UNDEAD IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL 
Kim Harrison 


 

1 
P hone cradled between her shoulder and ear, Ivy Tamwood scooped another chunk of chili up with her fries, leaning over the patterned wax paper so it wouldn’t drip onto her desk. Kisten was bitching about something or other, and she wasn’t listening, knowing he could go on for half her lunch break before winding down. The guy was nice to wake up to in the afternoon, and a delight to play with before the sun came up, but he talked too much.

Which is why I put up with him, she mused, running her tongue across the inside of her teeth before swallowing. Her world had gone too quickly from alive to silent on that flight back home from California. My God, was it seven years now? It had been unusual to foster a high-blood living vampire child into a sympathetic camarilla, taking her from home and family for her last two years of high school, but Piscary, the master vampire her family looked to, had become too intense in his interest in her before she developed the mental tools to deal with it, and her parents had intervened at some cost, probably saving her sanity.

I could keep Freud in Havana cigars all by my lone some, Ivy thought, taking another bite of carbs and protein. Twenty-three ought to be far enough away from that scared sixteen-year-old on the sun-drenched tarmac to forget, but even now, after multiple blood and bed partners, a six-year degree in social sciences, and landing an excellent job where she could use her degree, she found her confidence was still tied to the very things that screwed her up.

She missed Skimmer and her reminder that life was more than waiting for it to end so she could get started living. And while Kisten was nothing like her high school roommate, he had filled the gap nicely these last few years.

Smiling wickedly, Ivy gazed through the plate-glass wall that looked out on the floor of open offices. Weight shifting, she crossed her legs at her knees and leaned farther across her desk, imagining just what gap she’d like Kisten to fill next.

“Damn vampire pheromones,” she breathed, and pulled herself straight, not liking where her thoughts took her when she spent too much time in the lower levels of the Inderland Security tower. Working the homicide division of the I.S. got her a real office instead of a desk in the middle of the floor with the peons, but there were too many vamps—both living and undead—down here for the air circulation to handle.

Kisten’s tirade about prank phone calls ended abruptly. “What do vamp pheromones have to do with humans attacking my pizza delivery crew?” he asked in a lousy British accent. It was his newest preoccupation, and one she hoped he’d tire of soon.

Rolling her chair closer to her desk, Ivy took a swig of her imported bottled water, eyes askance on the boss’s closed door across the large room. “Nothing. You want me to pick up anything on the way home? I might be able to wing out of here early. Art’s in the office, which means someone died and I have to go to work. Bet you first bite he’s going to want to cut my lunch short”—she took another sip—“and I’m going to take it off the end of my day.”

“No,” Kisten said. “Danny is doing the shopping today.”

One of the perks of living atop a restaurant, she thought, as Kisten started in on a shopping list she didn’t care about. Pulling her plate of fries off her desk, she set them on her lap, being careful to not spill anything on her leather pants. The boss’s door opened, catching her eye when Art came out, shaking hands with Mrs. Pendleton. He’d been in there a full half hour. There was a stapled pack of paper in his hands, and Ivy’s pulse quickened. She’d been sitting on her ass going over Art’s unsolved homicides for too long. The man had no business being in homicide. Dead did not equal smart.

Unless being smart was in manipulating us into giving the undead our blood. Ivy forced herself to keep eating, thinking the undead targeted their living vampire kin more out of jealousy than maintaining good human relations, as was claimed. Having been born with the vampire virus embedded into her genome, Ivy enjoyed a measure of the undeads’ strengths without the drawbacks of light fatality and pain from religious artifacts. Though not in line with Art’s abilities, her hearing and strength were beyond a human’s, and her sense of smell was tuned to the softer flavors of sweat and pheromones. The undeads’ need for blood had been muted from a biological necessity to a bloodlust that imparted a high like no other when sated…addictive when mixed with sex.

Her gaze went unbidden to Art, and he smiled from across the wide floor as if knowing her thoughts, his steady advance never shifting and the packet of paper in his hand moving like a banner of intent. Appetite gone, she swiveled her chair to put her back to the room. “Hey, Kist,” she said, interrupting his comments about Danny’s recent poor choice of mushrooms, “change of plans. By the amount of paperwork, it’s one of Art’s cleanup runs. I won’t be home till sunup.”

“Again?”

“Again?” she mocked, fiddling with a colored pen until she realized it telegraphed her mood and set it down with a sharp tap. “God, Kisten. You make it sound like it’s every night.”

Kisten sighed. “Leave the paperwork for tomorrow, love. I don’t know why you bust your ass so hard. You’re not moving up until you let Artie the Smarty go down on you.”

“Is that so,” she said, feeling her face warm and the chili on her tongue go flat. Tossing her plate to her desk, she forced herself to remain reclining with her booted feet spread wide when what she wanted to do was hit someone. Martial arts meditation had kept her out of civil court until now; self-control was how she defined herself.

“You knew the system when you hired in,” he coaxed, and Ivy tugged the sleeves to her skintight black pullover from her elbows to her wrists to hide her faint scars. She could feel Art crossing the room, and adrenaline tickled the pit of her stomach. It was a run, she told herself, but she knew Art was the reason for the stir in her, not the chance to get out of the office.

“Why do you think I wanted to work with Piscary instead of the I.S.?” Kisten was saying, words she had heard too many times before. “Give him what he wants. I don’t care.” He laughed. “Hell, it might be nice having you come home wanting to watch a movie instead of ready to drain me.”

Reaching to her desk, she finished her water, wiping the corner of her mouth with a careful pinky. She had known the politics—hell, she had grown up in them—but that didn’t mean she had to like the society she was forced to work within. She had watched it end her mother’s life, watched it now eat her father away, killing him little by little. It was the only path open to her. And she was good at it. Very good at it. That’s what bothered her the most.

She stiffened when Art fixed his brown eyes to the back of her neck. Undead vamps had been looking at her since she had turned fourteen; she knew the feeling. “I thought you stuck with Piscary because of his dental plan,” she said sarcastically. “His dentals in your neck.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny,” Kisten said, his good humor doing nothing to ease her agitation.

“I like what I do,” she said, putting a hand up against the knock on her open door. She didn’t turn, smelling the stimulating, erotic scent of undead vampire in her doorway. “I’m damn good at it,” she added to remind Art she was the reason they had pulled his murder-solved ratio up the last six months. “At least I’m not delivering pizzas for a living.”

“Ivy, that’s not fair.”

It was a low blow, but Art was watching her, and that would unnerve anyone. After six months of working with her, he had picked up on all her idiosyncrasies, learning by reading her pulse and breathing patterns exactly what would set her rush flowing. He had been using the information to his advantage lately, making her life hell. It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive—God, they all were—but he had been working the same desk for over thirty years. His lack of ambition didn’t make her eager to jump his jugular, and being coaxed into something by way of her instincts when her thoughts said no left a bad taste in her mouth.

Even worse, she had realized after the first time she had come home hungering for blood and finding Piscary waiting for her that the master vampire had probably arranged the partnership knowing she’d resist—and Art would insist—the end result being she’d be hungry for a little decompression when she got home. The sad thing was she wasn’t sure if she was resisting Art because she didn’t like him or because she got off on the anticipation of not knowing if it would be Piscary, Kisten, or both that she’d be calming herself with.

But her weakness was no reason to bark at Kisten. “Sorry,” she said into the hurt silence.

Kisten’s voice was soft, forgiving, since he knew Art was playing hard on her. “You gotta go, love?” he asked in that lame accent. Who was he trying to be, anyway?

“Yeah.” Kisten was silent, and she added, “See you tonight,” that curious tightening in her throat and the need to physically touch someone settling more firmly inside her. It was the first stage of a full-blown bloodlust, and whether it stemmed from Kisten or Art didn’t matter. Art would be the one trying to capitalize on it.

“Bye,” Kisten replied tightly, and the phone clicked off. He said it didn’t bother him, but he was alive as she was, with the same emotions and jealousy they all had. That he was so understanding of the choices she had to make made it even worse. She often felt they were like children in a warped family where love had been perverted by sex, and the easiest way to survive was to submit. Her invisible manacles had been created by her very cells and hardened by manipulation. And she didn’t know if she would remove them if she could.

Ivy watched her pale fingers as she set the phone down. Not a tremor showed. Not a hint of her rising agitation. That was how she kept them away—placid, quiet, no emotion—a skill learned while working summers at Pizza Piscary’s. She had learned it so well that only Skimmer knew who she really wanted to be, though she loved Kisten enough to show him glimpses.

Carefully removing all emotion from her face, she swiveled her chair, boot tips trailing along the faded carpet. Art was standing to take up half her doorway, with a packet of stapled paper in his long fingers. Clearly they had a run. By the amount of paperwork, it couldn’t be pressing. Probably cleanup from before she became his partner and started following behind him with her dust broom and pan.

“I’m eating,” she said, as if it wasn’t obvious. “Can it wait a friggin’ ten minutes?”

The dead vampire—at least fifty years her senior on paper, her contemporary by appearances—inclined his head in a practiced motion to convey a sly sophistication mixed with a healthy dose of sex appeal. Soft black curls fell to frame his brown eyes, holding her attention. His small, boyish features and his tight ass made him look like a member of a boy band. He had the same amount of personality, too, unless he made an effort. But God, he smelled good, his aroma mixing with hers to set in play a series of chemical reactions that whipped her blood and sexual libido high. “I’ll wait,” he said, smiling.

Oh joy. He’d wait. Art’s practiced voice sent a trail of anticipation down her back to settle at the base of her spine. Damn it all to hell, he was hungry. Or maybe he was bored. He’d wait. He’d been waiting six months, learning the best way to manipulate her. And she knew she’d more than enjoy herself if she let him.

Bloodlust in living vampires was tied to their sex drive, an evolutionary adaptation helping ensure an undead vampire would have a willing blood supply to keep him or her sane. Being “bidden for blood” imparted a sexual high; the older and more experienced the vampire, the better the rush, the ultimate, of course, being blood-bidden by a powerful undead undead.

Art had been dead for four decades, having passed the tricky thirty-year ceiling where most undead vampires failed to keep themselves mentally intact and walked into the sun. Why Art was still working was a mystery. He must need the money since he certainly wasn’t good at his job.

The vampire breathed deeply as he stood on her threshold, pulling in her mood the way she inhaled a rare fragrance. Sensing her rising agitation, Art rocked into motion, rounding her desk and easing himself down in her leather office chair in the corner. Her face blanked as her pulse quickened. Art was the only person to ever sit there. Most people respected her attempts to avoid office friendships—if her sharp sarcasm and outright ignoring them weren’t enough. But then, Art didn’t like her for her personality but for the reputation he had yet to get a taste of.

Eyes on her immaculate desk, Ivy exhaled. He was dead, and she was alive. They were both vampires driven by blood: she sexually, he for survival. A match made in heaven—or hell.

Art reclined, smiling, with his long legs crossed and an ankle on one knee, managing to look powerful and relaxed at the same time. He brushed his hair back, trailing his fingers suggestively across his face kept at a clean-shaven tidiness as he tried to blend in with the younger crowd who would be more receptive to what he offered.

A shiver of anticipation rose through her. It didn’t make any difference that it came from Art pumping the air full of pheromones rather than true interest. The desire to satiate herself was as much a part of her as breathing. Inescapable. Why not get it over with? The gossip was because she was resisting, not because it was expected. And that was why he sat there in his expensive slacks and shirt with his two-hundred-dollar shoes and that confident bad-boy smile. The dead could afford to be patient.

“Tying off some of your loose ends?” she said dryly, glancing at the packet of papers and leaning back. She wanted to cross her arms over her chest, but instead put her boot heels up on the corner of her desk. Confident. She was in control of herself and her desires. Art could turn her into a pliant supplicant if he bespelled her, but that was cheating, and he would lose more than face, he’d lose the respect of every vamp in the tower. He had to bid for her blood. Playing on her bloodlust was expected, but bespelling her would piss Piscary off. She wasn’t a human to be taken advantage of and the paperwork “adjusted.” She was the last living Tamwood vampire, and that demanded respect, especially from him.

“Homicide,” he said, his teeth a white flash against his dark skin that hadn’t seen the sun in decades. “We can get there before the photographer if you’re done with your…lunch.”

She allowed a sliver of her surprise to show. A homicide wouldn’t come with that much information. Not anymore. She had pulled their solved ratio high enough that they were often among the first on the scene. Which meant they’d get an address, not a file. As her eyes returned to the papers he had set over his crotch, he moved them so she was looking right where he wanted her to. Irritation flickered over her. Her eyes rose to meet his gaze, and his smile widened to show a glimpse of teasing fang.

“This?” he said, standing in a graceful motion too fast for a human. “This is your six-month evaluation. Ready to go? It’s clear across the bridge in the Hollows.”

Ivy stood, part habit and part worry. Her work had been textbook exemplary. Art didn’t want her moving up the ladder and out from under him, but the worst scenario would be a reprimand, and she hadn’t done anything to warrant that. Actually the worst would be that he’d give her a shitty review and she’d be stuck here another six months.

Her job in homicide was a short stop on the way to where she belonged in upper management, where her mother had been and where Piscary wanted her to be. She had expected to be on this floor for six months, maybe a year, working with Art until her honed skills pulled her into the Arcane Division, and then to management, and finally a lower-basement office. Thank God her money and schooling let her skip the grunt position of runner. Runners were the lowest in the I.S. tower, the cops on the corner giving traffic tickets. Starting there would have put her back a good five years.

Confident and suave, Art brushed by her, his hand trailing across the upper part of her back in a professional show of familiarity that no one could find fault with as he guided her out of her office. “Let’s take my car,” he said, plucking her purse and coat from behind her door and giving them to her. A jingle of metal pulled her hand up in anticipation, and she caught his keys as he dropped them into her waiting palm. “You drive.”

Ivy said nothing, her faint bloodlust evaporating in concern. That he was pleased with her evaluation meant she wouldn’t be. Arms swinging as if unconcerned, she walked beside him to the elevators, finding herself in the unusual position of meeting the faces of the few people eating at their desks. She hadn’t made friends, so instead of sympathy, she found a mocking satisfaction.

Her tension rose, and she kept her breathing to a measured pace to force her pulse to slow. Whatever Art had scrawled on her evaluation was going to keep her here—her family name and money had pulled her as far as they could. Unless she played office politics, this was where she was going to stay. With Art? The luscious-smelling, drop-dead gorgeous, but lackluster Art?

“Well, screw that,” she whispered, feeling her blood rise to her skin and her mind shift into overdrive. That was not going to happen. She would work so well and so hard that Piscary would talk to Mrs. Pendleton and get her out of here and where she belonged.

“That’s the idea,” Art murmured, hearing only her words, not her thoughts. But Piscary wasn’t going to help her. The bastard was enjoying the side benefits of her coming home frustrated and hungry from Art’s attempts at seducing her blood. If she couldn’t handle this alone, then she deserved the humiliation of picking up after Art the rest of her life.

They halted at the twin sets of elevators in the wide hallway. Ivy stood with her hip cocked, frustrated and listening to the soft conversation filtering in from the nearby offices. Art was attractive—more so given the pheromones, God help her—but she didn’t respect him, and letting her instincts rule her conscious thought, even to move ahead, sounded like failure to her.

Leaning closer than necessary, Art pushed the UP button. His scent rolled over her, and while fighting the pure pleasure, she watched his eyes go to the heavy clock above the doors to check that the sun was down. She could feel his confidence that the sun would rise with him getting his way, and it pissed her off.

Her booted foot tapped, and her image in the double silver doors did the same. Behind her, Art’s reflection watched her with a knowing slant to his pretty-boy features. He was an ass. A sexy, powerful, conceited, ass. Because of who she was, it was assumed that she would rise in status by way of her blood, not her skills or knowledge. It was how business was done if you were a vampire. Always had been. Always would be. There were papers to sign and legalities to observe when a vamp set his or her sights on anyone other than another vampire, but having been born into it, she fell under rules older than human or Inderland law. That she had been conditioned to enjoy giving her blood to another left her feeling like a whore if it ended with her being alone. And she knew it would with Art.

As her mother had said, the only way out was to give them what they wanted, to sell herself and keep selling until she reached the top where no one would have a claim on her. If she did this, she would be promoted out from under Art and someone a little smarter and more depraved would be her new partner. Everyone would want a taste of her on her way up. God, she might as well break off her fangs and become an unclaimed shadow. But she had grown up with Piscary and found that the more powerful and older the vampire, the more subtle the manipulation, until it could be confused with love.

Taking a slow breath, she touched the ponytail she had put her hair in this afternoon, pulling the band out and shaking the black waist-length hair free. It and her brown eyes were from her mother. Her six-foot height and pale skin she got from her father. Accenting her Asian heritage was an oval face, heart-shaped mouth, thin eyebrows, and a leggy body toned by martial arts. No piercings apart from her ears and a belly button ring Skimmer had sweet-talked her into while high on Brimstone after finals, kept as a reminder. Twenty-three, and already tired of life.

Art was gazing at her reflection beside his, and his eyes flashed black when she melted her posture from annoyed to sultry. God, she hated this…but she was going to enjoy it, too. What the hell was wrong with her?

Pulling away from Art, she set her back casually against the wall and put one foot behind her, balancing it on a toe as they waited for the lift. “You’re a fool if you think I’m going to let an evaluation keep me in this crappy job,” she said, not caring if the people in earshot heard. They probably had a pool going as to where and when he’d break her skin.

Art moved with an affected slowness, eyes pupil-black. He knew he had her; this was foreplay. Her eyes closed when he placed the flat of his arm beside her head, leaning to whisper in her ear, “I like you following behind me, tying off my loose ends. Picking up my slack. Doing my—paperwork.”

