“No blood.”

“What?”

“I wanted to remind you to make sure to bruise rather than bloody him. This corridor is protected by a sound shield, but they do not block odors. And nothing is calculated to get a vampire’s attention faster than—” He noticed my expression and stopped.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

“I’m on the Senate,” he reminded me. “It’s Lord Obvious. And I don’t want any mistakes tonight.”

I could have said a lot of things to that, but we didn’t have time. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said sweetly, and squatted by my guy to frisk him.

But other than a .45 that I tucked into the front of my dress, there was nothing of interest. Like detailed plans of the smugglers’ intentions. Or a map of their portal system. Or even a photo ID, none of which the bad guys I met ever seemed thoughtful enough to provide.

“Nothing,” Marlowe said in disgust, throwing his man alongside and then crouching beside him.

“But human.”

“Mages,” he confirmed.

“Dark or light?”

He concentrated for a second, then shook his head. “Can’t tell.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.” I met his eyes, and his expression darkened. And I knew we were both thinking about Lawrence and the mage he’d followed into hell. “Mages, demons, vampires, smugglers—what’s next?”

“Let’s go find out,” he growled.

Finding out meant finding Slava’s office, which was a process of elimination involving a lot of rooms that looked like they ought to have interesting activities going on—hence the silence spell, I assumed—but that were inexplicably empty. Like the door the men had been coming out of, which proved to be a break room. And the corridor. And everything except a door at the very end of the hall with a light on under it.

I scowled at it.

We’d been up here six, maybe seven minutes by now, with another couple in the elevator. That was plenty of time for Slava to have prepared a welcome, even if he hadn’t already had something in place. And since this had been his base of operations for years, that seemed unlikely.

He knew we were here. He knew there was a chance we would get past his men. Yet there were no guards, no traps, nothing to keep us from waltzing right into his office except a couple of clueless mages who hadn’t even had shields up. It was enough to give me stomach cramps.

“Hold up,” I said.

We were plastered to either side of the office door, about to break in, so Marlowe didn’t look happy at the interruption. “What now?” he demanded, like the previous delays had been my fault.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. But it wasn’t just paranoia coming out to play. Something had triggered an “oh, crap” response in the back of my mind.

I couldn’t pin it down any more than that, because there was nothing to see but empty corridor and, thanks to the spell, nothing to hear. And the only odors coming from the room ahead were pretty standard for an office: printer ink, industrial cleaner, a full ashtray, and feline, because apparently even evil pimps keep pets. There was nothing to explain why the hair had suddenly risen all along the back of my neck.

But it had, and it was a problem. Particularly as my big bag o’ tricks had been confiscated on the first go-round. All I had was a purloined gun with no extra clips and no idea what was behind that damned door.

And I was suddenly finding myself less than curious.

“For fuck’s sake!” Marlowe hissed, as I just stood there. “You’re supposed to be a professional!”

“I am,” I said. “And in my professional opinion, there’s something—”

But Marlowe didn’t want my opinion, professional or otherwise. Marlowe wanted inside that room. “Remember—alive,” he snarled. And before I could stop him, he’d grasped the knob, flung open the door and bolted inside with vampire swiftness.

Which was when things got a little confusing.

A blur even my eyes couldn’t track shot out of the room and then shot back in, slamming the door behind it. It took less time than it takes to say, almost less than it takes to think—maybe a second in all. It took me another to notice that Marlowe was now across the hall, splayed against the wall.

Nailed to the tasteful gold wallpaper by the knife buried in his heart.

It would have killed a human, and seriously inconvenienced a regular vampire. But that sort of thing doesn’t work so well on senior masters. Not even with wood, and Marlowe’s bloody hands were slipping on a metal hilt. But it didn’t look like it had done him any good, either.

A thin ribbon of blood trickled out of the side of his mouth as he opened it to gasp, “Wha’?”

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know. And because the door suddenly opened again, if you can call it that when a body is flung through it, splintering the wood and sending someone flying back into Marlowe. And plunging the knife he’d just jerked out of his rib cage right back inside.

