And in that time, he’d try to repair some of the damage he’d done. Try to rebuild a friendship that he’d always valued over any other, and that he’d had to force himself not to miss after he’d destroyed it. If he couldn’t do that, if that was too much to hope for, Marc would just make damn certain he didn’t do anything so careless and hurt her again.

Right now, that might just mean catching her if she slipped on the icy sidewalks. A Guardian’s feet wouldn’t freeze, but he couldn’t imagine walking barefoot across the slush and snow as she was.

“It’s bothering you,” she said.

“What?”

“My feet. You keep looking at them.” She wiggled her toes, gold rings winking. “You’re not alone. It bothers Mariko, too. She thinks I do it to be like Michael.”

The Guardians’ leader—who didn’t need shoes now anyway, trapped as he was in Hell. “Why do you?”

“Partially because I want to be like Michael.” Her grin invited him to laugh with her. Probably every Guardian had admitted such a thing at some point. “But it also helps me build illusions. The better I know how something feels or tastes or looks, the more convincing I can make it. And I like the feeling, too. Cold doesn’t hurt us, so why would I protect myself from it?”

“You could cut your feet.” God knew how many broken bottles or sharp stones were hidden beneath the snow.

“And heal in less than a minute. You weenie. Afraid of a little blood?”

God, he’d missed her teasing. “Maybe. But you wouldn’t like the look of my feet anyway, so I’ll spare you the sight of them bare.”

“I remember perfectly well how they looked, thank you—and they were nice. Long and lean, just like you. Every part of you was long. That was nice, too.”

Was she still teasing him? Probably. But all that he could think was that her feet were just like her, too. Small, delicate, soft—and that when he’d touched them, kissed them, she’d gasped and shivered.

She wasn’t shivering now. “Is that the girls’ Jeep?”

He forced himself out of that memory, spotted the Cherokee parked in front of the small city library—about a half block down from Perk’s Palace.

“That’s theirs,” he confirmed. “Let’s hope we don’t have to slay the bastard in front of them.”

Radha slanted that Don’t say stupid things look at him, and he realized that with her Gift, the girls wouldn’t see anything that Radha didn’t want them to.

But the girls weren’t at the coffee shop—and he and Radha wouldn’t be slaying Gregory Jackson unless they planned on breaking one of the most important rules that a Guardian had to follow: not to hurt or kill humans. One psychic touch told Marc that the kid behind the cash register was human, through and through. The demon might have taken his shape at some point, but it wasn’t here now—and so Gregory Jackson probably wasn’t the demon’s default identity, the form the demon used when it wasn’t shape-shifting and stirring up trouble.

“It figures,” Radha murmured. “Finding him after one conversation would have been too easy.”

She’d had one conversation since coming to Riverbend. Marc, on the other hand, had talked to about thirty people so far, starting with the county sheriff and his deputies. Still, he had to agree. It would have been too easy.

But it wasn’t a wasted trip. Gregory might have seen something that homecoming night, especially if he was with Miklia. He might not know what he’d seen, but that was Marc’s job—to figure out what fit and what didn’t.

On the other hand, he could imagine quite a few places where Gregory Jackson wouldn’t fit. Marc wasn’t a small man by any measure, and it wasn’t often that he had to look up at someone, let alone a seventeen-year-old kid who must have weighed the equivalent of him and Radha put together, all muscle. A small monitor hanging in view of the front counter played a classic football game, and Jackson kept an eye on the television while Marc showed his identification and asked for a few minutes.

“I have a break in five,” Jackson said.

Marc glanced at the screen. “The ’84 Orange Bowl?”

“Yeah.” Jackson flashed a big smile. “Nebraska’s about to go for the two-point conversion instead of the tie, and lose it all.”

In other words, he’d talk when the game was over. Standing near the glass case of pastries, Radha narrowed her eyes on Marc, but whatever she intended to say had to wait. A black-haired woman in a flour-dusted apron emerged from the back of the store, drying her hands on a towel. No question where Jackson had gotten his height from. Her eyes were level with Marc’s.

“Are you here to talk to my son?”

“With your permission,” Marc said. “We need to ask him a few questions.”

“Is he in any trouble?”

“No, ma’am. We’re just gathering information.”

“All right, then. And since you’re here on the government’s dime, you make sure you order something.”

Radha tapped her claw-tipped forefinger against the glass case. “I want that.”

A four-layer slice of white coconut cake. Jackson’s mother retrieved the plate and slid it across the counter. “Forks are at the station by the window. Gregory will bring your coffees out to you.”