He smelled like leaf ash, dusky and thick, and the scent went right to the primitive part of her brain and flicked a switch. Her breath caught, then came fast. She hesitated, then with a feeling of self-loathing she knew would fade and return like the sun, she breathed deeply, bringing his scent deep inside, coating her dislike for him with the sweet promise of blood ecstasy, silencing her desire to avoid him with the quick, bitter lust for blood. She knew what she was doing. She knew she would enjoy it. Sometimes, she wondered why she agonized over it. Kisten didn’t.

Letting his keys drop to the carpet with her coat and purse, she curled an arm around his neck and pulled him close, an inviting sound lifting through her, realigning her thoughts, shutting down her reasoning to protect her sanity. “What do you want to change my evaluation?”

She sensed more than saw his smile widen as she leaned forward. His earlobe was warm when she put her lips on it, sucking with just a hint of pressure from her teeth. He slid his fingers along her collarbone to rest atop her shoulder, easing his fingers under her shirt. Eyes closing at the growing warmth, her muscles tensed. He exhaled against her, a soft promise to bring her to life with an exquisite need, then satisfy it savagely.

The elevator dinged and slid open, but neither of them moved. Art breathed deeply when the doors closed, an almost subliminal growl that touched the pit of her soul. “Your paperwork is above reproach,” he said, his fingers moving to grip the back of her neck.

A jolt of blood-passion lit through her. Without thought, she jerked him forward into her, spinning them until Art’s back hit the wall where hers had been. Breath fast, she met his hunger-laced eyes with her own. She felt her jaw tighten and knew her eyes had dilated. Why had she put this off? It was going to be glorious. What did she care if she respected him? Like he respected her? Like any of them did?

“And my investigative skills are phenomenal,” she said, maneuvering a long leg between his and hooking her foot behind his shoe, tugging until their hips touched. Adrenaline zinged, promising more.

Art smiled, showing his longer canines that death had given him. Hers were short by comparison, but they were more than sharp enough to get the job done. Undead vamps loved them. She likened it to how a sexual pervert loved children. “True,” he said, “but your interpersonal skills suck.” His smile widened. “More accurately, you don’t.”

Ivy chuckled low, deep, and honestly. “I do my job, Artie.”

The vampire pushed from the elevator, and together they found the opposite wall. Ivy’s jaw clenched as he tried to physically manipulate her, making her feel as if she was moving on animal instinct. She had been putting this off so long that it might last all night if she let it.

“This isn’t about your job,” Art said, his fingers tracing the trails he wanted his lips to follow, but there was a strict policy against bloodletting in the tower. She could tease and flirt, drive him crazy, let him drive her to the brink, but no blood. Until later.

“It’s about putting your time in,” he continued, and Ivy shivered when his lips touched her neck. God help her, he’d found an old scar. Pulse hard and fast, she pushed him away and around again so he was between her and the wall. He let her do it.

“I am putting my time in.” Ivy put a hand to his shoulder and shoved him back. He hit the wall with a thump, black eyes glinting from behind his black curls. “What is my evaluation going to say, Mr. Artie?” She leaned into his neck, taking a fold of skin between her lips and tugging. Her eyes closed, and as her own bloodlust pulsed through her, she forgot that they were standing in the elevator hallway, deep underground, amid the hum of circulation fans and electric-lit black.

Art rode the feeling she knew she was instilling in him, letting it grow. He had been dead long enough to have gained the restraint to string the foreplay out to their limits. “You’re argumentative, closed, and refuse to work in a team environment,” he said, his voice husky.

“Oh…” She pouted, gripping the hair at the base of his scalp hard enough to hurt. “I’m not bad, Mr. Artie. I’m a good little girl…when properly motivated.”

Her voice had an artful lilt, playful yet domineering, and he responded with a low sound. The bound heat in it hit her, and her fingers released. She had found his limit.

He moved so quickly, she sensed more than saw the motion. His hand abruptly covered hers, forcing her fingers back among the black ringlets at his neck and making them close about them again. “Your evaluation is subjective,” he said, his eyes stopping her breath as time balanced. “I decide if you’re promoted. Piscary said you’d be a worthwhile hunt, pull me up in the I.S. hierarchy as you resisted, but that you’d give in and I’d have a better job and a taste of you.”

At that, Ivy paused, jealousy clouding her. Art was conceited enough to believe Piscary was giving her to him when the truth was Piscary was using Art to manipulate her. It was a compliment in a backward way, and she despised herself for loving Piscary all the more, craving the master vampire’s attention and favor even as she hated him for it.

“I am giving in,” she said, anger joining her bloodlust. It was a potent mix most vamps craved. And here she was, giving it to him. The only thing they liked more was the taste of fear.

But Art’s domineering smile surprised her. “No,” he admonished, using his undead strength to force her back to the elevators. Her back hit hard, and she inhaled to catch her breath. “It’s not that easy anymore,” he said. “Six months ago, you could have gotten away with a nip and a new scar I could brag about, but not now. I want to know why Piscary indulges you beyond belief the way he does. I want everything, Ivy. I want your blood and your body. Or you don’t move from that shitty little office without dragging me with you.”

Fear, unusual and shocking, trickled through her and gripped her heart. Art sensed it, and he sucked in air. “God yes,” he moaned, his fingers jerking in a spasm. “Give this to me…”

Ivy felt her face go cold, and she tried to push Art off her, failing. Blood she could give, but her blood and body both? She had flirted with insanity the year Piscary had called her to him, breaking her, lifting her to glorious heights of passion her young body could scarcely contain before dropping her soul to the basest of levels to pay for it, to make her kneel for more and do anything to please him. She knew it had been a studied manipulation, one practiced on her mother, and her grandmother, and her great-grandmother before that until he was so good at it that the victim wept for the abuse. But that didn’t stop her from wanting it.

True to his word, she got as good as she gave. And she almost killed herself from the highs and lows as Piscary carefully built within her an addiction to the euphoria of sharing blood, warping it, mixing it with her need for love and her craving for acceptance. He had molded her into a savagely passionate blood partner, rich in the exotic tastes that evolve in mixing the deeper emotions of love and guilt with something that, at its basest, was a savage act. That he had done it only to make her blood sweeter didn’t matter. It was who she was, and a guilty part of herself gloried in the abandonment she allowed herself there that she denied herself everywhere else.

She had survived by creating the lie that sharing blood was meaningless unless mixed with sex, whereupon it became a way to show someone you loved him or her. She knew that the two were so mixed up in her mind she couldn’t separate them, but she had always been in a position to choose who she would share herself with, avoiding the realization that her sanity hung on a lie. But now?

Her eyes fixed on Art’s black orbs, taking in his mocking satisfaction and checked bloodlust. He would be an exquisite rush, both beautiful and skilled. He would let her burn, make her weep for his pull upon her, and in return she would give him everything he craved to find and more—and she would wake alone and used, not cradled among sheltering arms that forgave her for her warped needs, even if that forgiveness was born in yet more manipulation.

Jaw clenching, she shoved Art away and moved to get her back from the wall. He fell back a step, surprised.

She did not want to do this. She had protected herself with the lie that blood was just blood, and had been prepared for the mental pain of whoring that much of herself. But Art wanted to mix blood with her body. It would touch too closely to the truth to keep the lie that held her intact. She couldn’t do it.

Art’s lust shifted to anger, an emotion that crossed into death where compassion couldn’t. “Why don’t you like me?” he questioned bitterly, jerking her to him. “I’m not enough?”

Ivy’s pulse hammered as they stood before the elevators, and she cursed herself for her lack of control. He was enough. He was more than enough to satisfy her hunger, but she had a soul to satisfy, too. “You have no ambition,” she whispered, instincts pulling her into his warmth even as her mind screamed no. Art’s jaw trembled, and his heady scent sang through her, starting a war within her. What if she couldn’t find a way past this? She had always been able to avoid a test between her instinct and willpower by walking away, but here that wasn’t an option.

“Then you aren’t looking deep enough.” Art gripped her shoulder until it hurt. “Either I get a taste of why Piscary indulges you, or you take me up with you, promotion by promotion. I don’t care, Ivy girl.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said, fear mixing with the sexual heat he was pulling from her. Piscary called her that, the bastard. If she gave in, it would start her on the fast track at work but kill what kept her sane. And if she held to her lie and refused, Art had her doing his dirty work.

Art’s smile became domineering as he saw her realize the trap. That Piscary had probably arranged the situation to test her resolve only made her love the master vampire more. She was warped. She was warped and lost.

But her very familiarity with the system she had been born into would save her. As she stilled her panic, her mind started to work, and a wicked smile curled the corner of her lips. “You forgot something, Art,” she said, tension falling from her as she faked passivity and hung in his grip. “If you break my skin without my permission, Piscary will have you staked.”

All she had to do was best her hunger. She could do that. 

He gripped her tighter, his fingers pressing into her neck where the visible scars of Piscary’s claim had been hidden with surgery. The scars were gone, but the potent mix of neuron stimulators and receptor mutagens remained. Piscary had claimed her, sensitized her entire body so that only he could make it resonate to past passions with just his thoughts and pheromones, but she still felt a spike of desire dive to her groin at the thought of Art’s teeth sinking cleanly into her. She had to get away from him before her bloodlust took over.

“You knew that, didn’t you?” she mocked, her skin tingling.

“You’ll enjoy it,” he breathed, and the tingles spun into heat. “When I’m done with you, you’ll beg for more. Why would you care who bit who first?”

“Because I like to say no,” she said, finding it difficult to keep from running her fingernail hard down his neck to bring him alive with desire. She could do it. She knew exactly how exhilarating the feeling of domination and utter control over a monster like him would feel. Her fear was gone, and without it, the bloodlust returned all the harder. “You take my blood without my acquiescence, and I’ll get you bumped down to runner,” she said. “You can coerce, you can threaten, you can slice your wrist and bleed on my lips, but if you take my blood without me saying yes, then you—lose.” She leaned forward until her lips were almost touching his. “And I win,” she finished, pulse fast and aching for him to run his hand against her skin.

He pushed her away. Ivy caught her balance easily, laughing.

“Piscary said you’d resist,” he said, his eyes black and tension making his posture both threatening and attractive.

God, the things she could do with this one, she thought in spite of herself. “Piscary is right,” she said, cocking her hip and running her hand provocatively down it. “You’re in over your head, Art. I like saying no, and I’m going to drive you into taking me without my permission, and then?” She smiled, coming close and curling her arms about his neck and playing with the tips of his curly hair.

Eyes black with hunger, Art smiled, taking her fingers in hers and kissing the tips. The hint of teeth against her skin brought a shiver through her, and her fingers trembled in his grip. “Good,” he said, voice husky. “The next six months are going to be pure hell.”

Instinct rose and gathered. Licking her lips, she pushed him from her. “You’ve no idea.”

He retreated to the wall beside the elevator. With a friendly ding, the elevator door opened as he bumped the call button. He stepped into the elevator, still wearing that shit-grin. “Coming?” he mocked, looking too damn good to resist in the back of the elevator.

Feeling the pull, she swooped for his keys beside her purse. Her pulse was faster than she liked, and she felt wire-tight from hunger thrumming through her. Damn it, it was only nine. How was she going to get to the end of her shift without taking advantage of the mail boy?

“I’m taking my cycle,” she said, throwing his keys at him. “I’ll meet you there. Better put your caps on. I want out of this crappy job, and I’d say you’ve got a week. You won’t be able to resist once I put my mind to it.”

Art laughed, ducking his head. “I’m older than you think, Ivy. You’ll be begging me to sink my teeth by Friday.”

The door closed and the elevator rose to the parking garage. Ivy felt her eyes return to normal as the circulation fans pulled away the pheromones they had both been giving off. One week, and she’d be out from under him. One week, and she’d be moving to where she belonged.

“One week, and I’ll have that bastard taking advantage of me,” she whispered, wondering if at the end of it, she would be counted the winner.

 

2 
I went an entire two weeks saying no to Piscary, once, Ivy thought as she idled into the apartment complex’s parking lot on her cycle’s momentum. Art didn’t have a shit’s chance in a Cincy sewer.

Feeling a flush of confidence, she parked her bike under a streetlight so the assembled I.S. officers could get a good look. It was a Nightwing X–31, one of the few things she had splurged on after getting her job at the I.S. and a paycheck that wasn’t tied to Piscary or her mother. When she rode it, she was free. She wasn’t looking forward to winter.

Engine rumbling under her provocatively, Ivy took in the multispecies-capability ambulance and the two I.S. cruisers, their lights flashing amber and blue on the faces of gawking neighbors. The U.S. health system had begun catering to mixed species shortly after the Turn, a natural step since only the health care providers who were Inderlanders in hiding survived the T4–Angel virus. But law enforcement had split, and after thirty-six years, would stay that way.

The FIB, or human-run Federal Inderland Bureau, wasn’t here yet. Art wasn’t here yet, either. She wondered who had called the homicide in. The man in the back of the I.S. cruiser in pajama bottoms and handcuffs? The excited neighbor in curlers talking to an I.S. officer?

Art wasn’t the only thing missing, and she scanned the lot for the absent I.S.’s evidence collection van. They wouldn’t show until Inderland involvement was confirmed, and while many humans lived across the river to take advantage of the lower taxes in the Hollows, to think that this was strictly a human matter was a stretch.

The man in the car was in custody. If he had been an Inderlander, he’d be in the tower by now. It seemed they had a human suspect and were waiting for the FIB to collect him. She’d probably find the crime scene almost pristine, with only the people removed to help preserve it.

“Idiot human,” she muttered, her foot coming down to balance her weight as she shut off her cycle and slid the key into the shallow pocket of her leather pants to leave the skull key chain dangling. She knew what she’d find in his apartment. His wife or girlfriend dead over something stupid like sex or money. Humans didn’t know where true rage stemmed from.

Fixing her face into a bland expression to hide her disgust, she removed her helmet and took a deep breath of the night air, feeling the humidity of the unseen river settle deep in her lungs. The man in the back of the cruiser was yelling, trying to get her attention.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her!” he cried, muffled through the glass. “It wasn’t me. I love Ellie. I love Ellie! You gotta believe me!”

Ivy got off her cycle. Clipping her ID to her short leather jacket, she took a moment to collect herself, concentrating on the damp night. The man’s fear, not his girlfriend’s blood he was smearing on the windows, pulled a faint rise of bloodlust into existence. His face was scratched, and the welts were bleeding. The man was terrified. Locking him in the cruiser until the FIB picked him up was for his own safety.

Her boot heels making a slow, seductive cadence to draw attention, Ivy walked to the front door and the pool of light that held two officers. Spotting a familiar face, Ivy let some of the tension slip from her and her arms swing free. “Hi, Rat,” she said, halting on the apartment complex’s six-by-eight common porch. “Haven’t you died yet?”

“It’s not for lack of trying,” the older vamp said, his wrinkles deepening as he smiled. “Where’s Art?”

“Biting himself,” she said, and his partner, a slight woman, laughed. The living vamp looked right out of high school, but Ivy knew it was a witch charm that kept her that way. The woman was pushing fifty, but the disguise was tax deductible since she used her looks to pacify those who needed…pacifying. Ivy nodded warily to her, and got the same in return.

The faint scent of blood coming from the hallway sifted through her brain. It wasn’t much, but after Art’s play for her, her senses were running in overdrive. “Is the body still in there?” she asked, thinking the situation could be useful. Art hadn’t been up long and his resistance would be lower. With a little planning, she might tip him into making a mistake tonight, and she stifled a shudder of anticipation for what that actually meant.

Rat shrugged, eyeing her speculatively. “Body’s in the ambulance. You okay?”

His teeth sinking deep into her, the salt of his dusty blood on her tongue, the rush of adrenaline as he drew from her what made her alive… “I’m fine,” she said. “Vampire?” she questioned, since they usually left bodies for the morgue unless there was a chance it might decide it was well enough to get up.

Rat’s expressive face went hard. “No.” His voice was soft, and she took a pair of slip-on booties that his partner extended to her. “Witch. Pretty, too. But since her staked-excuse of a husband was encouraged to ignore his rights and confessed to beating her up and strangling her, they moved her out. He’s a paint job, Ivy. Only good for draining and painting the walls.”

Ivy frowned, not following his gaze to the man shouting in the cruiser. They moved her?

Rat saw her annoyance and added, “Shit, Ivy. He confessed. We got pictures. There’s nothing here.”

“There’s nothing here when I say there’s nothing here,” she said, stiffening when the recognizable rumble of Art’s late-model Jaguar came through the damp night. Damn it, she had wanted to be in there first.

Ivy’s exposed skin tingled, and she felt a wash of self-disgust. God help her, she was going to use a crime scene to get Art off her back. Someone had died, and she was going to use that to seduce Art into biting her against her will. How depraved could she be? But it was an old feeling, quickly repressed like all the other ugly things in her life.

Handing her purse to Rat, she got a packet of evidence bags and wax pencil in return. “I want the collection van here,” she said, not caring that Rat had just told her to collect any evidence she thought pertinent herself. “I want the place vacuumed as soon as I’m out. And I want you to stop doing my job.”

“Sorry, Ivy.” Rat grinned. “Hey, there’s a poll started about you and Art—”

Ivy stepped forward, coiled arm extending. Rat blocked it, grabbing her wrist and pulling her off balance and into him. She fell into his chest, his weight twice hers. His partner snicked. Ivy had known the strike would never land, but it had burned off a little frustration.

