Afterward, she met Raoul in the gym as usual. Others were already there. Scott jumped rope, sweat trickling down the side of his face. Aaron and Brian sparred with each other. Diego had positioned himself over at the selection of free weights, pumping iron without appearing to look once in her direction.

As they walked to their usual mat, Raoul said, “I noticed you didn’t open the gates for your morning run.”

If she’d ever had any doubt whether or not Raoul was keeping an eye on her through the discreet security cameras that dotted the property, his words banished it.

She shrugged. “I pulled a hamstring and thought it would be better to take the time to stretch this morning.”

Aside from one quick, keen glance, he didn’t make any further comment. He didn’t have to; they both knew that if Xavier were periodically taking blood from her vein, she would have healed from any hamstring injury overnight.

Instead, he gestured to the mat, and they took their accustomed places. Adrenaline spiked her senses as she readied herself, bringing her weight to the balls of her feet, but her adrenaline spiked every morning just before Raoul started to pummel her, and besides, as enhanced as he was, she didn’t think he had a Vampyre’s sensitivity to pick up on anything unusual.

He paused, studying the placement of her feet. “Are you sure you don’t need to do any more stretching first?”

“I’m sure,” she told him. She brought her hands up.

“Very well,” he said. “On your guard, if you please.”

It was how he started every torture session. As soon as she heard the words, she whirled and sprinted toward the punching bag in another corner of the room.

What would he do? Would he chase her? He was so much faster—she would only get a split second from surprise. She lunged as hard and as fast as she could.

Then she heard him, coming after her. Dimly, she was aware of the others, talking and exclaiming.

Three more steps. Two.

His fingers brushed the back of her neck. She twisted away from the touch, dove, rolled and grabbed for the gun that she had duct-taped to the bottom of the punching bag.

Bracing her shoulders against the floor, she brought the gun up just as Raoul reached for her again.

He reared back, his gaze flaring.

She sighted down the gun, aimed at his heart and said, “Bang, bang. You’re dead.”

Silence fell over the gym. Raoul didn’t move. His astonished expression settled into something calmer and much more deadly. “How did you get that?”

She tilted the nose of the barrel away from him and opened up her hand, loosening her grip on the gun. “It’s not loaded.”

Relaxing, he took it from her and checked the cartridge, then checked the chamber. “That didn’t answer my question. You don’t have the passcode to the weapons locker.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Diego. He shook his head at her, grinning. She rolled to her feet. “Trade secret. Did I surprise you?”

Raoul gave her a speaking look, eyebrows raised. “What do you think?”

She knew he remembered their talk from the day before as well as she did. Training was all well and good, but in real life there weren’t any rules to a fight. You either won or you didn’t. This time, she had cheated, but she had also won.

She smiled. “I think I just changed the conversation.”

Nothing changed about the rest of her day, and yet everything had. At lunch, most of the guys gave her broad grins, and Marc gave her a friendly wink.

As she helped to clear away the dishes, Angelica said to her, “Don’t let it go to your head. You got lucky. You still have a lot to learn.”

“I know,” she told the older woman. “I’m working on it.”

Angelica’s only reply was a sniff, but her attitude toward Tess seemed to relax a bit too, and Tess thought she might have gotten a step closer to becoming part of the group.

Part of the family, really. The thought made her pause, but it was true. All the attendants really were like a family. They spent their energies working for the common good.

Maybe she had taken only one step out of many, but . . . It felt good. She liked it here. She liked these people.

For the first time since she had arrived, she considered what it might be like to stay long-term and plan for a future here. When she left Las Vegas and Malphas’s employ, all she could think about was getting away and trying to find a bolt-hole in which to hide. Long-term plans hadn’t factored into her thinking.

What if she did choose to stay?

She couldn’t train full-time for the rest of her life, nor would she want to. Eventually she would have to take on other tasks, but maybe Xavier or Raoul could give her meaningful, interesting work. As she had worked to get through school, she had been so ambitious. When she had graduated, she knew Malphas was dangerous even as she took a job working in one of his casinos.

But making money had been her biggest priority. She had been so determined she would never again be as poor as she had been growing up.

She told herself she was being worldly, working for a pariah Djinn. She wanted to be able to afford nice things, to have a fashionable wardrobe and a fat 401(k), to go on vacations to Hawaii and Europe, and retire by the time she was fifty. Now, when she looked back, she could see how foolish and shortsighted she had been.

Here, she might have a place and people to belong to. It was good to be able to go down the path to the beach and walk along the shore, and at night the estate was peaceful, surrounded as it was by forest and wreathed in fresh ocean air. Once she thought she might miss the bright lights of Las Vegas, but she didn’t. She liked the quiet and the seclusion of the forest that surrounded the estate.

She might have been a fool once, but she didn’t think she was being one twice. She knew there would be much more involved in her position as she finished her training. She had to complete her pact with Xavier, and one of the simplest yet hardest obstacles for her to overcome would be to walk calmly into a room filled with Vampyres.

Also, training so hard, not only in hand to hand but with weapons, might be to cover unlikely eventualities, but those eventualities did occur. Some day shit would get real, and some kind of confrontation would happen. But even that thought didn’t deter her. It was good to feel empowered, and to know that because of the work she did now, she might one day have an active hand in shaping critical events.

As the day wore on and evening approached, her good mood dissipated, and she grew more and more nervous.