“In about four minutes,” the kid said, watching the game again—but even distracted, he made the correct change.

“Pfft. Worthless boy.” She flicked his bottom with the towel, but it was easy to hear the affection in her voice—and easier to feel her pride.

Definitely not a demon, either.

The shop held a mix of mismatched tables and chairs, centered beneath long striped curtains hanging from the middle of the ceiling and drawn back to the corners of the room. A few big pillows and long benches along the walls provided more comfortable seating areas. Pop music piped through the speakers, and Radha danced her way across the floor with small steps and long swings of her hips. With a twirl of blue skin, orange scarves, and black hair, she chose a sturdy square table and sank gracefully into the wooden chair. Less gracefully, Marc sat opposite her, then watched her scrape off half the frosting before digging her fork into the cake.

Before taking a bite, she asked, “You follow American football?”

“This is the Midwest,” he said. “I remember that game, and when Nebraska lost. I don’t know if a thousand demons descending on a city would have caused the same amount of rage and despair coming from those fans.”

“Ah.” Radha nodded. “You should visit my territory during the Cricket World Cup.”

Maybe he would. “But you follow the matches a bit, don’t you? Soccer, too. Because not everyone in your territory follows them—and up north in my territory, it leans toward hockey—but every once in a while, you run across someone who should know the language of the sport, but doesn’t.”

“And it’s either a demon or a liar. You’re a clever man, Marc.”

“Well, I enjoy it, too.” He liked the strategy involved, the endless play variations. “And—”

He broke off as, beneath the table, a slight weight fell across his thighs. Radha’s icy feet pressed between his legs.

She grinned at him. “I’m trying to warm them up.”

God. Her toes wriggled, as if she were snuggling in deeper. Suddenly rock hard, he waited for them to wriggle higher, to torment him a little more. They didn’t.

“And what is everyone else seeing?” he asked.

She didn’t even glance at the few other people in the coffee shop. “My feet are firmly on the floor. I’m wearing black pumps. Boring black pumps. And your muscles are so tense.”

Her toes rubbed against his inner thighs. Biting back a groan, Marc caught one of her feet. Still cold, but to a Guardian, that wasn’t necessarily unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all.

“What are you doing, Radha?”

Making him pay for that long-ago hurt? A little friendly teasing? Something more?

He’d take anything she dished out, but he damn well wouldn’t respond until he knew what she wanted in return.

“I’m having fun.”

“Working me up?”

“Am I?” Her eyes began to glow, the gold flecks brightening, casting their own light. Not an illusion at all. A Guardian’s eyes did that when they were affected by a deep emotion. “Can a celibate warrior be worked up?”

By Radha? She could probably get a rise out of a stone.

“Marc.” It was a soft warning. “I’ll cover your eyes.”

She drew her foot back. Reluctantly, he let it slip from his grip—realizing that his eyes had begun to glow, too, but that she’d cast an illusion to conceal the green light.

Jackson set two frothy cappuccinos in front of them, swiveled a chair around, and straddled it. “So, agents. It’s my turn, huh?”

Word had obviously been getting around. Marc wasn’t surprised. But he did wonder what had been spreading. “So you know what we’re here for?”

“Somebody died, and you think it’s connected to Jason Ward. So you’re here hoping that someone remembers some little detail, like a stranger hanging around.” He rested his crossed forearms on the table, leaned in. “So, fire away. I can tell you now, I barely knew the guy.”

“But you met him a couple of times?”

“Not officially met, but I saw him. He never came in here, at least not while I was working, but he was in the bleachers at a few games. I was benched, so I had time to look at the crowd.”

“Was he at the homecoming game?”

Jackson’s eyes narrowed, as if looking backward. Slowly, he nodded. “Yeah. I remember him there. But I didn’t see him the rest of the night.”

“You knew Jason was Miklia’s brother?”

“Nah. Not then.”

“You knew him from the video store?”

Jackson shook his head. “That was closed by the time we moved here.”

Strange. Why recall one stranger in a crowd? “Why did you notice him, then? And remember him?”

As if uncertain, Jackson looked from Radha to Marc, before sighing. “All right. It’s not like this is a secret anyway, right? Everyone knows that Ward had those fangs made. Cosmetic dentistry or what-ever.”

That had been the explanation the coroner had given. “Yes.”

