developed a drug they could use to keep the newbies close to home. Nothing’s hard to escape like a bad habit, right? She tried it on a handful of kids but it didn’t work like the charm she’d hoped. There were too many side effects, like rage and paranoia. And besides that, the resentment ate them alive, until they either ran away or she killed them.”

I said “Hmm” because it lined up neatly with what I knew of Adrian’s sister—a young vampire in peculiarly poor health, begging for help, escaping her House and being left to her own devices … oh yes. The pieces fit nicely. Or horribly, as Adrian would probably see it.

“But you didn’t answer my question,” Clifford noted.

Drat his perceptiveness.

“I’m sorry. I got sidetracked.” And as I pondered how much to tell him, another blip went dashing across the screen—right to left, in front of the gate and around the inner edge of the wall. “Did you see that?”

“I did. He’s headed back to the east side. I think he’s covered the whole perimeter now. There’s nothing left for him to do but make a play to get inside. But I still want an answer to that question.”

Fine. “The answer is yes. Honestly, I think the Renner House could wipe this place off the map. I wouldn’t have thought so until tonight, but meeting these maniacs has sealed it for me.”

“Does San Francisco know this?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Do you plan to tell them?”

“I haven’t decided yet. But I probably will.”

He was no longer looking at the monitors, but looking at me. “You don’t give a shit about the San Fran House. What are you really doing here?”

“I believe that’s more questions than I agreed to answer.”

“Answer anyway.”

“No,” I told him. “Not until you tell me what you’re really doing here. You aren’t like the Barringtons, and it’s obvious enough that you don’t care for them. They drive you nuts, and they treat you like something they found on the bottom of their shoes. I didn’t know Macon even had a House. Are you really part of their family?”

“Sort of. The Macon House isn’t much to speak of. There are only three of us, and we keep to ourselves.”

“I see. So if you want any authority or muscle, you have to keep yourself allied with these yahoos.”

“That about sums it up. Now what about you?”

“I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.” And I had no intention of telling him that I was here because my favorite blind vampire was in hot water, and my not-a-ghoul had lost a sister. “But it boils down to San Francisco wanting to know what the hell happened here, before Atlanta and Chicago come down on it and install a pet judge to drive California crazy. Maximilian sent me here in case I could turn up something that would derail—or at least delay—Atlanta’s efforts to mount a hostile takeover.”

“But you’re not one of the California people.”

“Look, buddy—I’m trying to help some friends, okay?”

I might’ve gone on, but right at that moment something landed hard on the roof.

If we hadn’t been vampires, we wouldn’t have heard it. It only reached us as a dull thump—something that could’ve been mistaken for the shutting of a door or the dropping of a heavy book. But we did hear it, and we both jerked our eyes up to the ceiling like a couple of dumb-asses—since neither one of us had X-ray vision.

Then we looked quickly at each other.

“He could be doing anything up there—setting the place on fire, cutting a hole in the roof …”

“Hanging out, disabling cameras,” I said, noting that the second screen with four quadrants had just lost the feed from the top of the chimney. “Were those new?”

“I don’t know.”

“How should we play this?” I asked him. “Do we go up there and try to take him down? We don’t even know if he’s alone.”

“I haven’t seen anything to indicate anyone else, have you?”

“No, but that might only mean that they’re really, really good.”

“Shit,” he cursed. “You’re right.” He leaned out of the small room, looking back and forth down the halls. Seeing no one, he said, “Between you and me, I’m tempted to say, ‘Let him have it.’ Maybe it’s time this dynasty rolled over and died. It’s been badly, stupidly run for decades. The Barringtons are coasting on their reputation, getting by because they stay so insular nobody knows how weak they’ve grown. Christ, the big fucking babies all bolted for their ironclad closet the moment that alarm went off!”

“They do seem a bit skittish.”

“I’m not saying they’re fragile. I’m saying they’re dumb, and they were given power without responsibility. They took it, and they wrung it dry.”

“And now you want it, don’t you?” I asked him levelly, even as I tried to track the sound of footsteps above—and I watched one more camera feed go dark. “You want to move in and take over.”

“I’d do a better job.”