“You know,” Rat breathed, the scent of his partner’s blood fresh on his breath from an earlier tryst, “you really shouldn’t wear those high-heeled boots. They make your balance suck.”

Ivy twisted and broke from him. “I hear they hurt more when I crotch-kick bastards like you,” she said, the fading adrenaline making her head hurt. “Who else has been in there?” she asked, thinking a room stinking of fear would be just the thing to tip Art into a mistake. He was currently standing by the cruiser, looking at the human and letting his blood-ardor grow. Idiot.

Rat was rubbing his lower neck in invitation. God, it had started already. By sunup, they’d all think she was in the market to build up the IOUs necessary to reach the lower basement and she’d be mobbed. Imagining the coming innuendos, suggestions, and unwanted offers, Ivy stifled a sigh. Like the pheromones weren’t bad enough already? Maybe she should start a rumor she had an STD.

“The ambulance crew,” the vampire was saying. “Tia and me to get him out. He was crying over her as usual. A neighbor called it in as a domestic disturbance. Third one this month, but when it got quiet, she got scared and made the call.”

Frowning, Ivy took a last breath of clean night air, and stepped into the hall. Not too many people to confuse things, and Rat knew not to touch anything. The room would be as clean as could be expected. And she wasn’t going to sully it.

The tang of blood strengthened, and after slipping on the blue booties, she bent to duck under the tape across the open door. She stopped inside, taking in someone else’s life: low ceilings, matted carpet, old drapes, new couch, big but cheap TV, even cheaper stereo, and hundreds of CDs. There were self-framed pictures of people on the walls and arranged on the pressboard entertainment shelves. The feminine touches were spotty, like paint splatters. The victim hadn’t lived here very long.

Ivy breathed deeply, tasting the anger left in the air, invisible signposts that would fade with the sun. Blue booties scuffing, she followed the scent of blood to the bathroom. A red handprint gripped the rim of the toilet, and there were several smears on the tub and curtain. Someone had cut his scalp on the tub. The pink bulb gave an unreal cast, and Ivy shut off the exhaust fan with the end of her wax pencil, making a mental note to tell Rat that she had.

The soft hum stopped. In the new silence, she heard the soft conversation and laugh track of a sitcom coming from a nearby apartment. Art’s satisfied voice filtered in from the hallway, and Ivy’s blood pressure rose. Rat had said the man had strangled his wife. She’d seen worse. And though he hadn’t said where they found the body, an almost palpable anger flowed over the bedroom’s doorjamb, broken about the latch with newly painted-over cracks.

Ivy touched the hidden damage with a finger. The bedroom had the same mix of careless bachelor and young woman trying to decorate with little money to spend. Cheap frilly pillows, pink lace draped over ugly lampshades, dust thick on the metal blinds that were never opened. No blood but for smears, and they were likely the suspect’s. Pretty clothes in pink and white were strewn on the bed and floor, and the closet was empty. She had tried to leave. A black TV was in the corner, the remote broken on the floor under a dent in the wall smelling of plaster. On the carpet was Rat’s card and a Polaroid of the woman, askew on the floor by the bed.

Forcing her jaw to unclench, Ivy pulled the air deep into her, reading the room as if the last few hours of emotion had painted the air in watercolors. Any vampire could.

The man in the car had hurt the woman, terrified her, beat her up, and her magic hadn’t stopped him. She had died here, and the heady scents of her fear and his anger started a disturbing and not entirely unwelcome bloodlust in Ivy’s gut. Her fingertips ached, and her throat seemed to swell.

The sound of Art’s scuffing steps cut painfully through her wide-open senses. A thrill of adrenaline built and vanished. Eyes half lidded, she turned, finding a seductive tilt to her hips. Art’s eyes were almost fully dilated. Clearly the fear of the man outside and its echo still vibrating through the room were tugging on his instincts. Maybe this was why he continued to work homicide. Pretty man couldn’t get his fangs wet without a little help, maybe?

“Ivy,” he said, his voice sending that same shiver through her, and she felt a dropping sensation that said her eyes were dilating. “I make the call for the evidence van, not you.”

Posture shifting, Ivy stepped to keep him from getting between her and the door. “You were busy jacking off on the suspect’s fear,” she said lightly. She moved as if to leave, knowing if she played the coy victim it would trigger his bloodlust. As expected, Art’s pupils went wider, blacker. She felt his presence rise up behind her, almost as if pushing her into him. He was pulling an aura, not a real one, but simply strengthening his vampiric presence.

Art snatched her arm, domineering and possessive. Teasing, she feigned to draw away until his grip tightened. “I call the van,” he said, voice dangerous.

“What’s the matter, Art?” she said languorously, pulling her wrist and his hand gripping it to her upper chest. “Don’t like a woman who thinks?” Sexual tension lanced through her. Enjoying it, she put a knuckle between her lips, letting it go with a soft kiss and a skimming of teeth. Piscary had made her who she was, and despite his experience, Art didn’t have a chance.

“You think I’m going to lose it over a fear-laced room and a pair of black eyes?” he said, looking good in his Italian suit and smelling deliciously of wool, ash, and himself.

“Oh, I’m just getting started.” With her free hand, she took Art’s fingers off her wrist. He didn’t stop her. Smiling, she ran her tongue across her teeth, hiding them even as they flashed. The fear in the room flowed through her, inciting instincts older than the pyramids, screaming unhindered through her younger body. She stiffened at the potent rush of blood rising to her skin. She expected it, riding and enjoying it. It wasn’t the scent of blood, it was the fear. She could handle this. She controlled her bloodlust; her bloodlust didn’t control her.

And when she felt that curious drop of pressure in her face as her eyes dilated fully, she turned to Art, her paper-clad boots spread wide as she stood in the middle of the room stinking of sex and blood and fear, lips parted as she exhaled provocatively. A tremble lifted through her, settling in her groin to tell her what could follow if she let it. She wouldn’t give him her blood willingly, and that he might forcibly take it was unexpectedly turning her on.

“Mmmm, it smells good in here,” she said, the adrenaline high scouring through her because she was in control. She was in control of this monster who could kill her with a backhanded slap, who could rip out her throat and end her life, who could make her powerless under him—and who couldn’t touch her blood until she allowed him, bound by tradition and unwritten law. And if he tried, she’d have his ass and a better job both.

Pulse fast, she took a step closer. He wanted her—he was so ready, his shoulders were rock hard and his hands were fists to keep from reaching for her. His inner struggle was showing on his face, and he wasn’t breathing anymore. There was a reason Piscary indulged her. This was part of it, but Art would never taste it all.

“Can’t have…this,” she said, her hand sliding up from her inner thigh, fingers spread wide as they crossed her middle to her chest until they lay provocatively to hide her neck. She felt her pulse lift and fall against them, stirring herself as much as Art. Her eyes were on the vampire before her. He would be savagely magnificent. She exhaled, imagining his teeth sinking into her, reminding her she was alive with the promise of death in his lips.

Almost…it might be worth letting him have his way.

Art read her thought in the very air. In a flash of motion too fast for her to follow, he moved. Ivy gasped, her core pulsing with fear. He jerked her to him. His hand gripped the back of her neck, the other twisted her arm painfully behind her. He hesitated as he caught himself, his eyes black and pained with the control needed to stop. She laughed, low and husky.

“Can’t have this,” she taunted, wishing he would take it as she lolled her head back to expose the length of her neck. Oh God. If only he would… she thought, a faint tickling in her thoughts warning her a war had started between her hunger and will.

“Give it to me,” Art managed, his voice strained, and she smiled as he started to weaken. “Give this to me…”

“No,” she breathed. Her pulse lifted under his hand, and her eyes closed. Her body demanded she say yes, she wanted to say yes. Why, she thought, hunger driving through her as she found his hard shoulders, why didn’t she say yes? Such a small thing…And he was so deliciously beautiful, even if he didn’t stir her soul.

Art sensed her falter, a low growl rising up through him. He pressed her to him, almost supporting her weight. With a new resolve, he nuzzled the base of her neck.

Ivy sucked in her air, clutching him closer. Fire. This was fire, burning promises from her neck to her groin.

“Give this to me,” he demanded, his lips brushing the words against her skin. His hand slipped farther, edging between her coat and shirt, cupping her breast. “Everything…” he breathed, his exhalation filling her, making her whole.

In a breathless wave, instinct rose, crushing her will. No! she panicked even as her body writhed for it. It would turn her into a whore, break her will and crack the lie that kept her sane. But with a frightened jolt, Ivy realized her lips had parted to say yes.

Reality flashed through her, and with a surge of fear, she kneed him in the crotch.

Art let go, falling to kneel before her, his hands covering himself. Not waiting, she fell back a step and snapped a front kick to his jaw. His head rocked back and he hit the floor beside the bed. “You stupid bitch,” he gasped.

“Ass,” she panted, trembling as her body rebelled at the sudden shift of passions. She stood above him, fighting the desire to fall on him, sink her teeth into him while he knelt helpless before her. Damn it, she had to get out of this room. Two unrequited plays for her blood in one night was pushing it.

Slowly Art lost his hunched position and started to chuckle. Ivy felt her face flame. “Get off the floor,” she snapped, backing up. “They haven’t vacuumed yet.”

Still laughing, Art rolled onto his side. “This is going to be one hell of a week,” he said, then hesitated, eyes on the carpet just beyond the bedspread knocked askew. “Give me a collection bag,” he said, reaching into his back pocket.

Bloodlust still ringing in her, Ivy came forward, pulled by his intent tone. “What is it?”

“Give me a bag,” he repeated, his expensive suit clashing with the ugly carpet.

She hesitated, then scooped up the bags from where they had fallen. Checking the time, Ivy jotted down the date and location before handing it to Art. Still on the floor, Art reached under the bed and rolled something shiny into the light with a pen from his pocket. With an eerie quickness, he flicked it into the bag and stood. The growing brown rim about his pupils said he was in control, and smiling to show his teeth, he lifted the bag to the light.

Seeing his confidence, Ivy felt a flash of despair. It had been a game to him. He had never been in danger of losing his restraint. Shit, she thought, the first fingers of doubt she could do this slithering about her heart.

But then she saw what he held, and her worry turned to understanding—and then true concern. “A banshee tear?” she asked, recognizing the tear-shaped black crystal.

Suddenly the words of the distraught man in the car had a new meaning. I didn’t mean to hurt her. It wasn’t me. Pity came from nowhere, making the slice of low-income misery surrounding her all the more distasteful. He probably had loved her. It had been a banshee, feeding him rage until he killed his wife, whereupon the banshee wallowed in her death energy.

It was still murder, but the man had been a tool, not the perpetrator. The murderer was at large somewhere in Cincinnati, with the alibi of time and distance making it hard to link her to the crime. That’s why the tear had been left as a conduit. The banshee had targeted the couple, followed them home, left a tear when they were out, and when sparks flew, added to the man’s rage until he truly wasn’t capable of resisting. It wasn’t an excuse; it was murder by magic—a magic older than vampires. Perhaps older than witches or demons.

Art shook the bag to make the black jewel glitter before letting his arm drop. “We have every banshee on record. We’ll run the tear through the computer and get the bitch.”

Ivy nodded, feeling her pupils contract. The I.S. kept close tabs on the small population of banshees, and if one was feeding indiscriminately in Cincinnati, they could expect more deaths before they caught her.

“Now, where were we,” Art said, slipping an arm about her waist.

“Bastard,” Ivy said, elbowing him in the gut and stepping away. But the strike never landed, and she schooled her face to no emotion when he chuckled at her a good eight feet back. God, he made her feel like a child. “Why don’t you go home after the sun comes up,” she snarled.

“You offering to tuck me in?”

“Go to hell.”

From the hallway came the sounds of soft conversation. The collection van was here. Art breathed deep, bringing the scents of the room into him. His eyes closed and his thin lips curled upward as he exhaled, apparently happy with what he sensed. Ivy didn’t need to breathe to know that the room stank of her fear now, mixing with the dead woman’s until it was impossible to tell them apart.

“See you back at the tower, Ivy.”

Not if I stake you first, she thought, wondering if calling in sick tomorrow was worth the harassment she’d get the next day. She could say she’d been to the doctor about her case of STD—tell everyone she got it from Art.

Art sauntered out of the room, one hand in his pocket, the other dropping the banshee tear onto the entering officer’s clipboard. The werewolf’s eyes widened, but then he looked up, eyes watering. “Whoa!” he said, nose wrinkling. “What have you two been doing in here?”

“Nothing.” Ivy felt cold and small in her leather pants and short coat as she stood in the center of the room and listened to Art say good-bye to Rat and Tia. She forced her hands from her neck to prove it was unmarked.

“Doesn’t smell like nothing,” the man scoffed. “Smells like someone—”

Ivy glared at him as his words cut off. Adrenaline pulsed, this time from worry. She had contaminated a crime scene with her fear, but the man’s eyes held pity, not disgust.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly, his clipboard held to himself as he obviously guessed what had happened. There was too much fear in here for just one person, even a murdered one.

“Fine,” she said shortly. Psychic fear levels weren’t recorded unless a banshee was involved. That she hadn’t known one was, wasn’t an excuse. She’d get reprimanded at the least, worse if Art wanted to blackmail her. And he would. Damn it, could she make this any easier for him? Flushed, she scooped up the rest of the collection bags and gave them to the Were.

“I don’t know how you can work with the dead ones,” the man said, trying to catch her eyes, but Ivy wouldn’t let him. “Hell, they scare my tail over my balls just looking at me.”

“I said, I’m fine,” she muttered. “I want it vacuumed, dusted, and photographed. Don’t bother with a fear level profile. I contaminated it.” She could keep quiet about it, but she’d rather suffer an earned reprimand than Art’s blackmail. “Keep the tear from the press,” she added, glancing at it, small and innocuous on his clipboard. “The last thing we need is the city in a panic, calling us every time a high schooler cries over her boyfriend.”

The man nodded. His stubble was thick, and stifling the thought of how it would feel to rake her fingers and then her teeth over it, Ivy strode from the room, fleeing the stink of the dead woman’s fear. She didn’t like how it smelled exactly like her own.

Ivy passed quickly through the living room and into the hallway, trying not to breathe. She should have planned this, not made a fool of herself by acting on impulse. Because of her assumptions, Art had her by the short hairs. Avoiding him the rest of her day was going to be impossible. Maybe she could spend it researching banshees. The files were stored in the upper levels. Art might follow her, but the Inderlander ratio would be slanted to witch and Were, not only reducing the pheromone levels, but also making it easier to pull out early since the entire tower above ground emptied at midnight with their three to twelve shift. Only the belowground offices maintained the variable sunset to sunrise schedule.

Wine, she thought, forcing herself to look confident and casual when she emerged on the stoop and found the lights of a news crew already illuminating the parking lot. She’d pick up two bottles on the way home so Kisten would be drunk enough not to care if she hurt him.

 

3 
E ven with her intentions to leave at midnight, the sun was up by the time Ivy was idling her bike through the Hollows’s rush-hour traffic, winding her way to the waterfront and the spacious apartment she and Kisten shared above Piscary’s restaurant. That she worked for the force that policed the underground he controlled wasn’t surprising or unintentional, but prudent planning. Though not on the payroll, Piscary ran the I.S. through a complicated system of favors. He still had to obey the laws—or at least not get caught breaking them lest he get hauled in like anyone else. It reminded Ivy of what Camelot had probably really been like.

Her mother had worked in the top of the I.S. hierarchy until she died, and Ivy knew that was where she and Piscary wanted Ivy to be. Piscary dealt in gambling and protection—on paper, both legal ways to make his money—and the master vampire had more finesse than to put her where she’d have to choose between doing what he wanted and what her job required. The corruption was that bad.

Or that good, Ivy thought, checking to see that the guy behind her was watching before she slowed and turned left into the restaurant’s parking lot. If it hadn’t been for the threat of Piscary coming down on aggressive vampires in backstreet justice, the I.S. wouldn’t be able to cope. She was sure that was why most people, including the FIB, looked the other way. The I.S. was corrupt, but the people actually in charge of the city did a good job keeping it civilized.

Ivy slowed her bike by the door to the kitchen and cut the engine, scanning the empty lot. It was Wednesday, and whereas any other day of the week the restaurant would be emptying out of the last stragglers, today it was deserted. Piscary liked a day of rest. At least she wouldn’t have to dodge the waitstaff and their questions as to why her eyes were half dilated. She needed either a long bubble bath before bed, or Kisten, or both.

The breeze off the nearby river was cool and carried the scent of oil and gas. Taking a breath to clear her mind, she pushed the service door open with the wheel of her bike. It didn’t even have a lock to let the produce trucks make their deliveries at all hours. No one would steal from Piscary. For all appearances he obeyed the law, but somehow, you’d find yourself dead anyway.

Purse and twin wine bottles in hand, she left her bike beside the crates of tomatoes and mushrooms and took the cement steps to the kitchen two at a time. She passed the dark counters and cold ovens without seeing them. The faint odor of rising yeast mixed with the lingering odors of the vampires who worked here, and she felt herself relax, her boots making a soft cadence on the tiled floor. The scent brought to memory thoughts of her summers working in the kitchen and, when old enough, on the floor as a waitress. She hadn’t been innocent, but then the ugliness had been lost in the glare of the thrill. Now it just made her tired.

Her pulse quickened when she passed the thick door that led to the elevator and Piscary’s underground apartments. The thought that he would meet her with soothing hands and calculated sympathy was enough to bring her blood to the surface, but her irritation that he was manipulating her kept her moving into the bar. He wouldn’t call her to him, knowing it would cause her more mental anguish to come begging to him when she could take no more, desperate for the reassurance that he still loved her.