“Well, I saw him up in the stands once, cheering. I saw those teeth”—he glanced toward the counter where his mother stood, then leaned in and lowered his voice—“and it creeped me the fuck out. You know what I’m saying? The next game, he wasn’t there at first. Then, in the fourth quarter, he suddenly shows up and I thought he was the devil or something. Stupid shit my mom would slap me up the back of the head for. So when I heard about those teeth, that there was a real reason behind them, it was kind of a relief.” He sat back again. “I felt sorry for Miklia, though. That was rough for her. A stake through the heart—what is that?”

Probably the least efficient way to kill a vampire, so it was all about setting the scene, and the impact it would have on the family who found him. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Did you see Miklia the night of the dance?”

“For homecoming? Yeah. They came in once, wearing those dresses. I think before they went to the dance, because they asked if I’d be there.”

“Did you go?”

“Nah. Dances aren’t my thing. I worked that night, just so that I had an excuse to get out of it.”

So far, then, Sam had been the last to see them. “You were friends with her then?”

“Not really.” The kid shrugged, but his emotions skittered about—a little uneasy.

“But you know her well now.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t say that. I see her a lot—she comes in here practically every night—but we don’t talk much.”

That uneasiness was still there, but Marc didn’t think the boy was lying to him. He glanced at Radha, saw the confusion creasing her brow.

Delicately, she said, “We were told that you were bumping uglies.”

“Truth?” Surprise and amusement sent Jackson rocking back with a laugh. “No, nothing like that. I don’t have time for that. Moving here, the injury—it set me back. But I’ve already got a postgraduate year at a prep school lined up back East, so I’ll have a chance to get in front of the recruiters again. I don’t have time for girls, especially not ones into the crazy shit they are. Who said that we hooked up?”

Crazy shit? Marc met Radha’s eyes. “We can’t divulge—”

Jackson waved it off. “Ah, it doesn’t matter. Maybe someone saw us together in the gym last fall, back when she was looking for advice about getting into fighting shape, building up her endurance.”

What the hell? “Fighting shape?”

He nodded. “That’s what she said. I was like, whatever. It’s all the same to me.”

“Was this before or after her brother died?”

“After,” he said immediately. “I mean, that was the only reason I agreed. I’ve got work here, correspondence classes, my own workouts, regular classes . . . I don’t have time to be a personal trainer. But she asked, and her freak brother had just died, so what the hell was I supposed to say? She and her friends are a little freaky, too, but at least they aren’t going to the dentist for fangs. Oh, bam!—I just got it. Did this other guy killed have fangs, too? Is that the connection?”

“Yes,” Marc said. He’d told the sheriff the same thing, so the lie would be consistent. But at last they were getting to the reason for Jackson’s uneasiness. “What do you mean, freaky?”

“Not the good kind of freaky, you know what I mean? No, they bring in all kinds of books, sit around here reading them.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice again. “And I’m not getting into their business, but after a while, I see a page here, a drawing there. It’s all demon shit. What is it called? Occult. Occult shit. They’ve been coming in for months, reading that stuff.”

How many months’ worth of reading would the city library have on their shelves? “All of it from that little library?”

“No, that old librarian there wouldn’t carry something like that. Check this. I went in there once to pick up The Lightning Thief for my little sis, and that old lady told me to be careful, that the Greek god stuff might lead to practicing voodoo—then she called my mom, in case I didn’t pass that warning along. The old lady got an earful then.” Jackson laughed, sat back again. “Nah, Miklia and the others have some volunteer thing worked out, and they use the library loan system. She told me that once when I asked how she could stand volunteering for the old bat—it’s just so that they have easy access to the books they want.”

“Do you overhear what they talk about here?”

“They don’t talk. They just text each other.”

Marc’s gaze shot to Radha’s face. Her grin appeared, widening to the edge of a laugh. He could barely stop his own.

“Seriously?” she asked.

“Yeah. I asked her if she thought the music in the shop was too loud for a conversation. She said, ‘You never know who is listening’—all serious and shit.” He rolled his eyes. “Anyway. If you want to stay and talk to them, they’ll probably be here around five thirty, just after the library closes. I should probably get back to work. There’s a rush that comes in right at five.”

It was almost that now. Marc didn’t have anything more for Jackson, not right now. He looked to Radha. She shook her head.

“Thank you, Gregory,” Radha told him. “Good luck with the knee and the recruiters next year.”

“Thanks. If all goes right, in five years you’ll see me throwing in a championship bowl.”

“I hope it does.” She watched him walk back toward the counter, then looked back to Marc. “Some days, I really like people.”