“I bet you’re right,” I said, and I meant it. “But are you seriously proposing a coup d’état to a woman you just met half an hour ago?”

“No, I’m proposing that you go back to San Francisco and tell the Renners the truth—that this place is a sham, and that the Barringtons let a burglar kill their father one night in the back bedroom.”

“That’s how he died?”

“That’s where I found all the blood. They moved his body up onto the roof to cook it when the sun came up. But he didn’t smoke himself to ashes. He bled out in the guest room after someone broke in. This someone, I bet.”

The third camera went down. One tiny square was left, wobbling on the roof—up at the edge of some gable or rain gutter. Whoever it was, he was knocking down dominoes and getting ready to come inside to play. But he didn’t want to be seen, or recorded at any rate.

I met Clifford’s eyes and didn’t blink. “What are you saying, Mr. O’Donnell?”

“I’m saying, let’s get out of here while the getting is good. You and I go our separate ways, you deliver your message to San Francisco, and you have a new ally when the Barringtons fall. I don’t know who that is upstairs, and I don’t want to know. Whoever it is, I’m sure his grievance is legitimate, and I don’t feel like standing between him and some righteous retribution.”

“Neither do I,” I admitted.

“Then let’s go.” He was pleading now, so desperate to get away and to get out from under the political thumb … for how long? Hadn’t he said he’d known them for forty years?

As they say down there, bless his heart.

I said, “I’d love to, and maybe I will. But I’m not leaving without my ghoul.”

“Well,” he said, shaking his head, “that’s your call. But I’m going to hit the road—and get out while I can. It’s been nice chatting with a rational person for a few minutes.”

“Likewise,” I told him.

He turned to run but stopped himself and faced me again. “One last thing. You really will send in the Renners?”

“Like the fist of God.” Something brilliant dawned on me, and I added, “If I can ask you for a little favor in return.”

“How little?”

“Very little,” I assured him. “I’ll give you a call about it later.”

“It’s a deal. And it’s time for me to take advantage of some vacation time.”

“Good luck,” I said with a wave.

“You too.”

He disappeared with a bang—the sound of him striking off down the tiled floor—then I heard nothing at all. His departure was swift, smooth, and utterly seamless. I didn’t even hear any doors open and close, but the alarm for the front door made a little chime and its blue light began to blink.

Just like that, Clifford O’Donnell was gone, and with him my sole ally of any supernatural power.

As I shut down the security systems one grid at a time, I considered my strange new … friendly acquaintance. Older than he looked, certainly. Confident and strong, and tired of being in the background—second fiddle to a pack of weaker creatures. I sensed a whiff of eau de old cop about him, like maybe he’d been a real investigator, back in the day. It sure parlayed nicely into a seneschal position—even a position that was only part time and odious.

I flipped the last switch to deaden the final alert, leaving the house utterly undefended from a security point of view. And I wondered if that wasn’t why I’d taken such an instant liking to the guy—that eau de old cop. He dimly reminded me of my dad.

“There,” I said to the control room.

It didn’t say anything back. Not a blip or a beep, or a tiny flickering light. I’d disabled the whole damn thing, or so I was reasonably confident.

Grimly, it occurred to me that should I encounter this intruder, I wouldn’t have much time to explain my helpfulness, but that would have to be okay. If his grudge was with the House, it might not be with me. Maybe we could do that whole “my enemy’s enemy” thing and skip off into the night, holding hands.

Or maybe I’d just do my damndest to avoid the fellow, get my ghoul, and get out of Dodge.

I heard scrabbling up above—not nearby, but on the other side of the house. Someone was slipping down off the roof and hunting for a window to kick in. Unfortunately for that someone, all the windows were the same shatterproof (bulletproof?) design as the ones in the living room. He was meeting with difficulty.

Not a pro, then. A pro would have a cutter or, in a pinch, a little C-4.

Good to know. Definitely somebody with a grudge, not a hired gun.

Since the Barringtons were still AWOL and I wasn’t sure how to find my way to the basement, I wasted a few minutes fluttering back and forth between hallways, looking for stairs. I found a set going up, but nothing going down. I wished I’d thought to ask O’Donnell where the entrance was, but I hadn’t, and now he was gone, so screw it. And then I remembered an old place of mine, years ago, and how the stairs to the basement area had been just off the kitchen.