It was comfortingly silent in the restaurant proper, and the low ceilings and dim atmosphere seemed to follow her into the closed-party rooms in the back. A wide stairway behind a door led to the private second floor. Her hand traced the wall for balance as she rose up the wide, black-wood stairs, eager to find Kisten and an understanding ear that wasn’t attached to a manipulating mind.

She and Kisten lived in the converted apartment that took up the entire top floor of the old shipping warehouse. Ivy liked the openness, arbitrarily dividing it into spaces with folding screens and strategically placed furniture. The windows were spacious and smeared on the outside with the dirt and grime of forty years. Piscary didn’t like being that exposed, and this granted the two of them a measure of security.

Wine bottles clinking, Ivy set them on the table at the top of the stairs, thinking she and Kisten were like two abused children, craving the attention of the very person who had warped them, loving him out of desperation. It was an old thought, one that had lost its sting long ago.

Shuffling off her coat, she set it and her purse by the wine. “Kist?” she called, her voice filling the silence. “I’m home.” She picked the bottles back up and frowned. Maybe she should have gotten three.

There was no answer, and as she headed back toward the kitchen to chill the wine, the scent of blood shivered through her like an electrical current. It wasn’t Kisten’s.

Her feet stopped, and she breathed deeply. Her head swiveled to the corner where the deliverymen had put her baby grand last week. It had dented her finances more than the bike, but the sound of it in this emptiness made her forget everything until the echoes faded.

“Kist?”

She heard him take a breath, but didn’t see him. Her face blanked and every muscle tightened as she paced to the couches arranged about her piano. The dirty sunshine pooling in glinted on the black sheen of the wood, and she found him there, kneeling on the white Persian rug between the couch and the piano, a girl in tight jeans, a black lacy shirt, and a worn leather coat sprawled before him.

Kisten lifted his head, an unusual panic in his blue eyes. “I didn’t do it,” he said, his bloodied hands hovering over the corpse.

Shit. Dropping the bottles on the couch, Ivy swung into motion, moving to kneel before them. Habit made her check for a pulse, but it was obvious by her pallor and the gentle mauling on her neck that the petite blond was dead despite her warmth.

“I didn’t do it,” Kisten said again, shifting his trim, pretty-boy body back a few inches. His hands, strong and muscular, were shaking, the tops of his fingernails red with a light sheen. Ivy looked from them to his face, seeing the fear in his almost delicate features that he hid behind a reddish blond beard. A smear of blood was on his forehead behind his brown bangs, and she stifled an urge to kiss it away that both disgusted and intrigued her. This is not who I wanted to be.

“I didn’t do it, Ivy!” he exclaimed at her continued silence, and she reached over the girl and brushed his too-long bangs back. The gentle swelling of black in his gaze made her breath catch. God, he was beautiful when he was agitated.

“I know you didn’t,” she said, and Kisten’s wide shoulders relaxed, making her wonder if that was why he was upset. It wasn’t that he had to take care of Piscary’s mistake, but that Ivy might think he had killed her. And somewhere in there, she found that he loved her.

The pretty woman was Piscary’s favorite body type with long fair hair and an angular face. She probably had blue eyes. Shit, shit, and more shit. Mind calculating how to minimize the damage, she asked, “How long has she been dead?”

“Minutes. No more than that.” Kisten’s resonant voice dropped to a more familiar pitch. “I was trying to find out where she was staying and get her cleaned up, but she died right here on the couch. Piscary…” He met her eyes, reaching up to tug on a twin pair of diamond-stud earrings. “Piscary told me to take care of it.”

Ivy shifted her weight to her feet, easing back to sit on the edge of the nearby couch. It wasn’t like Kisten to panic like this. He was Piscary’s scion, the person the undead vampire had tapped to manage the bar, do his daylight work, and clean up his mistakes. Mistakes that were usually four foot eleven, blond, and a hundred pounds. Damn it all to hell. Piscary hadn’t slipped like this since she had left to finish high school on the West Coast.

“Did she sign the release papers?” she asked.

“Do you think I’d be this upset if she had?” Kisten arranged the small woman’s hair as if it would help. God, she looked fourteen, though Ivy knew she’d be closer to twenty.

Ivy’s lips pressed together and she sighed. So much for getting any sleep this morning. “Get the plastic wrap from the piano out of the recycling bin,” she said in decision, and Kisten rose, tugging the tails of his silk shirt down over the tops of his jeans. “We open in eight hours for the early Inderland crowd, and I don’t want the place smelling like dead girl.”

Kisten rocked into motion, headed for the stairs. “Move faster, unless you want to have the carpet steam cleaned!” Ivy called, and she heard him jump to the floor from midway down.

Tired, Ivy looked at the woman’s abandoned purse on the couch, too emotionally exhausted to figure out how she should feel. Kisten was Piscary’s scion, but it was Ivy who did most of the thinking in a pinch. It wasn’t that Kisten was stupid—far from it—but he was used to having her take over. Expected it. Liked it.

Wondering if Piscary had killed the girl on purpose to force Kisten to take responsibility, Ivy stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes going to the filthy windows and the river hazy in the morning sun. It sounded just like the manipulative bastard. If Ivy had succumbed to Art, she would have spent the morning at his place—not only obediently taking the next step to the management position Piscary wanted for her, but forcing Kisten to handle this alone. That things hadn’t gone the way he planned probably delighted Piscary; he took pride in her defiance, anticipating a more delicious fall when she could fight no longer.

Warped, ruined, ugly, she thought, watching the tourist paddleboats steam as they stoked their boilers. Was there any time she hadn’t been?

The sliding sound of plastic brought her around, and with no wasted motion or eye contact, she and Kisten rolled the woman onto it before her bowels released. Crossing her arms over her like an Egyptian mummy, they wrapped her tightly. Ivy watched her hands, not the plastic-blurred face of the woman, trying to divorce herself from what they were doing as they passed the duct tape Kisten had brought around her like lights on a Christmas tree.

Only when she had been transformed from a person to an object did Kisten exhale, slow and long. Ivy would cry for her later. Then cry for herself. But only when no one could hear.

“Refrigerator,” Ivy said, and Kisten balked. Ivy looked at him as she stood bent over the corpse with her hands already under the woman’s shoulders. “Just until we decide what to do. Danny will be here in four hours to start the dough and press the pasta. We don’t have time to ditch the body and clean up.”

Kisten’s eyes went to the blood-smeared rug. He lifted a foot and winced at the tacky brown smear on it, tracked downstairs and back again. “Yeah,” he said, his fake British accent gone, then took the long bundle entirely from Ivy and hoisted it over his shoulder.

Ivy couldn’t help but feel proud of him for catching his breath so quickly. He was only twenty-three, having taken on Piscary’s scion position at the age of seventeen when Ivy’s mother had accidentally died five years ago and abdicated the position. Piscary was active in his control of Cincinnati, and Kisten had little more to do than tidy up after the master vamp and keep him happy. Stifling her tinge of jealousy that Kisten had the coveted position was easy.

Piscary’s savage tutorial had made her old before she had begun to live. She wouldn’t think about what she was doing until it was over. Kisten hadn’t yet learned the trick and lived every moment as it happened, instead of over and over in his mind as she did. It made him slower to react, more…human. And she loved him for it.

“Is there a car to get rid of?” she asked, already on damage control. She hadn’t noticed one in the parking lot, but she hadn’t been looking.

“No.” Kisten headed downstairs with her following, his vampire strength handling the weight without stress. “She came in with Piscary right around midnight.”

“Off the street?” she asked in disbelief, glad the restaurant had been closed.

“No. The bus station. Apparently she’s an old friend.”

Ivy glanced at the woman over his shoulder. She was only twenty at the most. How old a friend could she be? Piscary didn’t like children, despite her size. It was looking more and more likely Piscary had orchestrated this to help Kisten stand on his own. Not only planned it, but built in the net of the woman’s cryptic origins in case Kisten should fall. The master vamp hadn’t counted on Ivy catching him first, and she felt a pang of what she would call love for Kisten—if she knew she could feel the emotion without tainting it with the desire for blood.

Ivy caught sight of Kisten’s grimace when she moved to open the door to the kitchen. “Piscary killed her on purpose,” he said, adjusting the woman’s weight on his shoulder, and Ivy nodded, not wanting to tell him about her own part in the lesson.

Tucking a fabric napkin from the waiting stack into her waistband, she yanked up the handle of the walk-in refrigerator and slid a box with her foot to prop it open. Kisten was right behind her, and in the odd combination of moist coldness Piscary insisted his cheese be kept at, she moved a side of lamb thawing out for Friday’s buffet, insulating her hands with the napkin to prevent heat marks from making it obvious someone had moved it.

Behind the hanging slab was a long low bed of boxes, and Kisten laid the woman there, covering the blur of human features with a tablecloth. Ivy had the fleeting memory of seeing a similar bundle there once before. She and Kisten had been ten and playing hide-and-seek while their parents finished their wine and conversation. Piscary had told them she was someone from a fairy tale and to play in the abandoned upstairs. Seemed like they were still playing upstairs, but now the games were more convoluted and less under their control.

Kisten met her eyes, their deep blue full of recollection. “Sleeping Beauty,” he said, and Ivy nodded. That was what they had called the corpse. Feeling like a little girl hiding a broken dish, she moved the slab of lamb back to partially hide the body.

Cold from more than the temperature, she followed him out, kicking the box out of the way and leaning against the door when it shut. Her eyes went to the time clock by the door. “I’ll get the living room and stairs if you take the elevator,” she said, not wanting to chance running into Piscary. He wouldn’t be angry with her for helping Kisten. No, he’d be so amused she had put off Art again that he would invite her into his bed, and she would quiver inside and go to him, forgetting all about Kisten and what she had been doing. God, she hated herself.

Kisten reached for the mop and she added, “Use a new mop head, then put the old one back on when you’re done. We’re going to have to burn it along with the rug.”

“Right,” he said, his jaw flushing as it clenched. While Kisten filled a bucket, Ivy made a fresh batch of the spray they wiped the restaurant tables down with. Diluted, it removed the residual vamp pheromones, but at full strength, it would break down the blood enzymes that most cleaning detergents left behind. Maybe it was a little overkill, but she was a careful girl.

It would be unlikely to have the woman traced here, but it wasn’t so much for eliminating her presence from a snooping I.S. or FIB agent as it was avoiding having the restaurant smell like blood other than hers and Kisten’s. That might lead to questions concerning whether the restaurant’s mixed public license, or MPL, had been violated. Ivy didn’t think her explanation that, no, no one had been bitten on the premises—Piscary had drained a woman in his private apartments—and therefore the MPL was intact, would go over well. From the amount of aggravation Piscary had endured to get his MPL reinstated the last time some fool Were high on Brimstone had drawn blood, she thought he’d prefer a trial and jail to losing his MPL again. But the real reason Ivy was being so thorough was that she didn’t want her apartment smelling like anyone but her and Kisten.

Her thoughts brought her gaze back to him. He looked nice with his head bowed over the bucket, his light bangs shifting in the water droplets being flung up as it filled.

Clearly unaware of her scrutiny, he turned the water off. “I am such an ass,” he said, watching the ripples settle.

“That’s what I like about you,” she said, worried she might have made him feel inadequate by taking over.

“I am.” He didn’t look at her, hands clenching the rim of the plastic bucket. “I froze. I was so damn worried about what you were going to say when you came home and found me with a dead girl, I couldn’t think.”

Finding a compliment in there, she smiled, digging through a drawer to get a new mop head. “I knew you didn’t kill her. She had Piscary all over her.”

“Damn it, Ivy!” Kisten exclaimed, lashing the flat of his hand out to hit the spigot, and there was a crack of metal. “I should be better than this! I’m his fucking scion!”

Ivy’s shoulders dropped. Sliding the drawer shut, she went to him and put her hands on his shoulders. They were hard with tension, and he did nothing to acknowledge her touch. Tugging into him, she pressed her cheek against his back, smelling the lingering fear on him, and the woman’s blood. Eyes closing, she felt her bloodlust assert itself. Death and blood didn’t turn on a vampire. Fear and the chance to take blood did. There was a difference.

Her hands eased around his front, fingers slipping past the buttons to find his abs. Only now did Kist bow his head, softening into her touch. Her teeth were inches from an old scar she had given him. The intoxicating smell of their scents mixing hit her, and she swallowed. The headiest lure of all. Her chest pressed into him as she breathed deep, intentionally bringing his scent into her, luring fingers of sexual excitement to stir along her spine. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, her voice low.

“You’d be a better scion then I am,” he said bitterly. “Why did he pick me?”

She didn’t think this was about which one of them was his scion but his stress looking for an outlet. Giving in to her urge, she lifted onto her toes to reach his ear. “Because you like people more than I do,” she said. “Because you’re better at talking to them, getting them to do what you want and having them think it was their idea. I just scare people.”

He turned, slowly so he would stay in her arms. “I run a bar,” he said, eyes downcast. “You work for the I.S. You tell me which is more valuable.”

Ivy’s arms slipped to his waist, pressing him back into the edge of the sink. “I’m sorry for the pizza delivery crap,” she said, meaning it. “You aren’t running a bar, you’re learning Cincinnati, what moves who, and who will do anything for whom. Me?” Her attention went to the wisp of hair showing at the V of his shirt. “I’m learning how to kiss ass and suck neck.”

His gaze hard with self-recrimination, Kisten shook his head. “Piscary dropped a dead girl in my lap, and I sat over her and wrung my hands. You walked in and things happened. What about the next time when it’s something important and I fuck it up?”

Running her hands up the smooth expanse of silk to his shoulders, she closed her eyes at the deliciously erotic sensation growing in her. Guilt mixed with it. She was ugly. All she had wanted to do was console Kisten, but the very act of comforting him was turning her on.

The thought of Art and what had almost happened hit her. Between one breath and the next, the muscles where her jaw hinged tightened and her eyes dilated. Shit. May as well give in. Feeling like a whore, she opened her eyes and fixed them on Kisten’s. His were as black as her own, and a spike of anticipation dove to her middle. Warped and twisted. Both of them. Was there any way to show she cared other than this?

“You’ll handle it,” she whispered, wanting to feel her lips pulling on something, anything. The soft skin under his chin glistened from the thrown-up mist, begging her to taste it. “I save your ass. You save mine,” she said. It was all she had to offer.

“Promise?” he said, sounding lost. Apparently it was enough.

The lure was too much, and she pulled herself closer to put her lips softly against the base of his neck, letting his pulse rise and fall teasingly under her. She felt as if she was dying: screaming because they needed each other to survive Piscary, pulse racing in what was going to follow, and despairing that the two were connected.

“I promise,” she whispered. Eyes closed, she raked her teeth over skin but didn’t pierce as her fingers lifted through the clean softness of his hair.

Kisten’s breath came fast, and with one arm he picked her up and set her on the counter, forcing his way between her knees. She felt her gaze go sultry when his hands went behind her hips, edging over the top of her pants. “You’re hungry,” he said, a dangerous lilt to his voice.

“I’m past hungry,” she said, twining her hands behind his neck as if bound. Her voice was demanding, but in truth she was helpless before him. It was the bane of the vampire that the strongest was the most in need. And Kisten knew the games they played as well as she did. Her thoughts flitted to Sleeping Beauty in the refrigerator, and she shoved away the loathing that she wanted to feel Kisten’s blood fill her not ten minutes after a woman had died in their apartment. The self-disgust she would deal with later. She was eminently proficient at denying it existed.

“Art bothering you again?” he said, his almost delicate features sly as he slipped a hand under her shirt. The firm warmth of his fingers was like a spike through her.

“Still…” she said, stifling a tremor to entice the feeling to grow.

His free hand traced across her shoulder and her collarbone to slide up the opposite length of her neck. “I’ll have to write a letter and thank him,” he said.

Eyes flashing open, Ivy yanked him to her, wrapping her legs around him, imprisoning him against her. His hands were gone from her waist, leaving only a cool warmth. “He wants my blood and my body,” Ivy said, feeling her lust for Kisten mix with her disgust for Art. “He’s getting nothing. I’m going to drive him into taking my blood against my will.”

Kisten’s breath was against her neck, and his hands were at the small of her back. “What’s that going to get you?”

A smile, unseen and evil, spread across her as she looked over his shoulder to the empty kitchen. “Satisfaction,” she breathed, feeling herself weaken. “He promotes me out from under him to keep my mouth shut or he becomes the laughingstock of the entire tower.” But she didn’t know if she could do it anymore. He was stronger than she had given him credit.

“That’s my girl,” Kisten said, and she sucked in her breath when he bent his head, his teeth gently working an old scar to send a delicious dart of anticipation through her. “You’re such a political animal. Remind me never to cross stakes with you.”

Breathless, she couldn’t answer. The thought of having to deal with the contaminated scene flitted past, and was gone.

“You’ll need practice saying no,” Kisten murmured.

“Mmmm.” Eyes open, she found herself moving against him as his hands pulled her closer. His head dropped, and her hands splayed across his back curled so her fingers dug into him. Kisten’s lips played with the base of her neck, moving ever lower.

“Could you say no if he did this?” Kisten whispered, grazing his teeth along her bare skin while his hands under her shirt traced a path to her breast.

The two feelings were joined in her mind, and it felt as if it was his teeth on her breast. “Yes…” she breathed, exhilarated. He worked the hem of her shirt, and she gripped the hair at the base of his skull, wanting more.

“What if he made good on his promise?” he asked, dropping his head, and she froze at the wash of a silver feeling cascading to her groin when he set his teeth where his fingers had been. It was too much to not respond.

