“Then borrow one from your roommate!”

I pursed my lips. Claire was six feet tall. Her shortest dress would drag the floor on me. Not to mention being completely not my style.

“So we’re going to a Ren faire, then?”

Marlowe ran a hand through his hair and muttered something. And then he eyed me up and down. “What are you? A two?”

“Depends on the dress. Mostly I’m a four, but it depends how snug they fit across—”

“The bust, yes,” he said thoughtfully.

I blinked. “That is…deeply disturbing…coming from you.”

He scowled. “I’ll send something over! Just be at Central at nine!” he told me, referring to the local office of the Vampire Senate.

“Give me one good reason why I should help you.”

“I’ll pay triple.”

I smiled and ate omelet. “That’s a good reason.”

Chapter Twenty-one

“I can’t believe I waxed for this,” I said, eight hours later. And picked a banana peel out of my hair.

Marlowe didn’t even bother to tell me to shut up, which wasn’t a great sign. Not that I thought he was in any real danger. Slava’s guys knew the penalty for killing a senator, and they weren’t going to risk it, orders or no. But he was looking a little under the weather.

I, on the other hand, didn’t have a scratch on me, unless you counted the ladder in my hose. I guess they’d assumed I was just his evening snack pack or something. Because they hadn’t even bothered to rough me up before they threw us both in the Dumpster.

Which was kind of where they lost me.

Slava had been on Marlowe’s radar long before he bought a yacht from the wrong guy. He was infamous for providing a smorgasbord of vice to the local paranormal community, including running one of the biggest prostitution rings in Manhattan. And for operating a notorious sex club, appropriately named the Aerie, in the penthouse above.

Of course, that wasn’t what had annoyed the Senate. They weren’t in the habit of policing vice and believed that what two adults did privately—or not so privately, in the right venue—was up to them. Unless said adults weren’t exactly human, weren’t exactly here legally, and weren’t exactly willing.

Slava was rumored to have reversed the usual fey-enslaving-humans thing to provide unusual delights to his more jaded—and well-heeled—customers. Which definitely was illegal, only nobody had ever been able to pin anything on him. Which was the part I didn’t get. Why did a guy who’d stared down both the Senate and the Circle for decades suddenly go nuts when Marlowe showed up to ask a few questions? Sure, a visit from the chief spy didn’t make anybody happy, especially somebody who was guilty as hell. But if half the rumors were true, Slava had been living that way for years. Why panic now?

I dug coffee grounds out of my décolletage and slid another glance Marlowe’s way. But he didn’t look like he wanted to discuss it. He was just sitting there, like the Buddha of Trash, his burgundy velvet evening coat splattered with blood and mustard, the latter from somebody’s day-old Reuben, by the smell. I wrinkled my nose and tossed one of the five-inch black satin torture devices he’d provided over the side of the Dumpster.

It bounced off the curb and landed in a puddle of something nasty.

Of course it did.

I sighed and heaved myself out after it. That was harder than it sounds, thanks to the Ace bandage in dress form that constituted Marlowe’s idea of sexy. But at least the color was nice. Crimson wasn’t my usual thing, but it covered a multitude of sins, not to mention ketchup.

Although I couldn’t help but notice that I smelled a little…unusual.

Chanel No. 5 obviously wasn’t meant for the trenches.

I brushed myself down, rescued the shoe, and looked up to find the Buddha making faces at the sky. I couldn’t see him that well—lower Manhattan is fairly well lit at night, but we were in the shadow of a building. But he looked like he was having a stroke.

Or it would have, if he’d been human. Since he was a vampire, I assumed he was having a conversation with some of his boys, doing the telepathic equivalent of tearing them a new one. So it was no real shock when less than a minute later a bunch of little cat feet came running down the sidewalk, and resolved themselves into a group of silent, black-suited vamps.

One of them made the mistake of trying to help the boss out of the Dumpster, only to have a fist knotted in his collar. “Well?” Marlowe snarled.

“No portal activity, my lord. If Slava has one on the premises, it is not active at present.”

“Then he doesn’t have one.” Marlowe jumped out and landed on the street beside me.

Someone else must have said something, because he responded. But he was the only one who bothered to articulate for the little dhampir. So I got only his side of the conversation as he stripped down, the mustard-covered shirt following the Reubenized coat back into the Dumpster.