It’s an old architectural hang-up, left over from the days when people stored food in their cellars. Or if you asked me in a pop quiz, that’d be my guess.

Back to the kitchen I ran, and sure enough, I’d gone right past the door several times without seeing it or realizing its purpose.

I got it now, though. I grabbed the knob and yanked, and met a lot of resistance. The thing was barricaded like a motherfucker from inside, and I noted when I began to beat upon it that it was steel-reinforced. It probably had a bracing bar on the other side—the kind you need a goddamn blowtorch to cut around if you ever expect to open it.

More often than not, the simple precautions are the most difficult to bypass.

(I, for one, have always fantasized about the day I can have a moat.)

Adrian! Adrian, can you hear me?

Is that you upstairs?

Yes, come open the fucking door.

I’ll try …

“Do or do not, there is no try,” I muttered.

I heard motion on the other side, and an argument, and what sounded like close-quarters fisticuffs … and then a grating slide of something metal being moved out of the way.

Adrian burst backward into the kitchen and crashed against an island’s countertop. He was holding a metal crossbar, and brandishing it at someone on the top of the stairs.

Sheriden bulleted through after him, holding—I swear to God—a sword, and swinging it like maybe she knew how to use it. It was the fancy kind, like Renaissance faire freaks hang up over a fireplace mantel but never actually use. Even so, it looked sharp enough to do some damage.

She didn’t see me, so she was easy to catch. I nabbed her from behind, took her sword away in a flash, and shoved her headlong back down the stairs with prejudice. Adrian heaved himself forward and slammed the steel door shut, then leaned against it for good measure—and jammed the crossbar through the latch to keep it fastened. Nicks, swipes, and a fairly deep cut blossomed red through his sweater and along his forearms. There, where he’d held up his arms to defend himself, the wounds were deepest.

“Jesus, Adrian!” I took one of his hands, attempting to better assess his damage.

He yanked it away from me and said, “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Good to hear, you fucking liar. What the hell was that?”

“That was a crazy bitch with a sword.”

“I gathered that much,” I told him. “Is there anyone else down there?”

“No one who’ll do any damage. I had to kill one and beat the shit out of the other one to get them off me. They knew, Ray. They knew I wasn’t a ghoul, and they didn’t like it.”

“Shit, man. I’m sorry. And I let the Barringtons just … lock you down there with them.”

“I’m the one who insisted on coming. And there’s nothing to be done about it now,” he added under his breath. He reached for a dish towel and wrapped his right forearm. “And I didn’t learn anything about my sister, so all these stitches in my future are for nothing. Hey, where is everyone?” he asked mildly.

Oh yeah. He didn’t know.

“I guess you couldn’t hear it down there, but there’s been some excitement up here. An alarm went off. Someone’s trying to break in.”

He stopped his makeshift swaddling and eyed me. “What? Like, right now?”

“I assume. I disabled the security system, but it took me a few minutes. Maybe it’ll help the guy.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Let’s get out of here and I’ll tell you all about it on the way home.”

“Where are the Barringtons?”

“Hiding behind their pool, I think. That’s where they went, and I haven’t seen them since. I assume they’re still there, ostriching themselves and eating paint chips, or whatever it is they do in their spare time. I don’t know. Actually … I have an idea.”

“Oh no.”

“No, it’s a good idea.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

Despite the fact that he was clearly injured, having him back at my side made me bolder. After all, I now had free rein of the McMansion (so far as I knew) and a hot tip on a crime scene. Also, I didn’t hear any more ruckus from the would-be intruder.

“Do you hear that?” I asked Adrian.

“What? No.”

“Me either. Maybe the burglar gave up.”

“And maybe I’m your dear aunt Rose.”

“Well, you kind of are.”

“You know what I mean.”

“We’re still leaving, don’t worry,” I assured him. “But we’re going to take a little detour first. Stick close.”

“What are we looking for?”

“A bedroom with a lot of blood in it.”

“Whose?”

