Ariane stared for a moment, not sure she’d heard right. “You’re… offering me a place to stay? Away from here?”

An edge of annoyance crept into Elena’s voice. “Yes, away from here. I may slum it for the job, but I’ve learned a few things from Strickland. I’ve got my fingers in more than one pie, and one of those pies is income property. Nice income property in vamp-safe areas. One tenant just vacated and headed for Borneo, so I’ve got an opening.”

Ariane quickly ran through a mental inventory of what little she had left to bargain with. The reality deflated her considerably.

“I don’t know how much I can pay,” she began, but Elena cut her off with a curt wave of her hand.

“No. This is gratis. Throwing you out would feel like kicking a damned puppy, which isn’t something I make a habit of doing. Anyway, I could stand to earn a little good karma once in a while. So come with me. Strickland’s holed up in his office. He can get his ass out of it for a while and do something useful while we’re busy. You’ll either get lost or mugged if I don’t take you there, no matter how well you think you can handle yourself.”

Ariane hesitated for only the barest of instants. Going with Elena was a risk, yes. But staying here was a bigger one.

“All right. And th—”

“Don’t,” Elena interrupted, holding up a hand to fend off the gratitude. “Do not thank me. I may toss you out of the place before the week is out. Don’t think I won’t. You make a mess, you attract a news crew, you become a pain in my ass in any way, and out you go. Also, don’t make the mistake of thinking this is permanent. It isn’t. If you’re staying in Charlotte, you have to get your feet under you sooner rather than later and find your own place here. Got it?”

Ariane fought back a smile at all the bluster and nodded. The words didn’t matter. What mattered was what was beneath them. And so far, all she saw was a good-hearted vampiress who really, really didn’t want anyone to know it. She could live with that.

Elena eyed the duffel bag. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Only the one piece of freaky-ass medieval weaponry?”

Ariane hesitated. “The daggers are in my satchel. But they’re small.”

“Oh. Great.”

“I’m wearing the larger ones.”

Elena paused. “That’s… scary.”

“I do appreciate this, Elena.”

Elena made a face, but it seemed more for show. “Don’t let anyone else hear that. I’m supposed to be a hardass. That’s why Strickland pays me to keep this place in order.” Then she paused, looked intently at Ariane for a moment, and shook her head with a rueful smile. “Come on, Ari,” she said. “I guess you need a friend. It might as well be me.”

Chapter Five

DAMIEN STOOD OVER the headless corpse of his only lead and cursed.

“Is he really dead?”

Damien whipped his head around at the sound of the voice, spoiling for a fight. It would help let off this head of steam that had been building for days with no outlet. His first look at the vampire who’d slunk into the waiting area, probably from a hiding place beneath his desk, left Damien completely unsurprised. Just another pretty, pampered highblood wannabe. A pet.

Damien gave a disgusted sniff and recognized the scent of fear he’d picked up on the moment he’d stepped into the office. Possibly a witness. Probably more trouble than he was worth. The latter impression was reinforced when the vamp gave a loud gulp.

“No,” Damien said flatly. “No, no, do not puke here, no.” He closed his eyes, threw his head back, and groaned at the first dry heave. “Have some self-respect, man! You’ll sick up a bunch of blood and make everything worse!”

“Is Mr. Manon really d-dead?” The newcomer tried again, sucking in far more air than he should have, evidence of the unabated nausea. His eyes darted quickly from the corpse to Damien to a series of hideous landscapes some tasteless idiot had hung on the wall and around again. It was as though he was afraid to let his eyes linger too long in one place, for fear of what they might see.

The weakness made Damien want to put a fist through the man’s head, but that would have been counterproductive. For now, at least. What mattered was that his one possible link to Sammael the Grigori was now permanently incommunicado.

“Unless I’m missing something important, yes, the man is dead,” Damien finally replied. “I think his head is over there behind the desk, if you need further proof. Are you finished being overly dramatic yet?”

“His head?” The vampire gave a pitiful moan, his eyes rolling.

“Ah, apparently not. Lovely.” Damien turned away from the fledgling before he became responsible for ruining the rest of his evening and began to pace the waiting room, fists balled, claws already starting to extend. His appointment was shot. The only one who might have heard anything useful was a blithering, burping wreck, and now he was even further away from getting his hands on that diamond.