Pulse racing, she jerked his head up. It could have hurt, but Kisten knew it was coming and moved with her. She never hurt him. Not intentionally.

Lips parted, she tightened her legs around him until she nearly left the counter. And though she buried her face against his neck, breathed in his scent, and mouthed his old scars, she didn’t break his skin. The self-denial was more than an exquisite torture, more than an ingrained tradition. It was survival.

The truth was that she was very nearly beyond thought, and only patterns of engraved behavior kept her from sinking her teeth, filling herself with what made him alive. She lusted to feel for that glorious instant total power over another and thus prove she was alive, but until he said so, she would starve for it. It was a game, but a deadly serious one that prevented mistakes made in a moment of passion. The undead had their own games, breaking the rules when they thought they could get away with it. But living vampires held tight to them, knowing it might be the difference in surviving a blood encounter or not.

And Kisten knew it, enjoying his temporary mastery over her. She was the dominant of the two, but unable to satisfy her craving until he let her, and in turn he was helpless to satisfy himself until she agreed. His masculine hands pushed her mouth from his neck, forcing his own lips against her jugular, rising and falling beneath him. Her head flung to the ceiling, she wondered who would surrender and ask first. The unknowing sparked through her, and feeling it, a growl lifted from her.

Dropping her head, she found his earlobe, the metallic diamond taste sharp on her tongue. “Give this to me,” she breathed, succumbing, uncaring that her need was stronger than his.

“Take it,” he groaned, submitting to their twin desires faster than he usually did.

Panting in relief, she pulled him closer, and in the shock of him meeting her, she carefully sank her teeth into him.

Shuddering, Kisten clutched her closer, lifting her off the counter.

She pulled on him, hungry, almost panicked that someone would stop them. Blessed relief washed through her at the sharp taste. Their scents mixed in her brain, and his blood washed into her, making them one, rubbing out the void that loving Piscary and meeting his demands continually carved into her. His warmth filled her mouth, and she swallowed, sending it deeper into her, desperately trying to drown her soul somehow.

Kisten’s breath against her was fast, and she knew the exquisite sensations she instilled in him, the vamp saliva invoking an ecstasy so close to sex it didn’t matter. His fingers trembled as they traced her lines and reached for the hem of her shirt, but she knew there wasn’t time. She was going to climax before they could work themselves much more.

Breathless and savage from the sensations of power and bloodlust, she pulled back from him, running her tongue quickly over her teeth. She met his eyes, pupil-black. He saw her teetering.

“Take it,” she breathed, desperate to give him what he needed, craved. It wouldn’t make amends for the savagery of the act, but it was the only way she could find peace with herself.

Kisten didn’t wait. A guttural sound coming from him, he leaned in. Sensation jerked through her, the instant of heady pain mutated almost immediately into an equal pleasure, the vampire saliva turning the sting of his fangs into the fire of passion.

“Oh God,” she moaned. Kisten heard, and he dug harder, going far beyond what he usually did. She gasped at the twin sensations of his teeth on her neck and his fingernails on her breast. Body moving with his, she pulled his hand from where he gripped the back of her neck and found his wrist. She couldn’t…bear it. She needed everything. Everything at once.

His mouth pulled on her, and with elation filling her, she bit down, slicing into old scars.

Kisten shook, his grip faltering as sexual and blood rapture filled them both. He pulled away from the counter, and her legs tightened around his waist.

She heard in his breathing that he was going to reach fulfillment, and content that they would end this with both of them satisfied, she abandoned all thought. Everything was gone, leaving only the need to fill herself with him, and she took everything he gave her, not caring he was doing the same. Together they could find peace. Together they could survive.

Ivy’s grip tightened, and she sank her teeth deeper. Kisten responded, a low rumble rising up through him. It sparked a primitive part of her, and fear, instinctive and unstoppable, jumped through her. Kisten felt it, gripping her aggressively.

She cried out, and with the pain shifting to spikes of pleasure, she climaxed, her pulse a wild thrum under Kisten’s hand, and in his mouth, and through him. He tensed, and with a last groan, his lips left her as he found the exquisite mental orgasm brought on by satiating the hunger and blood.

No wonder she was screwed up, she thought, even as her body shook and rebelled at the rapturous assault. Evil or wrong didn’t matter. She couldn’t resist something that felt so damn good.

“Kist,” she panted when the last flickers faded and she realized she still had her legs wrapped around him, her forehead against his shoulder and her body trying to figure out what had happened. “Are you okay?”

“Hell yes,” he said, his breathing haggard. “God, I love you, woman.”

As his arms tightened around her, an emotion she seldom felt good about filled her. She loved him more than she would admit, but it was pointless to plan for a future that was already mapped out.

Slowly he settled her back on the counter, his muscles starting to shake. The rim of blue about his pupils was returning, and his lips, still reddened from her blood, parted and his eyebrows rose. “Ivy, you’re crying.”

She blinked, shocked to find she was. “No, I’m not,” she asserted, swinging her leg up and around to get him out from between them. Her muscles protested, not ready to move yet.

“Yes, you are,” he insisted, grabbing a cloth napkin and pressing it to his wrist, and then his neck. The small punctures were already closing, the vampire saliva working to stimulate repair and fight possible infection.

Turning away, she slipped from the counter, almost stumbling in her need to hide her emotions. But Kisten grabbed her upper arm and turned her back.

“What is it?” he said, and then his eyes widened. “Shit, I hurt you.”

She almost laughed, choking it back. “No,” she admitted, then closed her eyes, trying to find the words. They were there, but she couldn’t say them. She loved Kisten, but why did the only way she could show him involve blood? Had Piscary completely killed in her how to comfort someone she loved without it turning into a savage act? Love should be gentle and tender, not bestial and self-serving.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept with someone without blood. She didn’t think she had since Piscary first turned his attentions fully to her, warping her until any emotion of caring, love, or devotion stimulated a bloodlust that seemed pointless to resist. She had carefully built the lie to protect herself that blood was blood and sex-and-blood was a way to show she loved someone, but she didn’t know how much longer she could believe it. Blood and love had become so intertwined in her that she didn’t think she could separate them. And if she had to admit that sharing blood was how she expressed her love, then she’d have to admit she was a whore every time she let someone sink his or her teeth into her on her way to the top. Was that why she was forcing Art into taking her against her will? She had to submit to rape in order to keep herself sane?

Kisten’s eyes roved the kitchen, and she saw his nose widen as he took in their scent. They’d endure a ribbing from the entire staff for having “relieved their vampiric pressures” in the kitchen, but it would cover up the smell of the corpse, at least. “What is it then?” he asked.

Anyone else would have been pushed aside and ignored, but Kisten put up with too much of her crap. “All I wanted to do was comfort you,” she said, dropping her head to hide behind the curtain of her hair. “And it turned into blood.”

Making a soft sigh, Kisten took her in a slow, careful embrace. A shiver lifted through her when he gently kissed away the last of the blood from her neck. He knew it was so sensitive as to almost hurt and would be for a few more minutes. “Hell, Ivy,” he whispered, his voice telling her he knew what she was not saying. “If you were trying to comfort me, you did a bang-up job.”

He didn’t move, and instead of pulling away, she stayed, allowing herself to accept his touch. “It’s what I needed, too,” he added, the smell of their scents mingling inciting a deep contentment instead of a dire need now that the hunger had been satisfied.

She nodded, believing him though she still felt ashamed. But why is that the only way I know how to be?

 

4 
I vy swiveled her chair, rolling the banshee tear safe in its plastic bag between her fingers and wondering if it was magic or science that enabled a banshee to draw enough emotional energy through the gem to kill someone. Science, she was willing to believe. A science so elaborate and detailed that it looked like magic. Resonating alpha waves or something, like cell phones or radio transmissions. The files hadn’t been clear.

The office chatter coming in her open door was light because of the ungodly hour. She was working today on the upper-tower schedule, having a three-thirty afternoon appointment to talk to a banshee who had helped the I.S. in the past. That it would get her out of here at midnight was a plus, but it was still damn early.

Mood souring, Ivy leaned back in her chair and listened to the quiet, the usual noises sounding out of place because of their sparseness. The office atmosphere had changed, the glances she caught directed at her having gone from bitter to sympathetic. She didn’t know how to react. Apparently the word had gone out that Art had made a real play for her blood, causing her not only to contaminate a crime scene but also to almost succumb. And whereas she could have taken comfort in the show of sympathy, she felt only a resentful bitterness that she was the object of pity. How in the hell was she going to get rid of Art if she couldn’t say no to him? It was a matter of pride, now.

Ivy’s eyes lifted to the humming wall clock. Art was tucked underground, and knowing he wouldn’t be coming in for several hours gave her a measure of peace. She’d like to stake the bastard. Maybe that’s what Piscary wanted her to do?

Over the ambient office noise of keyboards and gossip, she heard her name spoken in a soft, unfamiliar voice. Focusing, Ivy listened to someone else give directions to her office. Ivy set the tear beside her pencil cup with its colored markers, turning to her door when the light was eclipsed.

Her breath to say hello hesitated as she evaluated the woman, forgetting to invite her in. She’d never met a banshee before, and Ivy wondered if they all had that disturbing demeanor or if it was just Mia Harbor.

She was wearing a dramatic calf-length dress made of strips of sky blue fabric. It would have looked like rags if the fabric wasn’t silk. The cuffs of the long sleeves ran to drape over her fingertips, and it fit her slight figure perfectly. Her severely short hair was black, cut into downward spikes and iced with gold, completely contrary to her pale complexion and meadowy attire but somehow harmonizing perfectly. Dark sunglasses hid her eyes. Small, petite, and agelessly attractive, she made Ivy feel tall and gawky as she stood in her doorway, the expression on her delicate features shifting from question to a tired acceptance.

Ivy realized she was staring. Immediately she stood, hand extended. “Ms. Harbor,” she said. “Please come in. I’m Officer Tamwood.”

She moved forward, her dress furling about her calves. Her hand was cool, with a smooth strength, and Ivy let go as soon as it was polite. The confidence of her grip caused Ivy to place her somewhere in her sixties, but she looked twenty. Witch charm, Ivy wondered, or natural longevity?

“Please call me Mia,” the woman said, sitting in Art’s chair when Ivy indicated it.

“Mia,” Ivy repeated, sinking back down behind her desk. She considered asking the woman to call her by her first name, but didn’t, and Mia settled herself with a stiff formality.

Unusually uncomfortable, Ivy leafed through the report to hide her nervousness. Banshees were dangerous entities, able to draw enough energy from people to kill them, much like a psychic vampire. They didn’t need to kill to survive, able to exist on the natural sloughing off of emotion from the people around them. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t gorge themselves if they thought they could get away with it. She had never had the chance to talk to one before. They were a dying species as public awareness grew about this innocent-looking but highly dangerous Inderlander race.

Like black widow spiders, they generally killed their mate after becoming pregnant. Ivy didn’t think it was intentional; their human husbands simply lost their vitality and died. There had never been much of a population of them anyway—every child born was female, and the magic needed to conceive outside one’s species made things difficult.

“I make you nervous,” Mia said, sounding pleased.

Ivy glanced at her and then back to the papers. Giving up trying to maintain her stoic demeanor, she leaned back in her chair, setting her hands in her lap.

“I won’t be taking any emotion from you, Officer Tamwood,” Mia said. “I don’t need to. You’re throwing off enough nervous energy and conflicted thoughts to sate me for a week.”

Oh joy, Ivy thought sourly. She took pride in suppressing her emotions, and that Mia not only felt them but was sopping them up like gravy wasn’t a pleasant thought.

“Why am I here?” Mia asked, pale hands holding her tiny blue-beaded purse on her lap.

Ivy gathered herself. “Ms. Harbor,” she said formally, seeing Mia grimace when Ivy made an effort to calm herself. “I’d like to thank you for coming to see me. I have a few questions that the I.S. would be most grateful if you can help me with.”

A sigh came from Mia, chilling Ivy—it sounded like the eerie moan of a lost soul. “Which one of my sisters killed someone?” she asked, looking at the tear in its evidence bag.

Ivy’s prepared speech vanished. Relieved to be able to sidestep the formalities, she leaned forward, the flat of her forearms on the desk. “We’re looking for Jacqueline.”

Mia held out a hand for the tear, and Ivy pushed it closer. The woman let go of her purse and took the bag, slipping a white nail under the seal.

“Hey!” Ivy exclaimed, standing.

Mia froze, looking at Ivy over her sunglasses.

Breath catching, Ivy stopped her vamp-fast reach for the evidence bag and rocked back. The woman’s eyes were the shockingly pale blue of a near albino, but it was the aching emptiness that halted Ivy. Unmoving, her heart pounded at the raw hunger they contained, chained by an iron-laced restraint. The woman was holding a hunger whose depths Ivy had only tasted. But Ivy had learned enough about restraint to see the signs that her control was absolute: her lack of emotional expression, the stiffness with which she held herself, the soft preciseness of her breathing, the careful motions she made as if she would lose control if she moved too fast and broke through the envelope of her aura and will.

Shocked and awed by what the woman confidently contained, Ivy humbly sat back down.

A smile quirked Mia’s face. The snap of the seal breaking was loud, but Ivy didn’t stop her, even when she shook the tear into her palm and delicately touched it briefly to her tongue. “You found this at the crime scene?” she asked, and when Ivy nodded she added, “This tear is not functioning.” Ivy took a breath to protest, and Mia interrupted, “You found this in a room stinking of fear. If it had been working, every wisp of emotion would have been gone.”

Surprised, Ivy struggled to keep her emotions close. That the room reeked of fear when she entered hadn’t made it to her report. Since she had contaminated it, it seemed pointless. That might have been a mistake, but amending her report to include it would look questionable.

Mia dropped the tear back into the bag. “It wasn’t Jacqueline who killed. It wasn’t any of my sisters. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you, Officer Tamwood.”

Ivy’s pulse quickened. Thinking Mia was protecting her kin, she said, “The man admits to killing the victim, but doesn’t know why he did. Our theory is Jacqueline left the tear knowing there was the chance domestic violence would cover her crime. Please, Mia. If we don’t find Jacqueline, an innocent man will be sentenced for murdering his wife.”

The crackle of the broken seal was loud, and Ivy wondered what the black crystal tasted like. “A tear older than a week won’t function as a conduit for emotions,” Mia said. “And while that tear is Jacqueline’s”—she tossed the bag to the desk—“it is at least three years old.”

Wondering how she was going to explain why the original seal was broken, Ivy frowned. This had been a waste of time. Just as well she hadn’t told Art about it. “And you know that how, ma’am?” she said, frustrated. “You can’t date tears.”

From behind her black glasses, Mia smiled to show her teeth, her canines a shade longer than a human’s. “I know it’s at least that old because I killed Jacqueline three years ago.”

Smooth and unhurried, Ivy rose and shut the door. The hum of a copier cut off, and Ivy returned to her desk in the new silence, trying to maintain her blank expression. She watched the woman, reading nothing in her calm. Silently she waited for an explanation.

“We are not a well-liked group of people,” Mia said bluntly. “Jacqueline had become careless, falling back on old traditions of murdering people to absorb their death energy instead of taking the paltry ambient emotions that Inderland law grants us.”

“So you killed her.” Ivy allowed herself a deep breath. This woman was scaring the shit out of her with her casual admission of so heinous an act.

Mia nodded, the hem of her dress seeming to shift by itself in the still air. “We police ourselves so the rest of Inderland won’t.” She smiled. “You understand.”

Thinking of Piscary, Ivy dropped her eyes.

“We aren’t substantially different from each other,” the woman said lightly. “Vampires steal psychic energy, too. You’re just clumsy about it, having to take blood with it as a carrier.”

Head moving slowly in acceptance, Ivy quashed her feelings of guilt. Generally only vampires knew that a portion of a person’s aura went with the blood, but a banshee would, seeing as that’s what they took themselves. A more pure form of predation that stripped the soul and made it easy to break it from the body. A person could replace a substantial amount, but take too much aura too quickly, and the body dies. Ivy had always thought banshees were higher on the evolutionary ladder, but perhaps not, seeing as vampires used the visible signs of blood loss to gauge when to stop. “It’s not the same,” Ivy protested. “No one dies when we feed.”

“They do if you feed too heavily.”

Ivy’s thoughts lighted on the body in Piscary’s refrigerator. “Yes, but when a vampire feeds, they give as much emotion as they get.”

And though Mia didn’t move, Ivy stiffened when the slight woman seemed to gather the shadows in the room, wrapping them about herself. “Only living vampires with a soul give as well as take,” she said. “And that’s why you suffer, Ivy.”

Her voice, low and mocking, shocked Ivy at the use of her given name.

“You could still find beauty amid the ugliness, if you were strong enough,” Mia continued. “But you’re afraid.”

Ivy’s stomach clenched and her skin went cold. It was too close to what she had been searching for, even as she denied it existed. “You can’t find love in taking blood,” she asserted, determined to not get upset and unwittingly feed this…woman. “Love is beautiful, and blood is savagely satisfying an ugly need.”

“And you don’t need love?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Ivy felt unreal, and she gripped the edge of her desk. “Blood isn’t a way to show you love.” Ivy’s voice was soft, but inside she was screaming. She was so screwed up that she couldn’t comfort a friend without tainting it with her lust for blood. To mix her need for love and her need for blood corrupted love and made it vile. Her desire to keep the two separate was so close to her, so vulnerable, that she almost choked when Mia shook her head.

“That’s not who you want to be,” she taunted. “I see it. It pours from you like tears. You lie to yourself, saying that blood and love are separate. You lie saying sanity exists in calling them two things instead of one. Only by accepting that can you rise above what your body demands of you, to live true to who you want to be…with someone you love, and who is strong enough to survive loving you back.”

