“Enough of that,” he said, his voice a little lighter than before. “Wouldn’t want Owen to get jealous.”

   “Someone has a rather high opinion of himself.”

   “Always.” Phillip grinned at my teasing, then jerked his head at the mansion again. “But what are you going to do about McAllister? If Tucker and the rest of the Circle want him dead, then he has to know something about them, right? Maybe he just doesn’t realize that he does.”

   The thought of what the slimy lawyer might or might not know sent little spikes of pain shooting through my temples. I rubbed my aching head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore. Maybe McAllister knows something, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe Tucker just wants McAllister dead to prove a point. To prove that he can reach out and kill me and anyone else he likes anytime he wants to.”

   “But?” This time, Phillip asked the question.

   “But you’re right. I have to do something about him, as much as it pains me.”

   I sighed, pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket, and hit a number in the speed dial. He answered on the first ring, as though he’d been sitting by his own phone, waiting for my call. He probably had been. He was annoyingly efficient that way.

   “Yes, Gin?” the smooth voice of Silvio Sanchez, my personal assistant, filled my ear. “I take it that something happened with Jonah McAllister.”

   I glanced over at the mansion. McAllister had disappeared back inside, shut the patio doors behind him, and cut off all the lights, as if that would keep him safe.

   “You might say that. Someone tried to kill him.”

   Through the phone, I could hear Silvio pounding away on his keyboard. Even though it was after nine o’clock, he was still busy working, although I had no idea what or why he was typing right now. Most sane people would have been sprawled across the couch, watching TV or reading a good book, but the vamp was always available and always on his computer, no matter how late I called.

   “Hmm,” Silvio murmured. “Well, that’s not an entirely unexpected development. You thought that the Circle might come after him to keep him quiet.”

   “I don’t think that he actually knows anything about them,” I said. “That’s the real problem.”

   I filled the vampire in on everything that had happened, including Fedora’s assassination attempt on the lawyer.

   When I finished, Silvio kept typing for several more seconds before finally stopping. “I’ve made a note to see if Bria and Xavier can get me the traffic-camera footage from the area in the morning. Perhaps we can at least get a license plate on the SUV they were driving.”

   “I applaud your efforts, but I’m not holding my breath.”

   Detective Bria Coolidge, my baby sister, and Xavier, her partner on the force, had been helping me with my search for the Circle, especially Bria, who wanted answers about our mother just as badly as I did. Over the past few weeks, Bria and Xavier had scoured all sorts of police databases, trying to find info on Tucker and anyone he might be associated with. But so far, the two cops had come up empty, just like me, Silvio, and the rest of our friends.

   “So what do you want to do about McAllister, Gin?” Silvio asked. “There are any number of options available to you.”

   He was right. Since I was the head of the underworld, I could do anything I wanted to with Jonah McAllister, from going back inside his mansion and killing him myself, to having any number of underworld flunkies do it for me, to simply leaving the lawyer to simmer in his own fear, paranoia, and misery the way I had been for the last several months now.

   That was the real kicker, the brutal, bitter irony of this whole situation. Everyone thought that I was the big boss, that I was the head honcho, that I was the one in charge, but I knew the dark, dirty truth. That I was just a front man, just a puppet, just a convenient prop for the Circle to hide behind while they merrily continued on with their own machinations behind the scenes. I’d told Tucker that I would never, ever work for the group the way that Mab had, but the Circle was still using me all the same. The thought further soured my mood.

   “Gin?” Silvio asked again. “What do you want to do about McAllister?”

   I looked back at the mansion, which was as dark and silent as all the others on the street now. No doubt Jonah was still wide-awake, though, hiding in a closet somewhere and clutching a gun. The lawyer was probably still wearing his garish Christmas sweater and silverstone vest, desperately hoping that Fedora wouldn’t come back and finish him off.

   I doubted that she’d be back tonight since she thought that she’d already killed him, but she would come back, and I had to prepare for that. If McAllister did know something about the Circle, something he might not even realize that he knew, then I wanted another chance to pry it out of him.

   Oh, I didn’t think that I could stop Fedora from killing McAllister if she was truly determined to do it. I couldn’t watch or protect him 24-7, not even if I dragged him kicking and screaming to a safe house somewhere. But even if Fedora did succeed in offing the lawyer, then maybe I could at least learn more about her, which might lead me back to Tucker and the rest of the Circle. At this point, I’d take whatever bread crumbs I could get.

   “Gin?” Silvio asked for a third time.

   “Call Jade Jamison and ask if she can spare a couple of folks who work out in this neighborhood to keep an eye on McAllister. She probably already has some cooking, cleaning, and other people in the mansions out here, especially this time of year.”

   Jade Jamison was an underworld figure who ran a variety of cleaning and other service businesses throughout Ashland. In this neighborhood, cooks, housekeepers, gardeners, and even security guards would be as invisible as holiday snowmen, and no one would give them a second look. Not McAllister and hopefully not Fedora, when or if she came back to try to kill him again.

   “But tell Jade that I only want her folks to watch Mc­Allister,” I added. “I don’t want any of them trying to save him if he gets attacked again by Fedora or someone else. He’s not worth their lives, and neither is any information that he might or might not have.”