“William Renner’s,” I said. “And they’ll have tried to clean it up, but I’ll still smell it if I find it.”

“Not a suicide?” he asked, falling into step behind me. He was clearly in pain, so I kept up a pretty good clip as I went down halls, opening doors.

“Not a suicide,” I said, reaching the bottom of the stairs and starting to climb them. “He died in one of the extra bedrooms.”

“There could be a dozen in a place like this.”

“I bet there aren’t more than six or seven, and I’ve already breezed past a couple of them with nothing to hide. Up here, I bet.” I climbed the steps two at a time because no, I didn’t seriously believe the intruder had given up and moseyed on home, and I likewise didn’t really think that the Barringtons would stay conveniently holed up all night.

Adrian lagged behind.

“Stay close!” I commanded.

“I can’t—you’re going too—”

“Fast, yeah, sorry. Then stay there. I’m just going to do a dash, okay?”

“Fine,” he said. It told me he was tired, from fighting downstairs I assumed, more from the loss of blood. Though over my shoulder I saw him in a flash, just before I snapped around the corner, and his right arm was absolutely crimson.

I was glad I’d pushed pixie-faced Sheriden down the stairs. I hoped she’d broken her little pixie neck.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. I was already out of his line of sight.

“Hurry, Ray,” he called behind me. “I don’t like this.”

I said, “Me either.” But I said it quietly enough that he wouldn’t hear it.

Okay, so I’d been wrong about the McMansion having only six or seven bedrooms. I counted at least nine in total, and there were five just on the second floor landing, where I shoved open doors and took a deep breath inside each space.

Room number three stopped me in my tracks.

I threw open the door—or rather, I bashed it open with my shoulder—and right as I was about to take a big ol’ sniff … I realized I wasn’t alone.

Somehow without me hearing it, the intruder had come inside. He’d done so by literally disassembling the window—with the big crowbar in his hand, I could only assume. So that was the scuffling noise we’d heard. I was amazed that he’d kept it so quiet.

An iron lever combined with a vampire’s strength equals serious brute force. See? It’s the simple things.

Another simple thing I halfway saw coming—the intruder wasn’t a “he.”

She was wearing black in the finest old-school tradition of such things, and a ski mask too—though why, I couldn’t say.

I knew immediately who she was. So would anyone else from that household; they would’ve recognized her movement, her body, her scent. They would’ve known her as one of their own, or that’s how they would’ve thought of her.

As for me, I thought of her in a possessive sense, too, though we’d never met before and shouldn’t be meeting now.

Not like this.

Not with her hands frozen over a dresser with a huge vanity mirror that doubled the whole room. Three of the drawers had already been pulled out, searched, and thrown down in disgust. Three more remained, and I was interrupting her.

All four of us—me, and her, and our reflections in the big square mirror—held the pose and held the moment, neither one of us sure what would happen next.

Our eyes grappled and locked, and hers flinched away. I saw what she was thinking; it was all over her, in her posture, her shaking hands, her shallow breaths. She didn’t know me. I was an unknown quantity. I might be a problem. She might be better served to try again another day.

Before she could act on it or look away from me, I blurted out quickly—while she could still see my mouth moving, before she either jumped me or ran: “Isabelle, you didn’t come here to kill them, did you? You set off the alarms to lure them away from the house. What are you looking for?”

And I prayed that she could read lips.

“You know my name,” she whispered back. The words were imperfect, dulled around their edges, but I understood them without difficulty. “How?”

“I know your brother.”

She didn’t react, except to tense even tighter, her whole body as rigid as rebar.

“He came here for you, wanting to know what happened.”

“You’re lying. He can’t be dead. He can’t be one of us!” Her refusal to believe ended on a shrill note.

“I’m not lying, but you’re right: Adrian’s not one of us. He’s my friend.”

“People like us, we have no friends.”

“Please, what are you looking for?” I moved slowly into the room, releasing the door and tiptoeing toward her. “I can help you look. I’ve turned off all the alarms. The Barringtons are hiding behind their pool.”

But now she was uncertain. She let go of the drawer’s glass knob. “Adrian is … here?”