He might have had more patience if he’d been sleeping better. Who ever heard of a vampire having fucking sleeping problems?

There was the sound of stumbling, a whimper, and he saw a tottering figure out of the corner of his eye. Damien was on him in a flash, long years of assassin’s instinct kicking in. He needed to get it together, now, before everything else went to hell. He could waste time brooding later.

Even though he did not brood, as a general rule. He knew enough angsty cat-shifters.

“Don’t you dare pass out on me, you pathetic piece of shit. I’d do us all a favor and kill you now, but I need answers.” Damien grabbed the wavering vampire by the collar, lifted him off the ground a few inches, and hissed into his face. “You heard something. You must have. I suggest you tell me what before I lose what small amount of patience I still have.”

That stopped the moaning, but the vampire’s eyes, when they locked with Damien’s, were half wild with shock and fear. Very young, Damien decided. And whoever had made him ought to be ashamed for choosing one with such a weak constitution. He felt no pity.

“Please,” the man said, his voice choked and quavering as his feet dangled above the floor. “Please don’t hurt me. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t—”

Damien’s fists tightened. “No, you didn’t. You probably pass out from the sight of your own victims. Who met with Manon before me? What did you hear? I… want… answers.”

Absorbed in controlling his rapidly rising temper, Damien didn’t hear the door open. All he knew was that one moment he could smell nothing but blood and sweat and fear, and the next, his senses were flooded with the scent of a rose garden in full bloom. An outraged voice, light and musical despite the fury, filled the room.

“Put him down!”

He knew that voice. Damien shuddered, a wave of intense and utterly unexpected pleasure rippling through him. The physical reaction stunned him. Stunned… and then disgusted. Damien let go of the vampire in his fists, letting him crumple into a heap on the ground. He hit the floor with a pitiful grunt.

It helped. A little.

“There. As you wished,” Damien said smoothly. Cold, he reminded himself as he turned. Get it together. She’s unimportant, just a tasty little bit of trouble sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. If this is going to be a problem, just turn her in instead of screwing her; it hardly matters…

He was full of advice for himself in the seconds before he turned to glare at her, the Grigori who’d been slinking through his dreams, bad wig and all, and leaving him hard and restless when he awoke. The advice, and the glare, died as soon as he got a look at the woman standing in the doorway.

He finally understood the wig, the dark clothes. She’d been hiding herself, and he couldn’t help but think that was a good thing, at least for the sanity of the male population of Charlotte. More of Ariane walking around, and the men of the world would be reduced to groveling simpletons, besotted twits trotting along behind her and her ilk like dim-witted puppies.

He had the urge to do just that himself. Though if he had, he would have been in trouble. She was furious, if the violet fire in her eyes was any indication.

Ariane’s eyes moved quickly from Damien to the vampire whimpering on the floor to the headless corpse. He could see the conclusion she jumped to almost immediately. It was hard to blame her, since this sort of job would normally have been very much in his wheelhouse, minus what he felt was incredible sloppiness. Still, he found himself launching a defense immediately.

“This isn’t what you think.”

“How do you know what I think, you… you miserable piece of shit?”

“I see you’ve learned some naughty words since we last met,” Damien said smoothly, all the while darting quick glances around to see where he might dive to avoid whatever a Grigori might be able to do to him. He was sure Drake would be interested to know what that turned out to be, but he had no desire to be a guinea pig.

“I know a few more, if you’d like to hear them while I kill you,” Ariane snapped. “How could you? I knew you were going to make trouble for me, but did you really have to kill the man after you got the information out of him? He was all I had to go on!”

There was a note of despair in her voice that tugged at him and brought on a wave of guilt, even though he hadn’t done a thing. It was disconcerting.

“No, look…,” he began, then hesitated. What was he going to do, comfort her? What did he care if a dead body hurt some Grigori busybody’s feelings? Damien curled his lip.

Ariane reached behind her and drew her blade.

And not just any blade. It was the sort of sword no vampire had any business carrying. The kind of sword that said, “I am ancient and terrible and I don’t have time to let those who annoy me live.”

Ariane looked decidedly more than annoyed.

“Bloody hell, woman! I didn’t do—”