Shocked, Ivy froze. This slight woman sitting before her was pulling from Ivy her most desperate, hidden desires, throwing them out for everyone to see. She wanted to control the bloodlust…but it felt so damn good to let it control her. And if she called it love, then she had been whoring herself half her life.

As she stared at Mia’s knowing smile, memories filled her: memories of Piscary’s touch, his praise, of his taking everything from her and saying it was proof of her devotion and love, and her flush of acceptance, of finding worth in being everything he wanted. It was as raw as if it happened last night, not almost a decade ago. Years of indulgence followed, as she found that the more dominating she was, the more satisfaction she craved and the less she found. It was a cruel slipknot that sent her begging for Piscary to give her a feeling of worth. And though she never found it, he had turned the pain sweet.

Now this woman who could sip misery from another as easy as breathing wanted her to accept that the dichotomy that had saved her sanity was a hollow truth? That she could find beauty in her cravings by calling it love?

“It is not love,” she said, feeling as if she couldn’t breathe.

“Then why do you resist Art?” she accused, a hint of a smile on her face and one eyebrow raised tauntingly. “The entire floor is thinking about it. You know it’s more than a casual act. It’s a way to show your love, and to give that to Art would mean you were a demimonde; no—a whore. A filthy, perverted slut selling herself for a moment of carnal pleasure and professional advancement.”

It was so close to what she had been thinking herself that Ivy clenched her jaw, glad the office door was closed. She felt her eyes dilate, but the memory of Mia’s leashed hunger kept her sitting. She knew that Mia was provoking her, inciting her anger so she could lap it up. It was what banshees did. That they often used truth to do so made it worse. “You can’t express love in taking blood,” Ivy said, her voice low and vehement.

“Why not?”

Why not? It sounded so simple. “Because I can’t say no to blood,” Ivy said bitterly. “I need it. I crave it. I want to satisfy it, damn it.”

Mia laughed. “You stupid, whiny little girl. You want to satisfy it because it’s tied to your need for love. It’s too late for me. I can’t find beauty in satisfying my needs since anyone a banshee loves dies. You can, and to see you so selfish makes me want to slap you. You are a coward,” she accused. “Too frightened to find the beauty in your needs because to do so would admit that you were wrong. That you have been fooling yourself for most of your life, lying that it has no importance so you can indulge yourself. You are a whore, Ivy. And you know it. Stop deluding yourself that you aren’t.”

Ivy felt her eyes flash entirely to black, pulled by anger. “You need to leave,” she said, muscles so tense, it took all her restraint to keep from striking the banshee.

Mia stood. She was alive and vibrant, her smooth face flushed and beautiful—an accusing angel, hard and uncaring. “You can live above your fate,” she mocked. “You can be who you want to be. So Piscary warped you. So he broke you and remade you to be a pliant source of emotion-rich blood. It’s up to you to either accept or deny it.”

“You think I like being like this?” Ivy said, standing when her frustration spilled over. “That I like anyone with long teeth able to take advantage of me? This is what I was born into—there’s no way out. It’s too late! Too many people expect me to be the way I am, too many people force me to be the way they want me to be.” The truth was coming out, pissing her off.

Mia’s lips were parted and her face was flushed. Her eyes were lost behind her sunglasses, and the gold in her short black hair caught the light. “That is the excuse of a lazy, frightened coward,” she said, and Ivy tensed, ready to tell her to shut up but for the memory of the leashed hunger in her eyes. “Admit you were wrong. Admit you are ugly and a whore. Then don’t be that way anymore.”

“But it feels too good!” Ivy shouted, not caring if the floor heard her.

Mia trembled, her entire body shuddering. Breath fast, she reached for the back of her chair. When she brought her gaze up from behind her sunglasses, Ivy realized that the air was as pure and pristine as if the argument hadn’t happened. Pulse fast, Ivy breathed deeply, finding only the hint of Mia’s perfume and the softest trace of her sweat. Damn. The bitch was good.

“I never said it would be easy,” Mia said softly, and Ivy wondered exactly what the hell had just happened. “The hunger will always be there, like a thorn. Every day will be worse than the previous until you think you won’t be able to exist another moment, but then you’ll see the filth in your eyes trying to get out—and if you’re strong, you’ll find the will to put it off another day. And for another day, you will be who you want to be. Unless you’re a coward.”

The humming of the wall clock grew loud in the new silence, almost deep enough to hear Mia’s heartbeat, and Ivy stood behind her desk, not liking the feelings mixing in her. “I’m not a coward,” Ivy finally said.

“No, you’re not,” Mia admitted, subdued and quiet. Satiated.

“And I am not weak of will,” Ivy added, louder.

Mia inhaled slowly, her pale fingers tightening on her purse. “Yes, you are.” Ivy’s eyes narrowed, and Mia’s mien shifted again. “Forgive me for asking,” she said, sounding both embarrassed and nervous, “but would you consider living together?”

Ivy’s gut tightened. “Get out.”

Mia swallowed, taking off her sunglasses to show her pale blue eyes, her pupils carrying a familiar swelling of black that made her look vulnerable. “I can make it worth your while,” she said, her eyes running over Ivy as if she was a past lover and moistening her lips. “My blood for your emotion? I can satisfy everything you need, Ivy, and more. And you could kindle a child in me with the pain you carry.”

“Get—out.”

Head bowing, Mia nodded and moved to the door.

“I am not weak of will,” Ivy repeated, shame joining her anger when Mia crossed the small office. Mia opened the door, hesitating to turn and look at her.

“No,” she said, a gentle sadness in her ageless features. “You aren’t. But you do need practice.” Dress furling, the woman left, the click, click of her heels silencing the entire floor, the fluorescent lights catching the highlights in her hair.

Angry, Ivy lurched to the door, slamming it shut and falling back into her chair. “I am not weak of will,” she said aloud, as if hearing it would make it so. But the idea she might be wiggled in between thought and reason, and it was too easy to doubt herself.

Her boot heels went up onto her desk, ankles crossed. She didn’t want to think about what Mia had said—or what she offered. Eyes closed, Ivy took a breath to relax, forcing her body to do as she told it. She hadn’t liked Mia using her, but that’s what they did. It was Ivy’s own fault for arguing with her.

Again, Ivy inhaled, slower to make her shoulders ease. She could ignore everything but what she wanted to focus on if she tried—she spent a great deal of her life that way. It made her quick to anger, depressed her appetite, and caused her to be overly sensitive, but it kept her sane.

Ivy’s eyes opened in the silence, falling upon the tear. As inescapable as shadows, her mind fastened on it, desperately seeking a distraction. Disgust lifted through her at the torn bag. How was she going to explain the broken seal to Art?

Leaning forward, she felt her muscles stretch as she pulled the bag closer, and in a surge of self-indulgence, shook the tear into her palm. A moment of hesitation, and she touched it to her tongue. She felt nothing, tasted nothing. With a guilty motion, she dropped it back in and pressed the seal shut, tossing it to her desk.

The tear was three years old, found in a room stinking of fear. A banshee hadn’t been responsible. The man had murdered his wife with a plan already in place to shift the blame. Where had he gotten a tear? A tear three years old, no less?

Three years. That was a long time to plan your wife’s murder. Especially when they had been married only eight months, according to Mr. Demere’s file. Long-term planning.

Ivy leaned forward in a spike of adrenaline and fingered the bag. Vampires planned that long. Jacqueline had a record. Only a vampire who worked for the I.S. would be in a position to know she was dead, unable to clear her name. And only an I.S. employee would have access to a tear swiped from the old-evidence vault. A tear no one would miss.

“Holy shit,” Ivy softly swore. This went to the top.

Dropping the tear, Ivy reached for the phone. Art would crap his coffin when he found out. But then a thought struck her, and she hesitated, the buzz of the open line a harsh whine.

The apartment had been full of fear—anger and fear that should have been soaked up by the tear but wasn’t—fear that Art had covered up with her own emotions.

The buzz of the phone line turned to beeping, and she set the phone back in the cradle, the acidic taste of betrayal filling her thoughts. Art had used her to muddle the psychic levels in the room. The guy from the collection van had commented on it when he had come in, blaming it on her after he saw the banshee tear, not knowing she had only added to what was already there. No one documented psychic levels unless a banshee was involved, and they hadn’t known until after she contaminated the scene. “After Art stole and planted the tear,” she muttered aloud. Art, who was so dense he couldn’t find his pretty fangs in someone’s ass.

Plucking a pen from her pencil cup, she tapped it on the desk, wanting to write everything down but resisting lest it come back to bite her. Maybe not so dense after all. “Motive…” she breathed, enjoying the adrenaline rush and feeling as if it cleansed her somehow. Why would Art help plan and cover up a murder? What would he get out of it? Being undead, Art was moved only by survival and his need for blood.

Blood? she thought. Had the suspect promised to be Art’s blood shadow in exchange for the opportunity to murder his wife? Didn’t sound right.

Her lips curled upward and she smiled. Money. Art’s rise in the I.S. had stopped when he died and was no longer a potential source of blood. Without the currency of blood for bribes, he couldn’t rise in the vampiric hierarchy. He was existing on the interest from his postdeath funds, but by law he couldn’t touch the principal. If the suspect gave Art a portion of his wife’s insurance money, it might be enough to move Art up a step. That the undead vampire had openly admitted he wasn’t adverse to using Ivy to pull him up in the ranks only solidified her belief that he was having money problems. Undead vampires didn’t work harder than they had to. That Art was working at all said something.

Pen clicking open and shut so fast it almost hummed, Ivy tried to remember if she had ever heard that Art had died untimely. He’d been working the same desk over thirty years.

Jerking in sudden decision, she dropped the pen and pulled out the Yellow Pages, looking for the biggest insurance ad that wasn’t connected to one of Cincinnati’s older vamp families. She would call them all if she had to. Pulse quickening, she dialed, using the suspect’s social security number to find out his next payment wouldn’t be due until the fifteenth. It was for a hefty amount, and she impatiently kept hitting the star button until the machine had a cyber coronary and dumped her into a real person’s phone.

“Were Insurance,” a polite voice answered.

Ivy sat straighter. “This is Officer Tamwood,” she said, “and I’m checking on the records of a Mr. and Mrs. Demere? Could you tell me if they upped their life insurance recently?”

There was a moment of silence. “You’re from the I.S.?” Before Ivy could answer, the woman continued primly. “I’m sorry, Officer Tamwood. We can’t give out information without a warrant.”

Ivy smiled wickedly. “That’s fine, ma’am. My partner and I will be there with your little piece of paper as soon as the sun goes down. We’re kind of in a hurry, so he might skip breakfast to get there before you close.”

“Uh…” the voice came back, and Ivy felt her eyes dilate at the fear it held. “No need. I’m always glad to help out the I.S. Let me pull up the policy in question.”

Ivy tucked the phone between her ear and her shoulder, picking at her nails and trying to get her eyes to contract.

“Here it is!” the woman gushed nervously. “Mr. and Mrs. Demere took out a modest policy covering each of them shortly after getting married…” The woman’s voice trailed off, sounding puzzled. “It was increased about four months ago. Just a minute.”

Ivy swung her feet to the floor and reached for a pen.

“Okay,” the woman said when she returned. “I see why. Mrs. Demere finished getting her degree. She was going to become the major breadwinner, and they wanted to take advantage of the lower payment schedule before her next birthday. It has a payout of a half million.” The woman chuckled. “Someone was a little enthusiastic. A data entry degree won’t get her a good enough job to warrant that kind of insurance.”

A zing of adrenaline went through Ivy, and the pen snapped. “Damn it!” she swore as ink stained her hand and dripped to the desk.

“Ma’am?” the woman questioned, a new wariness to her voice.

Staring at the blue ink on her hand, Ivy said, “Nothing. My pen just broke.” She dropped it in the trash, and using her foot, she opened a lower drawer and snatched up a tissue. “It might be in your company’s best interest to misfile any claim for a few weeks,” she said as she wiped her fingers. “Could you give me a call when someone tries to process it?”

“Thank you, Officer Tamwood,” the insurance officer said cheerfully over the sound of a pencil scratching. “Thank you very much. I’ve got your number on my screen, and I’ll do just that.”

Embarrassed, Ivy hung up. Still trying to get the worst of the ink off her, she felt a stirring of excitement. It wasn’t in any report that the tear wasn’t functioning. This had possibilities. But she couldn’t go to the basement with her suspicions; if Art had promised someone down there a cut of money, her suspicions would go nowhere and she’d look like a whiny bitch trying to get out of giving Art his due blood. That she was doing just that didn’t bother her as much as she thought it would.

Balling up the inkstained tissue, Ivy reached again for the phone. Kisten. Kisten could help her on this. Maybe they could have lunch together.

 

5 
T he muted sounds of the last patrons being ushered out the door vibrated through the oak timbers of the floorboards, and Ivy relaxed in it, finding more peace there than she’d like to admit. Extending her long legs out under the piano, she picked up her melted milkshake and sipped through the straw as she planned Art’s downfall. Before her on the closed lid were written-out plans of contingencies, neatly arranged on the black varnished wood. Below her, Piscary’s living patrons stumbled home in the coming dawn. The undead ones had left a good hour ago. The scent of tomato paste, sausage, pasta, and the death-by-chocolate dessert someone had ordered to go drifted up through the cracks.

The light coming in the expansive windows was thin, and Ivy looked from her pages set in neat piles and stretched her laced fingers to the distant ceiling. She was usually in bed this time of day—waiting for Kisten to finish closing up and slide in behind her with a soft nibble somewhere. More often than not, it turned into a breathless circle of give and take that left them content in each other’s arms as they fell asleep with the morning sun warming their skin.

Focus blurring, Ivy plucking at the itchy fabric of her lace shirt, her thoughts returning to Mia. Banshees were known for inciting trouble, often hiring themselves in to a productive company and putting old friends at each other’s throats with a few well-placed words of truth, whereupon they would sit back and lap up the emotion while everything fell apart. That they usually did this with the truth made it worse. She loved Kisten, but to call it love when she took his blood? That was savage need. There could be no love there. Eyes dropping to the papers surrounding her, she pushed at them as if pushing away her thoughts, bringing her hand up to slide a finger between her neck and the collar of itchy lace.

Ivy felt like a vamp wannabe, dressed in tight jeans and a black stretchy shirt with a high collar of peekaboo lace and an open, low neckline. A pair of flat sandals finished the look. It wasn’t what she would have picked out for framing her partner for homicide, but it was close to what Sleeping Beauty had on.

She had been here at the piano for hours, having called in sick after meeting Kisten for lunch, blaming it on bad sushi. Kisten wasn’t convinced putting Art in jail by dumping Piscary’s mistake in his apartment was a good way to get promoted, but Ivy liked its inescapable justice. Going to the I.S. would gain her nothing but their irritation for interfering. True, Mr. Demere wouldn’t be going to jail for murdering his wife, but that didn’t mean he was going to walk away from it. She’d take care of him later when he thought he had escaped unscathed.

It surprised her that she was enjoying herself. She liked her job at the I.S., working backward from where someone else’s plan went wrong to catch stupid people making stupid decisions. But plotting her own action to snare someone in her own net was more satisfying. She was headed for management, but she’d never stopped to ask herself if it was something she wanted.

And so after she had discussed it with Kisten, he had reluctantly bought her car for cash, and she had gone shopping with the untraceable money. She had felt ignorant at the first charm outlet she had gone into, but the man had become gratifyingly helpful once she showed him the money.

Fingers cold from her melted shake, Ivy set the wet glass on a coaster and reached for the sleep amulet safe in its silk bag. She had wanted a potion she could get Art to drink or splash on him, but the witch refused to sell it to her, claiming it was too dangerous for a novice. He had sold her an amulet that would do the same thing, though, and she felt the outlines of the redwood disk on its cord carefully through the bag, satisfied it would work. The man had cautioned her three times to be sure there was someone there to take it off her or she’d sleep for two days before the charm spontaneously broke for safety reasons.

A second, metallic amulet would give her the illusion of blond hair and take off about eight inches of height, making her closer to the size and look of Sleeping Beauty. She didn’t know how witches in the I.S. managed to make any money, seeing as the two charms had cost as much as her car, and she wondered if the witch had upped the price because she was a vampire.

She had been sitting here writing out contingencies for nearly two hours, and she was growing stiff. The I.S. tower had cleared out by now, and Art was home. He had called her cell phone shortly after sunset, feeling her out as to what she was doing avoiding him, and with her charms literally in her hand, she had agreed to a date with him. Sunup. His place.

Agitated, Ivy clicked her pen open and shut, imagining he had probably spent his time in the office talking himself up big as to his plans for tonight. Her eyes fell on the purple stains in her cuticles from breaking her pen earlier, and she set it down.

A creak on the stairway brought her heart into her throat. She hadn’t told Piscary what she was doing, and only he or Kisten would be coming up. But then her eyes went to the windows and she berated herself. Piscary would never come up here so close to sunrise.

Determined to keep her back to the stairs, she hid her unease behind turning off the table lamp and shuffling her papers, but she didn’t think Kisten was fooled—he was grinning from behind his reddish blond beard when she looked up. Eyebrows rising, she sent her gaze across his shiny dress shoes, up his pinstripe suit, and to the tie he had loosened.

“Who are you trying to be?” she asked sharply, rarely seeing him in a suit, much less a tie.

