Okay, maybe not that last one, since Louis-Cesare was a serious potential asset to the family, if he ever got his shit together. Which he wouldn’t if he kept slumming around with me. So I didn’t know what, if anything, Mircea had done there, and what had been coincidence. But that was the problem with Mircea—I never knew anything for certain.

He was sitting silently, waiting for me to work through it. Other people were talking—I heard Claire’s bright tones, Radu’s soothing murmur, a flash of Marlowe’s thunder—but I couldn’t concentrate on any of it. All I could see were those dark eyes, so like mine, yet so different. So very different.

Part of the reason I’d freaked out on Louis-Cesare hadn’t had anything to do with him. He’d accidentally stumbled across one of my admittedly not insignificant number of hot spots, and this one was hotter than most. Or maybe sharper, because that’s what it felt like, the broken edges sharp as glass where memories used to be.

Mircea had used his little gift on me when I was a child, sorting through my head, taking out my recollections of his brother, of what had happened to my mother, of who-knew-what-else, because I sure as hell didn’t. But I could feel it, even now, the place where all those memories should have been, as conspicuous in its absence as a newly lost tooth.

Or a hole in the head. Because that’s what it was: a hole, a wound, a fissure. I could feel the raw edges where my memories had been cut to pieces, the sudden blanks where the film broke and left me floundering on the brink of a thought. A diver walking to the edge of a cliff and looking over to see…nothing.

Supposedly, the idea had been to keep me safe, since my baby dhampir mind had been set on revenge, and nobody in our family was an easy kill. Particularly not when surrounded by an army of guards bristling with weapons. True, they were human and I was not, but they’d also outnumbered me by a few hundred to one and Mircea hadn’t liked the odds. He also hadn’t liked the idea of a quick and easy death for his brother in case I got lucky.

Or so he said. But there was a problem with that. Because Mircea’s idea of fitting punishment had been perpetual confinement, locking his crazed sibling away for centuries after making him a vampire so he couldn’t die and get out of it. So he could never forget. It was a symphony of revenge instead of the few notes I’d planned to mete out, and it made perfect sense—except for one small detail.

No one under master status can make a vampire.

So Mircea had already made the leap to at least seventh-level master when he Changed Vlad, and I was a baby dhampir at the time, almost literally. And yet he couldn’t have controlled me without the mental surgery? He couldn’t have found another way without taking almost every damn memory I had of my early life, including all recollections of my mother? He couldn’t have done something, anything, else?

I didn’t buy it.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the less I bought it, which was why I was having problems with this whole reconciliation thing. And now he wanted back inside my head for round two? I stared at him silently and said nothing.

Neither did he.

Maybe because there wasn’t anything to say. I didn’t ask if they’d already checked other leads because I didn’t have to. Mircea wouldn’t have come here—not to me, not with this—unless he’d already tried everything else. Unless he was out of options.

So he was sitting there, bouncing Aiden on his knee, being patient with Claire, somehow keeping Marlowe in check, and waiting. For the deal. For the terms. For the bargains that were the only real heartbeat of vampire life.

And suddenly I was just sick of it, completely and utterly. There were things I could have asked for, things I could have used, but I didn’t want anything from him. I never had.

Nothing that I was likely to get, anyway.

“All right,” I heard myself say hoarsely.

And the dam burst.

Color, light, and the sound of raised voices surged around me. It felt like a veil had been lifted from over my head, leaving me blinking. And wincing, because Stinky had apparently been trying to get my attention by sinking wicked sharp nails into my thigh.

By the time I pried his toes out of my flesh, the party had moved to the living room, because it was darker. And Mircea needed his concentration for whatever he planned to do to my brain rather than putting out fires. I didn’t follow because I needed a few minutes.

And because of Claire.

Claire was Not Happy.

“I don’t like this,” she hissed, not bothering to keep her voice down.

Not that it mattered. The living room was only across the hall and down a little ways. Which meant we may as well have been standing beside them as far as vampire hearing was concerned. But Claire didn’t look like she cared.

“You don’t understand,” I told her, passing Stinky over so I could hold a paper towel to my leg. So much for another pair of jeans.