“You don’t usually?” Marc didn’t believe that.

“Oh, I do. But there are some who make me wonder why the hell we’re doing this: always fighting, seeing our friends killed by demons, always seeing so much crap we can’t stop—and most of it stuff that humans do to each other. Not to mention outliving every human around us. And then someone comes along and you think: I’m going to get that bastard demon just so he can’t touch this one.”

“But that’s not your only reason.”

“It’s never my only reason,” she said. “But it feels good. Doesn’t it?”

Marc glanced at the front counter, where the kid was behind the cash register again, one eye on the television. “It does.”

Though she’d gotten her way, once again, she didn’t grin as he expected. Instead, her eyes filled.

Crying? Tension and uncertainty took a freezing grip on his gut. “Radha? You all right?”

She shook her head, pressed her lips together, and turned her face away. After a long moment, she looked back to him—tears gone.

Or were they? With her, it was impossible to know.

But her voice was even and light as she said, “So, what next? Do we wait for Miklia and friends to show?”

No point. They weren’t more likely to talk now than they had been before. At least, not until he had something concrete to approach them with. “What do you make of the physical training, the books?”

“Probably the same thing that you make of it,” she said. “Miklia and her friends saw something the night Jason was killed—they probably saw the demon who killed him. Now they fancy themselves demon hunters. Maybe for revenge, maybe some other reason. So thank goodness for the Rules, yes?”

Yes. Those same rules that forbade Guardians from harming or killing humans also applied to demons, but with harsher consequences. Any Guardian who hurt a human or impeded a human’s free will—even with an action as simple as shoving an unwilling human out of danger’s path—would have to decide whether to ascend to the afterlife or become human again. A Guardian could break the Rules and live, but every demon would be slain. After a demon broke the Rules, there was no escaping the Guardian Rosalia and the powerful vampire Deacon; psychically bound to the demon from the moment it hurt or killed a human, the pair would find and slay the demon within minutes.

Even in the unlikely event that the girls did track down the demon, it couldn’t hurt them. They probably wouldn’t be able to hurt it, either, but Marc cared less about the demon’s chances of surviving than the girls’.

He checked the sky. Ten minutes of daylight left. The vampires in the area would be waking up at sundown. “Let’s talk to Bronner. If these girls looked for information about demons, and if they knew Jason was a part of the community, they might have tried getting it from him or another vampire first.”

“And they might have mentioned what they saw.”

Marc nodded. “Something sent them looking in the right direction. Maybe it was Jason himself, maybe he mentioned demons or Guardians to them. But if they saw something, the questions they asked might give us an indication of what happened that night.”

“How far away is Bronner?”

“Halfway between here and the next town over.”

With a grin, Radha formed her wings. They arched behind her, the white tips sweeping the floor. “So we fly?”

He usually waited for dark. “You can cover mine, too?”

Her hand flew to her chest, as if she’d been wounded. “Your doubt kills me. Oh, Marc. I can make you feel like you’re wearing wings when you aren’t. Of course I can cover them.”

“All right, then.”

He rose from his chair. She did the same, albeit more slowly, and with a glint in her eyes that could have been dangerous or mischievous. She dabbed her forefinger against her cake plate and brought it to her lips, her smile forming beneath the tip.

“You should ask what else I can make you feel.”

She didn’t give him the chance. Her tongue swept across the pad of her finger—and he felt a warm lick against his. He tasted sweet coconut.

Need rushed through him, the ache of arousal. He stared at her, his fingers tightening on the back of the chair, using all of his control not to snap the wood in half—then crash through the table after her.

Her smile widened. “So?”

“It’s good cake,” he said.

Her laugh was light—and so sweet. He’d suffer through any teasing for it.

“No.” She came around the table, letting her fingers trail across the surface, her gold-tipped claw dragging out a long, rough note. “I meant to find out earlier, but we were interrupted. Can a celibate warrior be worked up? Now I’m coming over to see whether one can be.”

To touch him—in the middle of a busy coffee shop, and yet hidden from them all. His fingers clenched on the wood as she stopped beside him. Her gaze dropped to the front of his pants, and he heard the catch of her breath.

“So. They can.”

“I don’t know,” he said, voice rough.

Glowing again, her gaze lifted to his. He gritted his teeth to stifle his groan when she boldly cupped him through his trousers, then slid her palm up his hardened length.

“This is an illusion, too? I don’t think so, Marc.”

His head fell forward. Though everything in him strained toward her, he struggled against the urge to thrust into her hand. “No,” he managed. “I meant: I’m not a celibate warrior. I gave up that idea a while ago.”