“Of course I’m bloody sure! He knows we’ll be coming for him. If he had an easy out, he’d use it!…Damn it, I said no! A mass stampede would be the perfect diversion. We’re not going to give him that.…I want this building sealed, do you understand? Every door, every window, every crack. We have him, and we’re damned well going to keep him!”

Marlowe had stripped replacement garments off the vamp closest to his size and threw them on while he looked me over. “I’m going back in. Are you up for it?”

“We just got kicked out.”

“That’s not what I asked,” he snapped, shoving studs through the holes in his shirt cuffs.

“But relevant. We never made it past the lobby. And now he’s probably got people watching the exits, too. How do you expect—”

I stopped, because a fire engine chose that moment to sling around a corner. That wouldn’t have been all that unusual, except that its lights were flashing, its siren was blaring, and it was skidding on what looked like only half its wheels. And then it straightened up and came barreling down the street. And onto the sidewalk. And through the double doors of the swanky building Slava called home in a burst of light and sound and shattering glass.

Which was either the biggest coincidence ever or Marlowe’s attempt at a distraction.

All right, points for effort, I thought, watching the truck’s rear wheels burn rubber on the sidewalk, kicking up a cloud of smoke as they tried to shove the bulky back end the rest of the way through the opening. But I didn’t see how that was going to—

And then it exploded.

Okay, yeah. That’s better, I thought, ducking behind the Dumpster to avoid the mass of flaming flying debris that was currently lighting up half the block. Marlowe said something, but I couldn’t hear him over the ringing in my ears—and the blaring siren, which was somehow still going. “What?”

“In or out?” he yelled, holding out a hand.

What the hell. “In.” And the next thing I knew, we were flying down the sidewalk, past a burning vamp running the other way, up some shallow stairs and through a fiery hole that used to be the doorway.

And straight into a wall of smoke. The damned truck must have been loaded with gasoline, because the whole lobby was burning. Not that I could see much of it, but the heat was phenomenal and there was virtually no breathable air.

Of course, that last didn’t bother the vamps lunging at us through the clouds. They looked like something out of a nightmare: just dark, smoldering outlines and glowing eyes. But it didn’t look like they’d been hurt too badly, because three jumped Marlowe, and a bunch more surged past us to attack his boys coming in the front door.

I was starting to feel neglected when an iron hand closed around my wrist.

I clamped my own hand down over it, wrenched up the thumb and twisted sharply, until there was a grunt and the thud of knees hitting tile. I looked down to see a confused vamp staring up at me. He wasn’t one of the stronger ones, maybe sixth-level at a guess, which was why he’d decided to be brave and jump the human. His eyes went from his broken hand to me and back again, as if he couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t stand.

Until I helped him out, by baring baby fangs.

His eyes widened, and when I let him go, he scrambled away without even standing up—straight through a wall of glass.

And then Marlowe grabbed my hand and we were off again.

We ran through the wreck of the front desk, past a wall with assorted truck parts sticking out of it, down a hall and into an elevator that was just opening. A confused young couple got off, only to hesitate at the sight of the inferno behind us. “Get them out!” Marlowe snapped, confusing me for a moment, until I noticed that one of his boys was right on our heels.

And then we were inside and off.

“How do I look?” Marlowe demanded, slinging a borrowed tie around his neck.

“Like hell,” I choked. Between smoke and powdered drywall, we were both pretty grimy.

I started to hit the stop button, but he grabbed my wrist. “No time.”

“Well, we can’t…go in there…like this,” I gasped, and then coughed again to clear my lungs. “Not if the idea is to grab Slava without anybody noticing.”

“It is.” Marlowe brushed down his coat savagely. “The bastard has too many prominent guests. A few of the wrong people get caught in the cross fire and the fallout won’t be pretty.”

“Well, right now neither are we.”

“Do the best you can,” he told me stubbornly. “If I’d known he was likely to run, I’d have set this up differently. But we’re stuck with it now.”

“Maybe not. If he doesn’t have a portal, he’s trapped. We could—”

“There are other ways out than a portal!”

“Such as?”

“Such as the helicopter he called for five minutes ago.”

“And how do you know that?”

He just tapped an ear before bending over and shaking both hands through his curly mop, sending dust flying everywhere—including all over me. But I didn’t take time to bitch, since I assumed that the ear thing meant he’d bugged Slava’s place at some point. Which reminded me.