“Downstairs. Look.” I extended a hand. I had some of his blood on my fingers. “He’s hurt. We need to get him out of here. Me and you, okay? We’ll get Adrian someplace safe. You can smell him on me, I know you can. You can smell him, and you know it’s him—just like I smelled that the two of you were kin.”

The poor kid had no idea what to do, and that made a pair of us.

“They kept my grandmother’s ring,” she said, in case it explained something. “Theresa kept it, and wouldn’t give it back. I saw her wearing it—she wore it to Chicago. There was a picture … and the ring was on her hand.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” I begged, desperate to not chase her away, not when I’d have to explain myself to Adrian. “Come with me, please! I can get us out of here. You can tell me all about it. I’m a thief, Isabelle. I’ll come back for it. I’ll get it for you.” I would’ve promised her anything at all to get her out of that room.

“Raylene!” Adrian shouted from downstairs.

“See?” I said to Isabelle, forgetting that she couldn’t hear. “That’s him!” Then out into the hall I asked loudly, “What?”

“We gotta go!”

I heard the sound of preternaturally strong fists banging something, and at first I thought of Sheriden, but no. The sound was coming from the house’s back, at the garage’s door to the interior, or so my ears suggested.

The Barringtons.

They were tired of burying their heads in the sand, and they wanted back inside their house. Had the door locked down behind them? A crash told me no, that it had only stuck or only locked, and whoever pushed behind it was really impatient to get some ass-whooping under way.

“Ray!” he all but screamed, and that was all it took.

I whirled out of the room and left Isabelle, not willing to beg her to stay if it meant letting Adrian get murdered downstairs. I was on him in a flash, a split instant before Paul Barrington could reach him.

I punched Paul in the throat—hard, since I had the weight of my full descending velocity to back it up. He choked and flew backward into the hall, where he made a very big dent in the far wall.

Theresa was right behind him. She came at us like a harpy, all wild hair and long fingernails and a face full of hate. Adrian pushed something into my hand. Sheriden’s sword.

Now that I had it in my hands, I knew I was right—it was a cheap replica—but it’d have to do. I swung it at Theresa’s throat and only winged her; she grabbed my wrist and tried to wrench the weapon free, but Adrian bent over and charged her, catching her in the side and throwing her off me, only to land on top of her. He wasn’t stronger than the vampire woman, but he was heavier, and for that moment, weight was the more important advantage.

I grabbed him by the back of his sweater and jerked him back to my side. I pushed him in front of me and said, “Run! I’m right behind you!”

He didn’t ask where I expected him to run to. There was only one way out for us because the Barringtons were blocking the way to the back door. We had to make for the nearby front door and run around the house, back to our car—assuming we could get it past the front gate. I was fully prepared to make a whole encyclopedia of assumptions, as long as it got us out of that hall as fast as possible, and preferably faster.

I brandished the sword, expecting any of the children to pounce at any minute, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Raleigh flew around the corner and into view. He didn’t slow down, he just charged—making a whole bunch of his own assumptions about his personal prowess, considering that I was armed and he wasn’t. I caught him through the upper torso without even meaning to; it was that fast, that’s all—he was over there, and then he was right here on top of us.

The wound wasn’t mortal but it was a serious inconvenience for both of us. For him, because hey, sword in the chest. For me, because he spun away from me and took the sword with him.

I said, “Uh-oh.”

Adrian heard me. “Uh-oh?”

“Nothing, keep going. Here, here—go left.” I pushed him around and into the foyer, where the front door loomed like the devil’s tombstone. It was locked eight ways from Sunday. You could see the locks doubled and tripled, and set in metal plates.

Adrian saw them and had a perfectly rational thought. He reached for the narrow hall table and picked it up like he could throw it through one of the skinny windows on either side of the door.

“Won’t work,” I told him with a hand on his arm. “They’re shatterproof, the lot of them.”

With that I went to work on the locks. And damn the whole Barrington clan forever and ever amen, because only about half of them were actually, you know, locked. And to think, my instinct to just run down the line and flip them all as fast as possible had looked so good on paper. I swore loudly and copiously, and Adrian said, “Hurry up!” like I was hanging around giving myself a manicure or something.