Her fingers stilled. Her eyes brightened, shining fiercely gold. “Truly?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

With a grin and a sharp rasp of her claw up his rigid length, she turned for the door, orange scarves swirling around her indigo legs. Marc watched her go, hurting in the best—and worst—possible way.

Good. He had no idea what she meant by that.

He hoped to God he’d find out.

Radha didn’t know if they were, or if she should. She wanted to.

But a hundred and forty years had passed, and he was a different man than she’d known. All good, it seemed, but a few hours couldn’t really tell her. For all she knew, he might be shacked up with a vampire somewhere. He might be in love with someone. She might get hurt again. Or worse, throw herself at him, and discover that she’d been a fool.

Solid, unflappable—but under it all, he was just a man. And a man’s cock hardened when a woman fake-licked coconut icing from his finger. His arousal didn’t mean anything except that he was alive and possessed a healthy libido.

And even if he did want sex, that wasn’t all she wanted. Not anymore. She’d done the pleasure-for-pleasure’s-sake thing. It had been fun while it lasted. But she’d changed, too. Now she needed more . . . and it could never be just fun with Marc.

So rushing would be idiocy. And they were Guardians; they lived a long time. No need to rush anything.

Unfortunately, Radha knew that she was very, very bad at resisting something that she wanted.

At least searching for this demon provided a distraction. Bronner lived along one of the rural roads, and they followed it west, flying under the sliver of a moon. Gently rolling, snow-covered hills passed beneath them. In the distance, the Mississippi snaked southward. Pretty. When the bare trees dressed in their leaves for the summer and green covered the hills, it was probably gorgeous.

Maybe she’d have reason to come back again, and find out.

The vampire’s one-level house was situated among a small scattering of homes—mostly humans, Marc told her. Best not to let them see two winged people landing in Bronner’s backyard. To conceal their arrival, she concentrated on the illusion of complete invisibility: no sound, no evidence of their footsteps through the snow, no lingering scent of coconut from her mouth.

Another scent hit her almost immediately: blood. Not surprising, given that this was a vampire’s home and that they usually fed from each other just after waking—but, given that it smelled like human blood, disturbing.

And a moment later, another scent: human death.

Marc smelled it, too. His jaw tightened, gaze searching the windows of the house. “Can anyone see us?”

“No.”

He vanished his wings. A sword appeared in his left hand, called in from his cache of weapons. Radha brought her crossbow in from her own psychic storage. Their tips poisoned with hellhound venom, the crossbow bolts wouldn’t badly injure a demon, but the venom would paralyze one. It was a hell of a lot easier to decapitate a demon if it couldn’t run away.

They reached the back door. Marc cocked his head, listening for noises from inside.

“I’m concealing our voices, our footsteps,” she said. “And I’ll conceal the noise when you break open that door.”

He nodded, then glanced down at her feet. “Put your shoes on. Something that won’t leave a mark.”

“What?”

“If a human is dead, I have to call in the sheriff. They’ll look for prints. Unless your illusions can cover up real physical evidence, you can’t go in with bare feet.”

That made sense. In her own territory, she didn’t bother—but she also rarely worked with local law enforcement. This was Marc’s territory, though, so she’d follow his lead. A pair of flip-flops wouldn’t confine her toes. She hated shoes that did.

Marc picked the lock instead of breaking the door down. The scent of death intensified. Quietly, they slipped into a darkened mudroom, then a tiny, bare kitchen. A bucket of cleaning supplies sat on the counter. No plates, pans, or evidence of food. There never was in a vampire’s house. Marc’s psychic sweep pushed against her shields.

“Do you sense anyone?”

She sent out her own soft probe, searching for any sign of life. “Nothing.”

“They sleep in the basement.” He entered the hallway leading to the front of the home, passing a bathroom, an empty bedroom. He paused at the edge of the living room, vanished his sword. “God damn it.”

Oh. Radha stopped next to him, her breath escaping on a long, heavy sigh. A woman lay between the end of a sofa and the low coffee table, eyes open, her features already locked in the waxy rigidity of death. Middle-aged, dressed in khaki pants, tennis shoes, and yellow latex gloves, she looked like a housewife going about her daily routine. Blood stained the beige carpet beneath her head, a dark pool that must have been congealing for at least a few hours.

