That night, her nightmare about Malphas returned.

• • •

When she opened her eyes at dawn, a few minutes before her alarm went off, she thought, Raoul was right. Xavier was right.

I have to change the conversations in my head.

I have to do more than just confront my fear. I have to conquer it.

Each training session, she had gritted her teeth and determined to get through it. Now, for the first time, she considered Raoul as an opponent. While he might be too formidable for her to take down (yet?), he had given her an accessible goal.

She lay in bed thinking until her alarm chimed. Then, instead of going directly to her morning run, she went in search of Diego, who sat on the patio facing the ocean while he drank coffee. As she joined him, he nodded to her.

“No morning run today?” he asked.

It was peaceful on the patio; she would have to remember that and come out here to enjoy it more often. This early in the morning, the air was chilly, and she zipped up her hoodie.

“I have something else I need to do,” she said. “And I need your help in order to do it.”

“Oh yeah?” The glance he gave her contained marginal interest.

“I need you to get me into the weapons locker.” The weapons locker was a room off the garage that was locked with an electronic code. She wasn’t sure who all knew the code, but she did know two things—Diego had access to the locker, and she didn’t.

“I don’t know, chica.” His expression had turned wary as he sipped his coffee. “I would need to hear a pretty good reason to do something like that.”

“I need a small gun and some duct tape,” she told him. The muscles in her thighs started to shiver from the cold. Much to her surprise, her body knew she was supposed to be running, and she felt twitchy and full of energy. “A nine-millimeter would do. I’m not asking for any bullets, I just want the gun. I’m going to use it as a prop. It’s for my morning training session with Raoul.”

“No bullets, eh?” He mulled the idea over, black eyebrows raised. “What do you need the duct tape for?”

“Staging.”

A grin began to spread across his broad, handsome features. “Okay, chica, I’ll bite. I’ve got some duct tape in the garage. But if I do this for you, I get to see what goes down.”

She shrugged. “I don’t even know if it’s going to work. Just make sure you’re in the gym during my training session, and you’ll see it.”

They walked together to the garage, and Diego keyed in the code for the weapons locker, selected a nine-millimeter and checked it himself to make sure it was unloaded before he handed it to her. She tucked it into the pocket of her hoodie and followed him into the clean, spacious garage.

A few of the attendants, like Angelica and Peter, didn’t own a vehicle, but those who did parked their cars in the lot at the side of the main house. The garage building was reserved for Xavier’s four vehicles—a gray Jaguar, a silver Mercedes, a black Lexus SUV and an Audi TT. She shook her head as she looked at them. “They’re gorgeous.”

Diego looked at the cars too. “Yeah, they’re nice, but some of the really wealthy patrons have fleets of thirty or more, filled with cars like Bentleys, Rolls-Royces and Lamborghinis. Xavier keeps a modest house by comparison.”

She remembered Xavier saying something similar and muttered, “It’s more than luxurious enough for me.”

He threw her a lopsided grin. “Eh, you don’t know any better. You haven’t seen those other estates yet.”

He sounded like he might be envious, but she wasn’t sure of what. If he were envious of anything, she would have thought it would be of the small fortune in horsepower they were contemplating, but instead he sounded almost disparaging of Xavier’s lifestyle. He couldn’t be envious of the other Vampyre households, could he?

“And you’ve seen them?”

“Sure, when I’ve been attending Xavier at some function or other. I’m not always stuck here, babysitting cars and cleaning pools.”

The tinge of envy in his voice had been replaced with restlessness or dissatisfaction. Maybe even a little resentment?

Finally, she had encountered something in this place that was less than idyllic. But instead of being reassured at finding a dose of reality, she found it jarring, and she studied him thoughtfully.

The estate had a cloistered atmosphere. While everybody got time off in rotation, they had to make an effort to actually leave, but she had found that she liked the peace and quiet. She enjoyed the surrounding forest and the ocean, and so far, cable TV and access to the Internet had met all of her modest needs. For the first time, though, she realized that others might not be as content with the lifestyle.

Diego walked over to the neat metal shelves set against one wall and rummaged through a few drawers, as he said, “Xavier has a six-bedroom house. Chica, that’s almost like living in a double-wide compared to some places I’ve seen. But hey, we each get our own room, so that’s saying something, right?”

He located a roll of duct tape and handed it to her. As she took it, she gave him a level look. “They’re nice rooms. We ate grass-fed prime rib last night. I have a thousand dollar Visa card from last month that I can use for fun money, if I want.”

He seemed to realize that he had begun to sound churlish, because he backtracked with a quick smile. “Yeah, of course. It’s all good. I’m just saying, you might think this is fancy, but it’s not as fancy as it can get.”

“I hear you.” Eager to back out of a conversation that was going nowhere fast, she hefted the roll of duct tape at him as she backed up a few steps. “Thanks for helping out.”

“No problem.” He gave her an easy smile. “Can’t wait to see what you’ve got planned.”

Now that she had gotten what she needed, she dismissed Diego from her thoughts and focused on her next steps. Hurrying to the gym, she was pleased to find it empty, and she studied the various angles and possibilities from the mat where she and Raoul usually worked. Everything had to be planned perfectly. She couldn’t afford even a moment’s hesitation, and even then, it might not work.

Once she had everything arranged to her liking, she jogged slowly back to the attendants’ house, showered and made it downstairs in time for breakfast.