Judging by his expression, that hadn’t been too healthy, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. Or about the fact that the vamp who had smashed into him was no longer in one piece, or even two. Or that one of those pieces was screaming in a high-pitched wheeze, like a little girl.

Because the thing in the room was now the thing on me.

What followed wasn’t exactly a fight, since a fight implies planning and strategy and execution and this was just the last step, fueled by pure instinct because there was no time for anything else. I blocked a flurry of knives that was really only one but was wielded by a slashing maniac with unearthly speed that I’d only ever encountered from a first-level vamp. But this wasn’t one, because the feel was wrong; the feel was strange, but it was oddly familiar, too, in a way I didn’t have time to grasp before—

Before I had him.

I feinted left and then jerked right with a liquid movement that I guess my assailant hadn’t been expecting. Because it allowed me to grab the neck that was following the knife headed for my heart. I held on to it with one hand while holding the damn knife away from me with the other. And looked past it to see—

Shit.

The shiny side of the knife trembling between us reflected a coldly handsome face, so pale that it didn’t look human—which was fair, since it wasn’t. A mass of silver-blond hair obscured most of the features, but I didn’t need them. The eyes glittering between the strands were more than enough. Like twin stars, they were the most unusual color I’d ever seen—solid opaque pewter. And narrowed and angry and terribly familiar as they met mine.

For a split second, until he threw off my hold, vaulted back into the office and slid across the desk.

“What the hell?” Marlowe cursed—from behind me, because I was already moving, hurling myself across the room and reaching out—

And missing, because the damned cat ran underneath my feet. “Shit!”

“I asked you a question!” Marlowe barked, and a bloody hand fell on my shoulder as I leaned out the window—the one his attacker had just thrown himself through. And either Marlowe had forgotten that he wasn’t handling another vamp, or he didn’t care if he cracked bone.

Luckily for him, I was too busy scanning the street far, far below to do more than shake him off. But there was no badly dented car, no body painting the sidewalk red, no sign of his attacker at all. Until I looked up.

And was clipped on the chin by the hard end of someone’s boot.

Son of a bitch.

I went staggering back into the desk, bounced off and started for the window again. Only to stop at the sight of a fey perched on top of a struggling pork chop doing a Superman impression. The pork chop was Slava. The fey was Æsubrand. And they were levitating outside the window like it was no big thing.

Chapter Twenty-three

For a moment, I just stared. Not because of the hovering in midair thing. Levitation charms aren’t exactly rare, although using them in full view of norms is a no-no. But human laws aren’t so easy to apply to a prince of the fey, and anyway, that wasn’t the problem.

No, the problem was that this particular prince hadn’t stuck his charm on a chair, a bookcase or a rug à la Aladdin. No, he’d stuck it on Slava. Which meant that both of them were about to be roadkill because the magic they were using didn’t work that way.

But Æsubrand obviously didn’t know enough about human charms to realize that. Or that he would need a propulsion system, or at least a good push, if he wanted to go anywhere. Which he hadn’t gotten because he’d been too busy kicking me in the head.

Leaving them stranded—for the moment.

I stopped staring up at them and started looking around the office, hoping for a grappling hook—preferably one attached to an M16. But I guess Slava kept the weapons elsewhere, because I didn’t see one. Of course, there was another option.

“Pull us in when I grab him,” I told Marlowe, who had just staggered up behind me.

“Grab who?” he rasped, and then stopped, staring in disbelief at the insanity outside the window.

“Æsubrand,” I said shortly, jerking down the office blinds and stripping off the cord. And thankfully, Slava’s impressively tall windows extended in here, and they had cords to match.

“What? There are fey now?” Marlowe demanded, outraged.

And I had to admit, it did seem a little unfair.

“Looks that way,” I said and threw myself out the window.

I ignored the stream of cursing from behind me because I had about a second to time this right or I’d be a greasy spot on the sidewalk. Luckily, it looked like Æsubrand hadn’t expected company. At least he hadn’t until I grabbed tubby’s belt and held on for dear life.

A pair of silver-bright eyes met mine over a pin-striped mountain for a second, before their owner sent a fist crashing into my jawline. Looks like he remembers me, too, I thought grimly, spitting blood. And then the fist was back for an encore.