“Sorry, love,” he said, using that British accent. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

He bent to slip a hand around her waist and give her a soft tug, but she ignored him, pretending to study her papers. “I don’t like your accent,” she said, releasing some of her tension in a bad mood. She smelled someone on him, and it made things worse. “And you didn’t startle me. I smelled you and some tart halfway up the stairs. Who was it? That little blond that’s been coming in here every payday to make black eyes at you? She’s early. It’s only Thursday.”

Fingers sliding from her, Kisten edged a step away. Eyes down, he picked up a paper. “Ivy…”

It was low and coaxing, and her jaw clenched. “I’m doing this.”

“Ivy, he’s an undead.” With a soft sound, he sat beside her on the piano bench. “If you make a mistake…They’re so damn strong. When they get angry, they don’t even pretend to remember pity.”

They both knew that all too well. Her pulse quickened, but she kept her face impassive. “I won’t make a mistake,” she said, scratching a notation on her paper.

Kisten took the pen from her and set it atop her papers. “All you have is a few witch charms and the element of surprise. If he has any idea that you might betray him, he’s going knock you out and drain you. And no one will say anything if you went down there looking to tag him. Even Piscary.”

Ivy pulled her fingers from his as if unconcerned. “He won’t kill me. If he does, I’ll sue his ass for unlawful termination.”

Clearly unhappy, Kisten opened the piano. The light made shadows on him, throwing his faint scars into sharp relief. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said, spreading his fingers to hit almost an entire octave, but he made no sound. “And I don’t want you dead. You won’t be any fun that way.”

Her eye twitched, and she forced it to stop with pure will. If things went right, Art would be really pissed. If things went wrong, Art would be really pissed and in a position to hurt her. “I don’t want to die, either,” she admitted, tucking her feet under the bench.

Kisten struck a chord, modifying it into a minor that sounded wrong. As the echoes lifted through the brightening room, she cursed herself for being so addicted to blood that it was such an overriding factor in her life. Mia had said all it took was practice to say no. Ivy had always scorned living vampires who abstained from blood, thinking they were betraying everything they were. Now she found herself wondering if this was why they did it.

The eerie chord ended when Kisten lifted his foot from the pedal and reached for the blue silk pouch.

“Careful,” Ivy warned, gripping his wrist. “It’s already invoked and will drop you quicker than tequila.”

Dark eyebrows high, Kisten said, “This?” and she let go. “What does it do?”

Hiding her nervousness, Ivy bent back over her paper. “It gets Art off my neck.” He held it from the drawstring like it was a rat. Clearly he didn’t like witch magic either. “It’s harmless,” she said, giving up on her last-minute planning, “Just bring Sleeping Beauty when you get my call.”

Kisten leaned backward, touching the front pocket of his slacks. “I’ve got my phone. It’s on vibrate. Call me. Call me a lot.”

Ivy allowed herself a smile. Setting the pen aside, she stood, gingerly wedging the amulet safe in its bag into a pocket. Kisten turned on the bench to keep her in view, and she tucked a placebo vial of saltwater down her bustier-enhanced cleavage. The man at the charm outlet had insisted she take the vial since it could do double-duty as a quick way to permanently break the sleep charm if she spilled it on the amulet. The cool spot it made caused her to shift her shoulders until the glass warmed. Kisten was wearing a shit-grin when she brought her head up. “How do I look?” she asked, posing.

Smiling, he drew her to him. “Mmmm, dressed to kill, baby,” he said, his breath warming her midriff since he was still sitting on the piano bench. “I like the shirt.”

“Do you?” Eyes closing, she let the mingling of his scent with hers stir her bloodlust. Her hands ran aggressively through his hair, and when his fingers traced the outlines of her buttocks and his lips moved just under her breast, she wondered if finding love in blood might be worth the shame of having lied to herself, of letting others tell her who she was, and letting them make her into this ugly thing. Feeling the rise of indecision, she pulled away. “I’ve got to go.”

Kisten’s face was creased in worry, and as he ran a hand through his hair to straighten it, she found herself wanting to arrange his tie. Or better yet, rip it off him. “I’m going to change, then I’ll be right behind you,” he said. “Your wine is downstairs on the counter.”

“Thanks.” She hefted her duffel bag with its change of clothes and hesitated. She wanted to ask him if he thought it was possible to find love in sharing blood, but shame stopped her. Sandals loud on the hardwood floor, she walked to the stairs, feeling as if she might never walk this floor again. Or that if she did, she’d be changed beyond recognition.

“Burn those papers for me?” she called, and got an “Already ahead of you” in return.

The restaurant had emptied of patrons, and the soft chatter of the waitstaff was pleasant as she passed the bar. Music was cranked in the kitchen over the sounds of the oversized dishes being hand washed, and everyone was enjoying the span between Piscary becoming unavailable and quitting time. Like children left home alone, they laughed and teased. Ivy liked this time the best, often lying in bed and listening, never telling anyone she could hear. Why the hell couldn’t she join in? Why was everything so damn complicated for her?

Grabbing a bottle of Piscary’s cheapest wine in passing, she gave a high-five to the pizza delivery guy coming in the receiving dock/garage as she went out. She couldn’t help but notice that the kitchen atmosphere was radically different from the one she found in the I.S. tower. The office held pity; the kitchen was sly anticipation.

Shortly after opening this afternoon, the entire staff knew there was a body in the refrigerator. They also knew Kisten was in a good mood. And with her change in her work patterns, they knew she was up to something. Maybe Kisten had it right.

The wine went into the duffel bag, which she then strapped to the back of her cycle. Swinging on to it, she started it up, eyes closing at the power beneath her as she put her helmet on. Waving to the second delivery guy pulling in, she idled into the rush hour traffic. It would soon slack off as humans took over Cincinnati, calling it theirs alone until noon when the early-rising Inderlanders began stirring.

Ivy felt insulated in her helmet, the wind tugging at her hair a familiar sensation. She was alive, free, the smooth movement of the earth turning under her instilling a peace she couldn’t readily find. Wishing she could just get on the interstate and go, she sighed. It would never happen. Her need for blood would follow her, and without Piscary providing protection as her master, she would be taken by the first undead vampire she ran into. There was no way out. There never had been. Mia’s invitation surfaced, and Ivy tasted it in her thoughts, trying it on before dismissing it as a slow, pleasant way to suicide.

The sun was rising as she crossed the bridge into Cincinnati. She was late. Art would be either pissed or still glowing from the men’s-club talk of the day. The thought that she was a whore flitted through her before she quashed it. She wasn’t going to sell herself to move up the corporate ladder. She could resist Art long enough to knock him out, and then she’d nail his ass to the wall and use it to make a new ladder.

Pulse quickening, she took a sharp right, weaving in and out of traffic until she reached Fountain Square. The plaza was empty, and she found a parking spot near the front of the belowground garage. Nervousness crept into her as she shut off her cycle. A moment with a small mirror and a red lipstick, and she was ready. Leaving her helmet on the seat, she fumbled for her duffel bag and headed to the rectangle of light with more confidence than she felt. There was no reason for her anxiety. She’d planned sufficiently.

A furtive glance to make sure no one was watching, and she found the charmed silver that would change her appearance. She pulled the tiny pin out of the watch-sized amulet to invoke the disguise, tossed the pin aside, and laced the metallic amulet over her head. This one didn’t need to touch her skin, just be on her person. The witch had said it worked using her own aura’s energy, but she really hadn’t cared beyond what she needed to make it function properly.

An eerie feeling rippled over her, and Ivy shuddered, her sandals grinding the street grit. It wouldn’t make her look like Sleeping Beauty—that was illegal, she had been primly told—but with the clothing, hair, and attitude, it would be close enough.

She squinted in the brighter light when she came out onto the sidewalk and headed for the bus stop. Witch magic was powerful shit, and she wondered if no one realized the potential it had, or if no one cared, seeing as witches didn’t try to govern anything but themselves, quietly going about their business of blending with humanity.

The bus was pulling up as she got there—precisely as she had timed it—and she was the third one on, dropping a token in before finding a seat and putting her duffel bag to prevent someone from sitting beside her. She had a swipe card, but using a token would add to her anonymity.

Jostled, she watched the city pass, the professional buildings giving way to tall thin homes with dirt yards the size of a Buick. Her clenched jaw eased when the yards got nicer and the paint jobs fresher as the house numbers rose. By the time she reached Art’s block, the salt-rusted, dented vehicles had been replaced by late-model, expensive cars. She watched Art’s house pass, waiting two blocks before signaling the driver she wanted off. It wasn’t a regular stop, but he pulled over, letting irate humans on their way to work pass him as she said, “Thank you” in a soft voice and disembarked.

She was walking before the door shut behind her. Free arm swinging, she hit her heels hard to attract attention. Warming, she shortened her pace to accommodate her smaller look. The clip-clack, clip-clack cadence was unnatural, and she dropped her head as if not wanting to be seen when she heard a car start.

At Art’s house, she hesitated, pretending to check an address. It was smaller than she expected, though well-maintained. Her parents had a modest mansion built with railroad money earned by her great-grandfather, the elaborate underground apartments added after her great-grandmother had attracted Piscary’s attention. Art couldn’t have much of a bedroom; the footprint for the two-story house was only fifty-by-thirty.

Swinging her duffel bag to her front, she took the stairs with a series of prissy steps. Thirty years ago, the house would have been low high-class, and it was obvious why Art needed the money. His interest income when he died had been sufficient to keep him at low high-class—of the seventies. Inflation was moving him down in the socioeconomic ladder. He needed something to pull himself up before he slid into poverty over the next hundred years.

There was a note on the door. Smirking, she pulled it from the screen and let it fall to the bushes for the forensics team to find. “Late, am I?” she muttered, wondering if he had the front miked. Pitching her voice high, she called, “Art, I brought wine. Can I come in?”

There was no answer, so she opened the door and entered a modest living room. The curtains were drawn and a light was on for her. She wandered into the spotless kitchen with a dry sink. Again there were leather curtains, hidden behind a lightweight white fabric to disguise them. Leather curtains couldn’t protect an undead vamp from the sun, but boarding up the windows was against the city ordinances. Another note on an interior door invited her down.

Her lip curled, and she started to wish she had arranged this during night hours so she didn’t have to play this disgusting game. Crumpling the note, she dropped it on the faded linoleum. She took off the charmed silver amulet, shivering when something pulled through her aura. Her hair lost its corn yellow hue, and she hung the amulet on the knob so Kisten would know where she was.

Knocking, she opened the door to find a downward leading stair and music. She wanted to be annoyed, but he’d done his research and it was something she liked—midnight jazz. A patch of cream carpet met her, glowing under soft lights. Gripping her duffel bag, she called, “Art?”

“Shut the door,” he snarled from somewhere out of sight. “The sun is up.”

Ivy took three steps down and shut the door, noting it was as thick as coffin wood and reinforced with steel with a metal crossbar to lock it. There was a clock stuck to its back, along with a page from the almanac, a calendar, and a mirror. Her mother had something similar.

Again Ivy wanted to belittle him, but it looked professional and businesslike. No pictures of sunsets or graveyards. The only notation on the calendar about her was “date with Ivy.” No exclamation points, no hearts, no “hubba-hubba.” Thank God.

She touched her pocket for the sleep amulet and looked down her cleavage for the fake potion. Relying on witch magic made her nervous. She didn’t like it. Didn’t understand it. She had had no idea witch magic was so versatile, much less so powerful. They had a nice little secret here, and they protected it the same way vampires protected their strengths: by having them out in the open and shackled by laws that meant nothing when push came to shove.

Sandals loud on the wooden steps, she descended, watching Art’s shadow approach the landing. The faint scent of bleach intruded, growing stronger as she reached the floor. She kept her face impassive when she found him, glad he was still wearing his usual work clothes. If he had been in a Hugh Hefner robe and holding a glass of vodka, she would have screamed.

Ignoring him watching her, she looked over his belowground apartments. They were plush and comfortable, with low ceilings. It was an old house, and the city had strict guidelines about how much dirt you could pull out from under your dwelling. They were in what was obviously the living room, a wood-paneled hallway probably leading to a traditional bedroom. Her eyes went to the lit gas fireplace, and she felt her eyebrows rise.

“It dries the air out,” he said. “You don’t think I’m going to romance you, do you?”

Relieved, she dropped her duffel bag by the couch. Hand on her hip, she swung her hair, glad it was back to its usual black. “Art, I’m here for one thing, and after I’m done, I’m cleaning up and leaving. Romance would ruin my entire image of you, so why don’t we just get it over with?”

Art’s eyes flashed to black. “Okay.”

It was fast. He moved, reaching out and yanking her to him. Instinct got an arm between them as he pulled her to his chest. Her pulse pounded, and she stared when he hesitated, her naked fear striking a chord with him. It was a drug to him, and she knew he paused so as to prolong it. She cursed herself when her own bloodlust rose, heady and unstoppable. She didn’t want this. She could say no. Her will was stronger than her instincts.

But her jaw tightened, and he smiled to show his teeth when she felt her eyes dilate against her will. Lips parting, she exhaled into it. The savage desire to force her needs on him vibrated through every nerve. Mia was wrong. There could be no love here, no tenderness. And when Art forced her closer and ran his teeth gently across her neck, she found herself tense with anticipation even as she tried to bring it under control. Concentrate, Ivy, she thought, her pulse quickening in her conflicting feelings. She was here to nail his coffin, not be nailed.

He knew she wouldn’t say yes to him until he pulled her to the brink where bloodlust made her choices. And even as she thought no, she gripped his shoulder, poised as he ran his hand down her hips and eased to the inside of her thighs, searching. A rumbling growl came from him, shivering through her. His hands became possessive, demanding. And she willed the feeling to grow, even when self-loathing filled her.

How had it come on so fast? she thought. Had she been wanting this all along, teasing herself? Or was Mia right in that she had refused Art because giving in would prove she knew she could find love in the ugliness, but was too cowardly to fight for it?

Art carefully hooked a tooth into the lace of her collar and tore it, the sound of the ripping fabric cutting through her. His teeth grazed her, promising, and she lost all thought but how to get him to sink them, to fill her with glorious feeling proving she was alive and could feel joy, even if she paid for it with her self-respect.

Art didn’t speak as he stood, holding her against him, the demanding pressure in his lips, his fingers, his very breathing, waking every nerve in her. He hadn’t bespelled her; he hadn’t needed to. She was willing to be everything he wanted, and a tiny part of her screamed, drowned out by her need to give to him and to feel in return, even though she knew it was false.

His fingers rose from his grip upon her waist, tracing upward with a firm insistence until they found her chin and tilted her head. “Give this to me,” he whispered, his fingers among her hair. “This is mine. Give it…tome.”

It was haggard, almost torn by the need in him that her tortured willingness had sparked. The thought that she was buying empty emotion rose like bubbles to pop against the top of her mind. Mia had said she could live above the bloodlust. Mia didn’t know shit, didn’t know the exquisite pleasure of this. She wanted his blood, and he wanted hers. What difference did it make how she would feel in the morning? Tomorrow she could be dead and it wouldn’t matter.

And then she remembered the leashed hunger Mia contained and counted it stronger than her own. She remembered the scorn in Mia’s voice, calling her a whiny little girl who could have everything if she had the courage to live up to her greater need for love. Even if she did have to taint it with bloodlust.

Ivy’s heart pounded as she tried to find the will to pull away, but the lure of what he could fill her with was too strong. She couldn’t. It was ingrained too deeply. It was what she was. But she wanted more, damn it. She wanted to escape the ugliness of what she really was.

As she struggled with herself, she found Art’s mouth with her own, drawing his lips from her neck and putting them on hers. The salty electric taste of blood filled her, but it wasn’t hers. Art had cut his own lip, sending her into a dizzy lust for the rest of him.

Gasping, she pushed away. It would stop here.

She fell back, fingers fumbling for the vial. Eyes black, Art gripped her wrist, the tiny glass bottle exposed. Ivy flushed hot as she stood, her arm stretched between them.

Hunched from the pain of breaking from her, Art wiped his mouth of his blood. He let go of her, and she stumbled back. In Art’s hand was the vial.

“What’s this?” he asked, wary but amused when he unscrewed the top and sniffed at it.

“Nothing,” she said, truly afraid even as her body ached at the interruption.

He sucked in her fear, his eyes going blacker and his smile more predatory. “Really.”

Panicking that he would drop it and come at her again, she fumbled in her pocket, bringing out the real charm, invoked but quiescent in its silk pouch.

Art’s eyes went to it, and before he could think, she jumped at him. Arm moving in a quick arc, Art flung the contents of the vial at her. Heavy droplets, warm from her body, struck her like shocks from a whip. Adrenaline pounding to make her head hurt, she forced her muscles to go slack. She collapsed as if she’d run into a wall, falling to where he had been standing a second earlier. The carpet burned her cheek, and she exhaled as if passing out.

From across the room, she heard him shift his feet against the carpet, trying to figure out what had happened. She forced her breathing to slow, feigning unconsciousness. It had to work. If not, she had only an instant to escape.

“I knew you’d try something,” Art said, going to the wet bar and pouring himself something. The undead didn’t need to drink, but it would cleanse his cut lip. “Not as clever as Piscary said you’d be,” he said amid the heavy clink of a bottle against glass. “Did you really think I wouldn’t have you followed on your shopping?”

Ivy clenched her stomach muscles when a dress shoe edged under her and flipped her over. Forcing herself to remain flaccid, she kept her eyes lightly shut as her back hit the carpet. He might bite her anyway, but fear and desire tainted the blood with delicious compounds, and he’d rather have her awake. Heart pounding, she loosened her fingers and let the pouch slip from them. Curiosity could put the cat in the bag when force could not.

“I’m forty-two years dead,” he said bitterly. “You don’t survive that long if you’re stupid.” There was a slight hesitation, and then, “And what the hell was this supposed to do?”

