“Back in?”

“Back inside your memory! After they almost lost you and you were so exhausted you couldn’t even sit up, he wanted to put you back!”

“Why didn’t they?” I asked, because last night had gone a bit fuzzy again, but I knew I hadn’t gotten a look at anyone’s face. Not even the guy who had stepped on mine. That damned searchlight had ensured as much, or whatever they had been using. Probably some new kind of spell that I was going to have to look out for because it might be—

“What?” I asked, because Claire was glaring at me.

“Why not?”

“Claire, we need to know—”

“The dick wouldn’t let him,” Ray broke in. “I guess it’s why he just got escorted to the door instead of thrown out.”

I stopped, my hands all soapy. “Mircea…got escorted to the door?” I repeated, not sure I’d heard right.

“I should have thrown them all out when they showed up!” Claire said severely.

Damn. I would have paid money to see that, I thought in awe. Like, a lot of money.

“You need to stay away from those vampires, Dory,” she told me, scowling. Because obviously I wasn’t taking this seriously enough. “You need to stay away from all of them.”

“That’s a little hard when I’m working for them,” I pointed out.

“Maybe it’s about to get easier.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She turned back to the stove. “Just…something your father said.”

“Something like…”

“Like he plans to fire your ass,” Ray informed me, digging through the fridge. “What? You guys got no beer?”

“What?”

“Beer. Alcohol. Booze. Hell, I’m desperate. I’ll even drink that light crap—”

“Not you,” I said, and jerked him out before he found the Guinness. And turned back to see Claire looking mulish.

“Want to run that by me again?”

“He didn’t say…he just agreed with me.”

“About what?”

“About the fact that you could have died, Dory!” she said, slamming her wooden spoon down. “If they can kill a master, they can kill you!”

“‘They’ didn’t kill a master. ‘They’ ambushed us like the pathetic wastes of flesh—”

“They arranged it,” Claire said, thrusting out her chin.

“Yeah. And I’m going to arrange a little something as soon as I figure out—”

“He said you’d say that.”

“Gonna be hard to go on a rampage without backup,” Ray pointed out, climbing back onto his stool with one of my longnecks.

“I’ll have backup,” I said grimly, reaching for my phone before I remembered: mine was currently waterlogged. So I grabbed the house phone off the wall and punched in a number I’m not supposed to have.

“What the hell?” I demanded.

The vampire on the other end of the connection snorted. At least, that’s what the sound would have been called if I had uttered it. But when you wore Brioni tuxedos because Armani was too common, it was called “expressing disapproval.”

“Dorina. How did you obtain this number?”

“I got tired of going through your boys. According to them, you’re always out or you’re always busy.”

“Which is frequently the case. And you did not answer the question.”

“How about you answer one first.”

“Such as?”

“Such as I let you into my head and now I’m fired?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. Because I have a few ideas about—”

“You’re suspended.”

“I’m—what?”

“It is merely temporary.”

“Why?” I asked harshly. “Because I let Lawrence get killed?”

“You didn’t ‘let’ Lawrence do anything. Lawrence was the senior member of that team. If anything, he let you down—”

“How? By dying?”

“By allowing overconfidence in his abilities to blind him to the dangers of the situation,” Mircea said, a little bite creeping into his tone. “Having three master abilities made him unusual, but not invincible. As he discovered—after he put you in the untenable position of abandoning him or rushing in after him. And of course, you chose the latter—”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“You weren’t supposed to be in that position in the first place. And you will not be again, not until—”

“Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight. I’m being fired for not leaving Lawrence to die?”

“You’re not being fired—”

“Funny, that’s what it sounds like.”

“You’re being suspended until we determine—”

“Determine what?”

“Why you’re still alive!” Mircea snapped.

Okay, that was a new record. It usually took me a full two minutes to get under his skin. Fair enough; it took him about that many seconds to work his way under mine.

“You want to explain that?” I asked, after a pause.

“If you give me a chance,” he said curtly. “However poor Kit’s choice of phrasing may have been, what he said this afternoon had merit—in any scenario I can envision, you should have been killed as well as Lawrence. That was the point, it would seem, of that whole exercise—to deprive us of as many agents as possible—”

“Like Radu said, maybe they didn’t—”

“—and clearly, we were not likely to send anything less than our best after a witness as important as Varus. Whether they knew what you are or not, you should have died last night. They had no reason whatsoever to keep you alive—and yet they did.”

“Maybe they—”

“And not just bleeding out on the pier. They took you. They picked you up and took you away, to some misbegotten hole in the wall where we could not find you. You are Mine, but not as a Child born of blood would be. I cannot trace you, and I foolishly did not think to put a trace on you—”

“Wait. I don’t remember any—”

“I know that you do not! But I saw. Through Louis-Cesare’s eyes, I saw it all, and it was very clear that they had some sort of plan for you. And until I know what that plan was, it is too much of a risk—”

“Like it’s not for everybody? From what you’re saying, it seems like I’m in less danger than anyone else. Wherever I ended up, I’m alive—”

“And so you shall remain.”

It was implacable—dry, cold, and hard as steel—in the tone I hated most from him. It was the one that said he wasn’t even listening to me, that he never had been, that he wasn’t going to. It was the one that said I might as well hang up right now, because this conversation was going exactly nowhere. But some of Mircea’s ungodly bullheadedness had dripped down the family line to me, and I wasn’t done yet.

“My partner is dead,” I said flatly. “Do you really expect me to—”

“Your partner. Whom you knew for all of an hour, and whose existence you had completely forgotten until this afternoon?”

“You know damned well that doesn’t—”

“Lawrence was Kit’s man. He was only the third Child he ever made. If you think someone will not bleed for this, many someones, you do not know him as I do.”

“Then let me help!”

“No.”

“If you were short on agents before, it’s twice as bad now! Why in the name of—”

“Because you are Mine.” The voice snapped like a whip. “As Lawrence was Kit’s. Closer, even, born not only of blood but of flesh and bone, and I will not risk—”

“You’re not risking anything!”

“That is correct. I am not. Not this time.”

“Damn it, Mircea!” I hung on to the phone, mad as hell but not able to give this up. I needed this job. And not just for the money, although a steady income was something I thought I could get used to. I needed it because of what I was.

I couldn’t just not hunt. It didn’t work that way. Even with Claire here it didn’t. Her presence made it easier to postpone episodes, to maintain some level of control. But I was what I was. A life lacking in violence might be the norm for most people, but for me it was a one-way ticket to the crazy house, and not just for a brief visit. The creature that lived inside my veins demanded blood; the only thing I’d ever been able to decide was whose.

And now he was taking that away.

“That Duergar mix of yours,” Mircea said after a moment. “You are fond of him, are you not?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“How would you like to see him walking headlong into a danger you cannot even name?”

“That’s not…” I gripped the phone tightly so I wouldn’t shove it through the wall. “That’s different. He’s a child.”

“And when he is not?” Mircea asked softly. “When he is an adult, when he has developed whatever abilities fate has decided for him, do you think you will feel one whit differently than you do today? Do you think you will suddenly not mind if someone takes him from you, if they threaten him, if they hurt him?”

“You never…” I swallowed, because he was doing it to me again. Just like every fucking…Goddamn it. “You never cared before.”

“I have always cared.”

“Then let me hunt.”

“No.”

“Mircea. I can find the ones who did this. I can—”

“What you can do is obey me,” the voice said, going cold again. “For once in your life, you will do as I say!” And the phone went dead.