“Then explain it to me!” she said furiously, somehow managing to be intimidating despite balancing a baby on each hip. “Explain why you would even consider—”

“Because Varus wasn’t among the corpses,” I snapped. Damn, Stinky was developing freaking talons. “Which means he set us up—”

“He set them up. Not you! Why do you have to—”

“Claire, if the criminal element gets the idea that they can butcher the Senate’s agents at will, we’re all going to be in trouble. The Senate’s got enough on its hands with the war; it doesn’t need another front opening up here.” Especially one that knew its weaknesses as well as Varus probably did.

The reason Geminus had gotten away with his little hobby for so long was that he hadn’t been just any old vampire. He’d been a senator, and what was more, the Senate’s weapons master, which had included locating and developing new ways to kill things. That had given him carte blanche to go into Faerie whenever he liked, and set up his network of portals. But it also meant that Varus, as his right-hand guy, had way too much knowledge about the Senate’s inner workings—and its arsenal.

“We have to find him,” I told Claire. “Finding Varus means finding his contacts, who may be some of the same people causing you problems back home.”

“That isn’t home.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head, red hair flying everywhere. It was sunny today, but it had been raining a lot lately, and Claire’s hair goes poufy when it rains. It was teetering on the edge of Afro territory right now, which wasn’t a great look for her. But it was better than the dark circles under her eyes and the pinched skin at the corners of her mouth.

I’d been kind of out of it lately, recovering from one disaster and apparently getting into another, and hadn’t really been paying attention. But maybe I should have; Claire looked like she could use it. “Are you all right?” I asked, wondering if we had a problem.

“This isn’t about me!” she said shrilly, green eyes flashing.

And okay, yeah. A problem. Of course, maybe having her slam somebody through a wall should have clued me in to that already. Claire had the stereotypical redhead’s temperament, but she usually stopped short of forcible redecoration.

“How can you let him do that, just…just tiptoe around in your brain like that?” she demanded.

“It won’t be the first time.”

“And that’s even worse! He already altered your memories once. What’s to say he won’t do it again?”

It looked like Mircea had less success with fey than with humans, I thought, because Claire clearly wasn’t a fan.

“It’s like I told you,” she said severely. “They only understand their own side, and it isn’t yours!”

“I’m part vampire, Claire,” I reminded her, since she seemed to keep forgetting that.

“You’re part human, too. And I’m beginning to believe the human part is the best part—in all of us.”

“What does that mean?”

She looked away. “Nothing. It’s just…Lately it feels like everyone I love is hanging by a thread, while some madman runs around with scissors. And some days, I just want to—”

“Throw somebody through a wall?”

Her head whipped back around. “Damn it, Dory!”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I get that way, too, remember?”

“Then help me.” Blazing emerald eyes met mine. “I can’t take any more stress right now. I just want to know that you’re safe. All right?”

“What are you stressed abou—”

“All right?”

I didn’t say anything, because Louis-Cesare had appeared in the door. “They are ready.”

Claire looked at me accusingly.

“I’ll be fine,” I told her firmly.

“Why do you even bother to say that?” she grumbled, and followed me across the hall.

The shades had all been pulled in the living room, and the curtains closed. The electricity was on, but it didn’t help much since it only powered an old fixture that hung from the ceiling, the lamps having been carted off by the troll twins for their basement apartment. We didn’t miss them much because we lived mostly in the kitchen and on the back porch, but it did make things a little gloomy at the moment.

I guess Ray had gotten tired of hanging out in the hall, and had come in here, only to be banished to a perch on the card table. I still didn’t know what he was doing here, but this didn’t seem like the time to ask, not with Marlowe glowering alongside, arms crossed, in almost the same pose he’d used in the kitchen. Like a beam of sunshine, I thought sourly.

Mircea and Radu had taken seats on the old-lady sofa, which Claire had inherited along with the house. It was red brocade with a high arched back, and always looked to me like it ought to be gracing a geriatric bordello. But with the two of them on it, its usual tattered garishness faded into the background.

A matching wingback chair had been pulled up in front of it, which I assumed was for me. I started toward it—which would have worked better if Louis-Cesare had let go of my arm. I looked up to find that the scowl he’d been wearing earlier had taken up permanent residence. It matched the shadow in his eyes, which the gloom had deepened to indigo.