Ivy heard him pick up the silk pouch and shake the amulet into his hand. She tensed, springing to her feet as he exhaled. He was still standing, his eyes losing their focus when she shot her hand out, curling his slack fingers around the amulet before it could slip from him.

With a sigh, he collapsed, and she went down with him, desperate to keep the amulet in his grip. They hit the carpet together, her arm wedged painfully under her.

“You can survive that long if you’re stupid and lucky,” she said. “And your luck’s run out, Artie.”

Slowly Ivy shifted her legs under her into a more comfortable position, her hand still gripped around Art’s fingers. Hooking her foot in the handle of her duffel bag by the couch, she dragged it closer. With one hand, she opened it to pull out a plastic-coated metallic zip-strip the I.S. used to bind ley line witches to keep them from escaping by jumping to a ley line. Art couldn’t use ley line magic, but the strip would hold the amulet to him. At the sound of the plastic ratcheting against itself to pinch the amulet between his palm and the strip, she relaxed.

Exhaling, she got to her feet. Drawing her foot back, she kicked him. Hard. “Bastard,” she said, wiping his spit off her neck. Limping, she went to the stereo and clicked it off. She’d never be able to listen to “Skylark” again. She rummaged in her duffel bag, and upon finding her phone, headed for the stairs. Three steps from the top, and she had enough bars. She hit speed-dial one, struggling to listen and take off her disgusting shirt simultaneously.

“Ivy?” came Kisten’s voice, and she pinched the phone between her shoulder and her ear.

“He’s down. Bring her in,” she said.

Without waiting for an answer, she ended the call, adrenaline making her jumpy. Shaking, she stripped off her clothes and slipped into her leather pants and a stretch-knit shirt, wiping her neck free of Art’s scent with a disposable towelette that then went into the contractor garbage bag she shook out with the sharp crack of thick plastic. She considered the lacy shirt for an instant, then dropped it in, too. Her sandals went into her duffel bag.

Barefoot, she crouched by Art. Lifting his lips from his gums, she sucked up blood and saliva with a disposable eyedropper, putting a good quarter inch into the empty saltwater vial. Done, she opened the wine, sat on the raised hearth, and with the hissing flames warming her back, took a long pull. It was bitter, and she grimaced, taking another drink, smaller this time. Anything to get rid of the lingering taste of Art’s blood in her mouth.

Toes digging into the carpet, she looked at Art, out cold and helpless. Witch magic had done it. God, they could be a serious threat in Inderland politics if they put their mind to it.

The sound of feet upstairs brought her straight, and she set the bottle aside. It was Kisten, thumping down the stairs with a large cardboard box in his arms. Ivy looked, then looked again. He had changed into an institutional gray jumpsuit, but that wasn’t it.

“You’re wearing the charm,” she said, and he flushed from under his new blond bangs. He was shorter, too, and she didn’t like it.

“I always wanted to know what I’d look like blond,” he said. “And it will help with the repairman image.” Grunting, he set down the box with Sleeping Beauty in it. “God almighty,” he swore as he stretched his back and looked at Art with the amulet strapped to his palm. “It smells like a cheap hotel down here, all blood and bleach. Did he wing you?”

“No.” Ivy handed him the bottle, unwilling to admit how close Art had come.

Kisten’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he drank, and he exhaled loudly as he lowered the bottle. His eyes were bright and his smile was wide. Just one big joke to Kisten, Ivy thought, depressed. She had acted just in time. If she hadn’t dropped Art, she would have said yes to him—even when she hadn’t wanted to. Mia was right. She needed more practice.

“Where do you want to put her?” Kisten said cheerfully.

A shrug lifted her shoulders. “The bathtub?”

Clearly enjoying himself, he lifted the box and headed into the paneled hallway. “Holy Christ!” he shouted, faint from the wall between them. “Have you seen his bathroom?”

Tired, Ivy rose from the hearth, trying not to look at Art sprawled on the floor. “No.”

“I’m going to put her in the hot tub.”

“He’s got a hot tub?” That would explain the scent of chlorine, and Ivy went to see, her eyebrows rising at the small tub flush with the floor. Kisten had turned it on, and though it wasn’t warm yet, tiny bubbles swirled in the artificial current. Putting Sleeping Beauty in that was going to make a mess, but it would help remove any traces of Piscary and blur that she had been stuck in the refrigerator for a day. Not to mention a dripping wet corpse was harder to get rid of than a dry one. Art wasn’t smart enough to manage it before the I.S. knocked on his door.

Kisten had gone respectfully silent, and keeping the woman in the box, they worked at getting her out of the plastic and duct tape. Jaw clenched, Ivy worked her out of her clothes, handing them to Kisten one by one to be sprayed with the de-enzyme solution from the bar to remove Piscary’s scent. The bottle was heavy as it hit Ivy’s palm, and with Kisten’s help, they sprayed her down as well, taking extra care with the open wounds.

Disturbed, she met Kisten’s eyes in the silence, and together they slipped Sleeping Beauty into the water, wedging the corpse between an edge and the railing. While Kisten tidied, Ivy went back for the wine and a glass.

Carefully keeping her prints off it, Ivy pressed Sleeping Beauty’s hand around the glass several times before adding a few lip prints. She dribbled some wine into the woman’s mouth, then the glass, which she set at arm’s length. There wouldn’t be any in her stomach, and there wouldn’t be any of her blood in Art’s system either, but it was a game of perception, not absolutes. Besides, all she needed to do was eliminate any evidence of Piscary.

Kisten had the vial of Art’s spit, and crouching by the tub, she took a sterile swab and ran it through the woman’s open wounds. Finished, she stood, and together they looked down at her.

“She had a nice smile,” Kisten finally said, gaze flicking to Ivy. “You okay with this?”

“No, I’m not okay with this,” Ivy said, feeling empty. “But she’s dead, isn’t she. We can’t hurt her anymore.”

Kisten hesitated, then grabbed the box and maneuvered his way out. Ivy picked up the heavy-duty shears he had left and tucked them behind her waistband. Looking at the woman, she crouched to brush the long hair from the corpse’s closed eyes. An impulsive “thank you,” slipped from Ivy’s lips, and, flustered, she stood.

Sickened, she backed out of the room. This was ugly. She was ugly. The things she did were ugly, and she didn’t want to do them anymore. Her stomach was cramping when she found Kisten standing above Art, and she forced herself to look tall and unbothered. The broken-down box and plastic wrap were already in the trash bag, along with everything else. “You sure you don’t want me to move him upstairs?” he asked. “They might call it a suicide.”

Ivy shook her head, checking the bottom of the woman’s shoes and setting them by the stairway. “Everyone’s going to know what I did, but as long as there is no easy evidence, they’ll let it go as me thinking outside the box. No one likes him anyway. But if I kill him, they’ll have to do a more thorough investigation.”

It was perfect in so many ways. Art would be cited for Piscary’s homicide and end up in jail. She would get to write her own six-month review. No one would mess with her for a while, not wanting a dead body showing up in their bathroom. She was a force not to be taken lightly. The thought didn’t make her as happy as she thought it would.

Kisten seemed to notice, since he touched her arm to bring her eyes to his. She blinked at the color of his hair and the fact that he was shorter than she, even if it was an illusion. It was a damn good illusion. “You did all right,” he said. “Piscary will be impressed.”

She hid her face by leaning to scoop up the duct tape. That Piscary would be proud of her lacked the expected thrill, too. For a moment, only the sound of the tape being unwound and wrapped about Art’s wrists and ankles rose over the hiss of the propane fireplace. The tape wouldn’t stop him, but all they needed was to get to the stairs.

“Ready?” Ivy asked when she tossed the tape into her duffel bag and took out her boots.

Kisten turned from his last-minute wipe down of fingerprints. “All set.”

As she sat on the hearth and laced her boots, Ivy looked over the room. The scent of chlorine was growing stronger as the water warmed, hiding the odor of dead girl. She wanted a moment with Art. Why the hell not? She’d earned a little gloating. Let him know she caught him covering up a murder. “Wait for me in the van,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”

Kisten grinned, clearly not surprised. “Two minutes,” he said. “Any longer than that, and you’re playing with him.”

She snorted, giving him a swat on the ass as he started up the stairs with her duffel bag and the trash. His blond hair caught the light, and she watched until he vanished in a flash of morning sun. Still she waited until the faint sound of the van starting up met her before she turned Art’s hand palm up and cut the strip with the shears. Tucking them behind her waistband, she stepped back and teased the amulet off his hand and into its little bag.

For a panicked moment she thought she had killed him, but her fear must have scented the air since Art jerked, his eyes black when they focused on her. He tried to move, his attention going to the duct tape about his wrists and ankles. Chuckling, he wedged himself into an upright position against the couch, and Ivy’s face burned.

“Piscary thinks so much of you,” he said condescendingly. “He needs to wipe the sand from his eyes and see you as the little girl you are, playing with boys too big for her.”

He tensed his arms, and Ivy forced herself to stay relaxed. But the tape held and she bent at the waist to look him in the eyes. “You okay?”

“This isn’t winning you any friends, but yes, I’m okay.”

Satisfied she hadn’t hurt him, she rose and plucked up the wine bottle and gave it another pull, the heat of the fire warming her legs. “You’ve been a bad boy, Art,” she said, hip cocked.

He ran his eyes over her, going still when he realized she was wearing her usual leather and spandex. His face abruptly lost its emotion. “Why is my hot tub going? What day is this? Who was here?”

Again he pulled against the tape, starting a rip. Ivy set the bottle down and moved closer, sending her wine breath over him to shift his silky black curls. It didn’t matter if her presence was placed here. The entire I.S. tower knew where she was this morning. “I’m not happy,” she said. “I came over here to make good on our arrangement, and I find another girl down here?”

Art shifted his shoulders, arms bulging. “What the hell did you do, Ivy?”

Smiling, she leaned over him. “It’s not what I did, Artie. It’s what I found. You need to be more careful with your cookies. You’re leaving crumbs all over your house.”

“This isn’t funny,” he snarled, and Ivy moved to the stairway.

“No, it isn’t,” she said, knowing that the tape would last as long as his ignorance. “You have a dead girl in your hot tub, Artie, and I’m out of here. The deal is off. I don’t need your approval to move into the Arcane Division. You’re going to jail.” Adrenaline struck through her when she turned her back and her foot touched the lowest stair. The door was open and ambient sunlight was leaking in. He couldn’t put one foot on them without risking death. She almost hoped he would.

“Ivy!” Art exclaimed, and she turned at the sound of ripping tape.

Pulse pounding, she hesitated. She was safe. It was done. “You made one mistake, Art,” she said, taking in his anger. “You shouldn’t have tried to use me to cover up that witch’s murder,” she said, and the color drained from him. “That pissed me off.” Giving him a bunny-eared “kiss-kiss” she turned and took the stairs with a slow, taunting pace.

“This isn’t going to work, Ivy!” he shouted, and her pulse leaped at the sound of the tape ripping, but she had reached the top and it was far too late. She smiled as she emerged into his kitchen. He was stuck down there with that corpse until the sun went down. If he called in help to get it out, it would damn him faster. An anonymous tip from a concerned neighbor was going to bring someone knocking on his door within thirty minutes. “No hard feelings, Art,” she said. “Strictly business.” She went to shut the door so he wouldn’t get light sick, hesitating. “Really,” she added, closing the door on his scream of outrage.

Scooping up her duffel bag from where Kisten had left it, she sauntered out the front door and down the steep walk to the street. Kisten was waiting, and she slipped into the passenger-side seat, throwing her bag into the back. She imagined the fury belowground, glad she could walk away. It didn’t matter if anyone saw her leave. She was supposed to be here.

“Two minutes on the nose,” Kisten said, leaning over to give her a kiss. He was still wearing her disguise amulet, and she caught him looking at himself and his hair. “Are you okay, love?” he asked, hitting his new accent hard and fussing with his bangs.

Rolling down the window, she put her arm on the sill as he drove away and the sun hit her. The memory of being unable to say no to Art resounded in her, and the lure of the bloodlust. Saying no had been impossible, but she had stopped him—and herself. It had been hard, but she felt good in a melancholy way. It wasn’t the glorious shock of ecstasy, but more like a sunbeam, unnoticed when you first find it, but its warmth growing until you felt…good.

“I’m all right,” she said, squinting from the morning sun. “I like who I am today.”

 

6 
I vy dropped the empty box on her desk and sat before it, swiveling her chair back and forth until someone walked past her open door. Adopting a more businesslike mien, she looked over her office. Her eyebrows rose, and she plucked her favorite pen from the cup and then tossed the empty box into the hall. The thump silenced the gossip, and she smirked. They could have everything. All she wanted was her favorite pen. Well, and a pair of thicker leather pants. And an updated map of the city. A computer would be helpful, but they wouldn’t let her take the one she’d been using. Some really comfortable boots. Sunglasses—mirror sunglasses.

A soft knuckle-knock at her open door brought her head around, and she smiled without showing her teeth. “Rat,” she said companionably. “Come to see me off?”

The large officer eased into her office, a manila folder in his hand. “I won the pool,” he said, ducking his head. “I’ve got your, ah, transfer papers. How you doing?”

“Depends.” She leaned across her desk, biting her finger coyly. “What’s the word on the street?”

He laughed. “You’re bad. No one will be looking at you for a while.” Brow pinching, he came in another step. “You sure you don’t want to work Arcane? It’s not too late.”

Ivy’s pulse quickened at the lure of bloodlust she knew she couldn’t resist. “I don’t want to work in the Arcane anymore,” she said, eyes lowered. “I need to get out from underground. Spend some time in the sun.”

The officer slumped, the folder before him like a fig leaf. “You’re ticking them off with this rebellious shit. This isn’t Piscary’s camarilla, it’s a business. They had a late meeting about you this morning in the lowest floor.”

Fear slid through her, quickly stifled. “They can’t fire me. There was no evidence that I had anything to do with that girl in Art’s tub.”

“No. You’re clear. And remind me to stay on your good side.” He grinned, but it faded fast. “You did contaminate that crime scene, and they’re almost ignoring that. You should lay low for a while, do what they want you to do. You have your entire life and afterlife ahead of you. Don’t screw it up your first six months here.”

Ivy grimaced, flicking her attention past him to the outer offices. “They’re already blaming my demotion on my—lapse. They can’t punish me twice for the same thing.” The reality was she was being demoted because she refused to move up to the Arcane. That was fine by her.

“Publicly,” he said, making her agitated. “What happens behind closed doors is something else. You’re making a mistake,” he insisted. “They can use your talents down there.”

“Don’t you mean a new infusion?” Rat winced, and she held up a hand and leaned back into her chair, well aware it put her in a position of power with him standing. “Whatever. I won’t be manipulated, Rat. I’d rather take a pay cut and go where I don’t have to worry about it for a while.”

“If only it was that easy.” Rat dropped the folder on her desk as if it meant something. “Ah, I thought you’d like to see your new partner’s file.”

In a smooth, alarmed motion, Ivy sat up. “Whoa. Put your caps on. I agreed to move upstairs, but no one said anything about a partner.”

Rat shrugged, his wide shoulders bunching his uniform. “They can’t give you a pay cut, so you’re pulling double duty chaperoning a newbie for a year. Intern with two years of social science and three years pulling familiars out of trees. Management wants her under someone with a more, ah, textbook technique before they instate her as a runner, so she’s all yours, Ivy. Don’t let her get you killed. We like you ju-u-u-ust the way you are.”

The last was said with dripping sarcasm, and her face hot, Ivy pushed the folder away. “She’s not even a full runner? I’ve worked too hard for my degree to be a babysitter. No way.”

Rat chuckled and pushed it back with a single, thick-knuckled finger. “Yes way. Unless you want to move down to Arcane where you belong.”

Ivy almost growled. She hated her mother. She hated Piscary. No, she hated their control over her. Slowly she pulled the folder to her and opened it. “Oh my God,” she breathed as she looked at the picture, thinking it couldn’t get any worse. “A witch? They partnered me with a witch? Whose bright-ass idea was that?”

Rat laughed, pulling Ivy’s eyes from her “partner’s” picture. Slumping back, she tried not to frown. Though it was clearly meant to be a punishment, this might not be a bad thing. A witch wouldn’t be after her blood, and the relief of not having to fight that would be enough to compensate for the extra work that having such a weak partner would engender. A witch? They were laughing at her. The entire tower was laughing at her.

“You said management doesn’t want her on her own. What’s wrong with her?” she asked and Rat took her shoulder in a thick hand and drew her reluctantly to her feet.

“Nothing,” he said, grinning. “She’s impulsive is all. It’s a match made in heaven, Ivy. You’ll be best friends before the week is out: going shopping, eating chocolate, catching chick-flicks after work. You’ll love it! Trust me.”

Ivy realized she was clenching her jaw, and she forced her teeth apart before she gave herself a headache. Her partner was a flake. She was partnered with a girly-girl flake who wanted to be a runner. This was going to be pure hell. Rat laughed, and seeing no other option, Ivy dragged the folder to her, tucked it under her arm, and headed for the door with Rat, leaving her old office and its comforting walls behind for an open office with pressboard walls and bad coffee.

It was only for a year. How bad could it be?

KIM HARRISON 
Born and raised in Tornado Alley, KIM HARRISON now resides in more sultry climates. The bestselling author of Dead Witch Walking; The Good, the Bad, and the Undead; and Every Which Way But Dead, she rolls a very good game of dice, hangs out with a guy in leather, and is hard at work on the next novel of the Hollows.

 

For more information, go to www.kimharrison.net.