At least his shout gave me a heads-up about Marie, who was barreling in our direction. She let out a scream like a very small hawk and went after Adrian, who had nothing but the narrow end table with which to defend himself. It was too bulky to work, or do anything more useful than hold her out of reach for a second or two.

Thank heaven, the second or two was enough for me to crack the last dead bolt and throw open the door. Once it was ajar, I whipped the table out of Adrian’s grasp. It was hardwood, oak maybe, and heavier than I expected. But that only meant it made an unexpectedly satisfying crunch when I swung it upside Marie’s skull.

Adrian didn’t need micromanaging; by the time I had dropped the table and returned my attention to the gaping door, he was already on the front lawn and heading around to the left.

Onto the freshly mowed grass I ran, playing catch-up and playing it well. I was beside him in the span of a few heartbeats, encouraging him along and eyeing the house warily, knowing that I hadn’t actually killed any of them and there was still at least one Barrington we hadn’t seen yet.

I threw a last look up at the bedroom where I’d found Isabelle, and I was truly impressed by the speed, scope, and silence of her work. She’d literally pried the entire window frame out of the building, thereby bypassing the need to smash or cut her way through the reinforced glass.

I didn’t see her. I didn’t see even a shadow, slipping across the wall.

Had she followed behind me? Had she believed me?

“Shit,” I mumbled.

“What?” Adrian panted.

“Where the fuck is the car?”

“I know, right? How big is this place anyway? Wait—there’s the garage. We’re close.”

“Hell yeah,” I said as our rental Lexus came into view.

It was a premature “hell yeah.” No sooner had we reached the car and Adrian was fighting to find the right key than the yard was brilliantly, suddenly, completely awash in columns of blinding white light.

“What the—?”

“Floodlights!” I squinted and wanted to howl. My eyes felt like they were boiling in my skull. “They’re back in the control room!”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re re-arming the property. Let’s go, now!”

“I’m working on it,” he insisted, and then he had the door open, and then he’d popped the locks.

I leaped into the leather seat and slapped the door shut. Then, because I couldn’t stop myself, I pressed the button to lock the doors, as if that would stop anybody who was chasing us. The engine turned over immediately, like a good luxury car should, and Adrian nearly blew out our back tires peeling off the lot and onto the driveway.

Then it was Adrian’s turn to say, “Oh shit. What about the gate?”

“We’ll ram it if we have to.”

“I don’t think we can ram our way through it,” he said dubiously.

“We have a better shot of ramming through the gate than ramming through a stone wall,” I said, reminding him that the entire property was surrounded by one. “Just drive!”

The car skidded down the driveway and beelined for the gate. I was afraid he was right, but what could we do?

I leaned over and buckled him into his seat belt, then did my own. And I prayed for air bags, because I had a feeling this was not going to go very smoothly at all, goddamn it.

The big black gate was rolled into position, hulking there and blocking the way to freedom. Adrian slammed on the gas and the tires screeched, but I hollered, “Wait!” and grabbed at his thigh. He took his foot off the gas and hit the brakes instead, so the car fishtailed on the concrete, losing a wheel over the edge and into the grass before righting and getting the traction to go straight again.

“Look!” I said, flailing toward a black-clad figure beside the gate. It was bent over the chain mechanism that drew the gate forward and backward, and it was doing something useful, I just knew it.

He didn’t ask any questions. He applied the gas again, more reasonably this time, lest we smash through a gate that was actually being opened for us, slowly but surely.

Isabelle was using every ounce of strength she had to pull the thing aside. Impossible under normal circumstances (I was sure the Barringtons had seen to that), she’d first snapped the chain and now had only the weight of the gate to fight her. She shoved it along the track until it was open enough to squeak-birth a Lexus, and she waved us through as if we had any other plans at the moment.

“Who the hell?” Adrian asked, craning his neck to get a better look at the still-masked woman.

She was looking back at him, too.

The way the gate had unspooled, she was on my side of the car—but she gazed in through the window, past me, and stared at his face so hard I thought she’d crack it. It would’ve been a touching moment were it not for the shadow that reared up behind her.

Gibson.