As Marc started toward the body, Radha glanced around the room. Nothing broken, nothing disturbed. The front door hadn’t been forced. The heavy drapes over the south-facing picture window were wide open. Strange, that. She didn’t know any vampires who weren’t careful about closing each curtain in the house every morning, even if they slept in a windowless room. Frowning, she walked around the sofa—stopped behind it. Oh, no.

“Marc.”

Crouched beside the woman, he looked up. “What did you find?”

“Vampire ash. Two piles, I think. Jewelry.” She bent, sifted through the sandy remains, selected a man’s signet ring and showed it to him. “Did Bronner wear this?”

Jaw clenching, Marc nodded.

“A woman’s ring is here, too. A set of earrings. No clothes.” Sick to her stomach, she glanced toward the center of the living room again. Hairs and blood clung to the nearest corner of the coffee table. “What happened here? Did this woman drag them up here into the sun, and then . . . trip? Hit her head?”

“I don’t think so.” He slid up the woman’s short sleeves, revealing the faint discoloration ringing her upper arms. “I think she was grabbed, pushed.”

Pushed. Not the most efficient way of killing someone. Her gaze settled on the woman’s gloves, and she recalled the cleaning supplies in the kitchen. “Maybe she was here to work and surprised someone. But when? A demon couldn’t have done this to her, not without Deacon and Rosalia being called to slay him—and you’d have sensed them coming.”

If not a demon, then a vampire or a human. Vampires didn’t have to follow the Rules forbidding demons from killing humans, though most knew better than to try. And in many vampire communities, leadership was determined by strength; Guardians didn’t interfere with vampire power struggles. If another vampire wanted to take Bronner’s place, no Guardian would slay the vampire for killing him. Marc and Radha would slay any vampire who killed a human, however.

But if she’d been killed after the sun had risen, a vampire couldn’t have done it.

Gently, Marc tested the woman’s joints. “She’s cold, and almost in full rigor. At least this morning, maybe earlier.”

So maybe a vampire, maybe not.

He rose to his feet. “Stay here, make sure no one sees anything through the windows. I’ll check out the basement.”

It only took him a few moments. Radha had time to vanish all of the ash and jewelry into her psychic storage before he returned, his mouth a tight line of frustration.

“Blood on the bed, the stairs. They were killed down there, dragged up here—the blood trail down the hall was ashed by the sun. The basement door locks from the inside. A reinforced door and lock, but it was bashed down. A human couldn’t have done that. Most vampires couldn’t. You or I could.”

“And a demon could,” Radha finished for him. When he nodded, she said, “Do we contact the other vampires in the community, tell them about Bronner?”

“Not yet. You vanished the ash?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I left the blood. There’s nothing in the DNA that looks different from a human’s, and if a human did this, maybe there’s a fingerprint, a hair, or something for the courts to nail them with. Did you touch anything?”

She mentally reviewed her steps. “The jewelry, but that’s in my cache now.”

“All right.” He called in a cell phone, began typing out a message. “I’m going through Special Investigations, asking them to leave an anonymous tip for the sheriff. I’ll call the county coroner myself. He knew Bronner, knew what he was and was able to keep quiet about it, so I’ll let him know I’ve got the ash, that I need to know the result of the exam as quickly as possible. The sheriff will probably list Bronner and his partner as missing, though.”

“You think a human did it,” Radha realized. “Despite the bashed-in lock.”

“I’m leaning that way. If he was awake, Bronner wouldn’t have still been in bed, naked, while someone broke into the basement. But we’ll have a better idea whether a vampire could have done it if the coroner can give us a time of death. That’ll take him a couple of hours tonight, so I’ll arrange to meet with him as soon as he’s done with the autopsy. The vampire community can wait until then.”

“Do you know the coroner?”

“No. But Bronner trusted him.”

“Do you?”

“No. I haven’t met him. And Bronner said he had the coroner in his pocket. That says‘payout’to me. How many demons with money have you known?”

“All of them,” Radha said. “You think they got together and did this?”

“No. But I do wonder about any man that can be bought, even if that money comes from a good man like Bronner.” He snapped the phone shut. “Ready? We can’t let anyone see us leave.”

“I’ve got that covered. What are we doing until we meet with the coroner?”

“We’re going to let the sheriff do his job. My place is a fifteen-minute flight away. We’ll wait there. I want to step back for a few hours, do a little research and see if anything anyone told me today doesn’t fit. Then take another look at everything, see if there’s anything I haven’t been seeing.”

His gaze fell on the woman’s body, her sightless eyes. Finally, shaking his head, he turned away.

“God damn it,” he said again.