“Hey, Hollywood, can I pay you to hide those?” someone said.

“We can still get access to them, though, right?” somebody else demanded.

“Fuck all y’all, for real,” Lassiter muttered. “I’m serious. One of these days, you are gonna respect me. . . .”

Mary just leaned into her arms and smiled at the bunch of crazies: In a way, this was exactly what Rhage needed, a little steam-blow-off on his way to the coffee shop. Heck, on that theory, they all deserved to release some tension.

It had been a heavy-duty couple of hours.

* * *

Fucking Little Mermaid, Rhage thought when he left their bedroom twenty-five minutes later.

Shutting the door, he retucked his already tucked-in shirt and pulled on the jacket Mary had picked out for him to hide his guns. As he walked down the hall, he fiddled with his hair, rolled his shoulders, tugged at his belt.

His palms were sweaty. How the hell was he going to shake the social worker’s hand if he was sweating this bad? She was going to have use a napkin to dry off.

Or a set of drapes.

Coming up to Wrath’s study, he saw that the doors were open and he paused, wondering if now would be a good time to tell his brother and his King what the hell they were up to. When he looked around the jamb, though, he got an eyeful of Wrath and V talking together, the King on the throne, the brother right next to him, crouching on the floor. Their heads were together, their voices low, the air so thick there might as well have been mhis around them.

What the fuck was going on, Rhage thought as he was tempted to go inside.

But then he checked his gold Rolex, the one that he’d given Mary, but which she’d insisted he wear for good luck. No time to ask, and on that note, no time to go into the whole Bitty thing, either.

Later, he decided.

Hitting the stairwell, he bottomed out on the mosaic floor and beelined for the exit.

“Good luck.”

Rhage pulled up short and looked to the right. Lassiter was in the billiards room, bluing up a cue.

“What are you talking about?” Rhage demanded.

As the angel just shrugged, Rhage shook his head. “You’re crazy—”

“When she asks about how the father died, don’t fudge it. She already knows it was you and your brothers who killed him. It’s in the file. She hates the violence, but she knows that the two of them wouldn’t have survived otherwise. She wants you to have the kid. You and Mary.”

As Rhage felt all the blood leave his head and end up in his shoes, he wished he had something to hold onto.

“How do . . . did Mary talk to you about this?” Even though he found that hard to believe. “Marissa?”

“And the beast. That makes her nervous. Don’t try to calm her down about it—you’ll dwell too much on the subject and it will rattle her. Mary will handle that. Mary will tell her all she needs to know on that issue.”

“How do you know all this?”

Lassiter put the square of chalk down and shifted those oddly colored eyes over. “I’m an angel, remember? And it’s going to work out. Just hang tight—you’re going to have to keep the faith. For both you and Mary. But it’s going to happen.”

“Really?” he found himself asking.

“No lie. I might fuck with your bathroom. But never, ever about this.”

Rhage’s feet moved of their own volition, crossing the way to the pool table—and the next thing he knew, he was bear-hugging the blond-and-black motherfucker.

“You got this,” Lassiter said as they clapped each other’s backs. “But just remember. You’ve got to keep the faith.”

Before things got too sappy, Rhage backed off and headed for the front door again. Stepping outside through the vestibule, he took a deep, bracing draw of the cold air . . . and off he went, traveling through the night in a rush of molecules, zeroing in on a very human establishment.

When he arrived at his destination, he was careful to re-form in the back of the shallow parking lot, and yes, he did a re-check on his hair and his shirt before he walked around to the I’ve Bean Waitin’ coffee shop’s front door.

Opening things up, he got hit in the nose with a whole lot of coffee aroma, and he had a momentary wobble about the whole not-ordering thing. What was he going to do with his hands while he sat there?

With a curse that he didn’t smoke or bring needlepoint, he looked through the human men and women, a lot of whom glanced up at him and kept on staring . . . and then met the stare of the only other vampire in the place—no, wait, there was a pretans in the crowd he didn’t recognize.

He knew who Rhym was, though. He’d seen her in plenty of pictures from Mary’s work.

As he took another deep breath, it wasn’t quite the cathartic experience the one on the front stoop of the mansion had been, but there was oxygen in here. Right?

God, that coffee smell was making him suffocate. Or maybe that was his adrenal glands.

Rhage tried to pin down his freak out as he began making his way one of the tables in the back.

When he stopped in front of Rhym, he wanted to pass out. Instead, he rubbed his hand on the ass of his pants as discreetly as he could, and then extended his arm.

“Hi, I’m Rhage.”

The female was a little wide-eyed as she stared at him—but that was common, and no, he wasn’t being arrogant. People did tend to do a little double-take when they first met him, and then yes, they usually ended up looking at him closely, as if trying to figure out whether he was for real.