I recognized his shape before I could see his face, so backlit by the industrial power spotlights.

I tried to warn her but she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at her brother. And of course, she couldn’t hear Gibson sneaking up behind her.

The Barrington seized her. Her eyes went big as nickels and she wrestled him, using her weight to pitch both of them forward, into the car. Her face pressed against my window, then smeared away from it in a smudge of cheap ski mask yarn as they tussled within arm’s reach.

Adrian was paralyzed, unsure of whether to gas it and go or help our mysterious benefactor.

I spared him the agony of a decision by unbuckling myself and throwing my fist through the Lexus’s window. The glass shattered into a billion shards of blue-green safety coating and razor-sharp edges. I shoved myself to my feet, forcing my upper body out the window and grabbing Isabelle by the neck.

Undignified and potentially painful? Yes. But it was the only thing I could get a grip on, and she didn’t hold it against me.

Forcibly I sat myself down, towing her with me and into my lap—and smacking Gibson’s face against the door frame hard enough to dent both his forehead and the car. Stunned, he released her. It gave me the leverage to draw her all the way inside in an ungainly move that ended with us both covered in safety glass pebbles—and with her head smashed against Adrian’s right thigh.

“Go!” I yelled, and he didn’t hesitate anymore.

He punched the pedal.

The car swerved, its driver-side mirror stuck on the gate. It snapped off with a pop and a scrape, and without an inch to spare, the car cleared the opening and leaped out into the relative safety of Buckhead’s suburban dream-land.

Isabelle pulled herself off my lap and slithered into the backseat, where she picked the tinted glass off her clothes.

The funny thing was, Adrian knew—even before she’d pulled off the mask. He knew while she was lying in the back of the Lexus, panting and looking back out the window in case they were coming after us. They weren’t. We all knew it. I think she just needed a reason to look away, because when a moment is a long time coming, sometimes it can wait a little longer. Sometimes it needs to, when the anticipation has been so much that the buildup becomes a barrier of sorts, and it needs those extra moments to dissolve and defuse.

When she turned around and pulled the mask off over her face, her hair came tumbling out in a dark, wavy ponytail she’d twisted up under the covering. Her face was stricken—not with terror or confusion, but with a gut-twisting nervousness that maybe this was not how it ought to be. Her eyes darted to the car door’s handle; I saw it in an instant and knew she was considering just … jumping for it. Getting out now, before anyone had to talk—before there were explanations or questions, or potential recriminations and shouts.

But none of that happened.

What happened was that their eyes met in the rearview mirror, Adrian driving and looking back at her, for he’d been staring with certainty and relief even before she’d admitted her identity by removing the mask.

He didn’t know what to say any more than she did, but I could feel some of the pent-up wanting in his chest, radiating toward my psychic senses with all the subtlety of an electric oven. He wanted to say that she looked exactly the same as she had ten years ago, but better now—not quite the sickly monster who’d hid in his closet while he was home on leave. He wanted to tell her how hard he’d looked for her, and how long, and how much it had almost cost him—but he couldn’t tell her anything to make her feel guilty. Despite the fact that he was driving and he could not watch her as hard as he wished, already he could see that it’d take little more than a word to send her flying away from him.

I was on the verge of turning on the radio, just to have something to fill the pressure-cooking silence of the car, when Adrian said, “I thought you were dead.”

But she couldn’t hear him and she couldn’t see his mouth moving, so she did not know what he’d told her.

Isabelle couldn’t hear anything, for almost exactly the same reason that Ian couldn’t see anything. Both of them had been part of the same god-awful experiment, intended to restore sensory ability to one god-awful ghoul who’d been stripped of it all in punishment for some heinous but unknown crime.

Someday, I intended to find him. And I intended to take away everything he’d managed to retrieve. As far as I was concerned, he deserved everything that had ever come to him and much, much worse—for what was done to my friends, before they were my friends … and for how he’d tried to do it all over again.

I didn’t know how I’d go about it. I had only the vaguest idea where he was, and he was surrounded by money and technology and well-paid minions who’d serve him better than ghouls. But one day, one way or another, he was going to pay for what he’d done to Ian and Isabelle.