She raised the mismatched rings in each brow, considering. “Lucky you.”

I laughed. Nope. It wasn’t going to be easier now that I was grown. I hadn’t fit in then, with a bunch of orphaned or semiorphaned girls, and I wouldn’t fit in now with a bunch of . . . girls. “Christie, you and Rachael. Tell me what you know about the vamps in this town. Especially the council.”

The girls looked at each other and at me. “Not much about the politics,” Christie said.

“Does Leo visit any of you? For . . .” I didn’t know how to phrase it and I just stopped.

Christie laughed, the sound taunting. “For blood? Sex? Or maybe combo entertainment, fun and games and dinner afterward?”

I managed to keep a blush under control. “Yeah.” I stuffed in another bite of greens and broke off a piece of roll. It was flaky and sweet and left traces of butter on my fingers.

“We all get a visit from Leo when we first come here,” Rachael said, her vivid eyes on me and her voice toneless. “He gets first try. He calls it the dark right of kings.”

I had heard of the divine right of kings, where a monarch had the right to deflower any virgin or use any woman he fancied, often on the night before her wedding. It was archaic rape, similar to the slave owner visiting his slave in her cabin, or having her brought to him. No way to say no. Rape in any form had always brought out the—I half smiled at the thought—the Beast in me. Rachael looked at Christie when I smiled. I didn’t need Beast’s nose to tell me Leo scared the crap out of Rachael. Leo Pellissier was shooting to the top of my list of people I didn’t like. I needed to interview the bloodsucker. My grin twisted in grim satisfaction. “I need to talk to old Leo, but since I burned him with a silver cross yesterday, I doubt he’ll be agreeable.”

Rachael looked at me, nervous laughter burbling in her chest. “You burned him? And he didn’t kill you?”

“He thought about it. Katie healed him. If she hadn’t, I might’ve had to stake him.”

The table went silent. No one moved. Every eye was on me.This sort of thing had happened occasionally when I was in the home, when I said something that came out weird. I looked at the little witch, her white skin and jet-black hair contrasting in the candlelight. This girl had touched me on some level the first time I saw her. I had felt a subtle connection, which had to be a mistake, didn’t it? But it was there, nonetheless, and my voice was softer when I said, “Bliss, right? What did Leo say when he . . .” The correct word eluded me.

“You have trouble with this, don’t you,” she said. It wasn’t mocking. The tone was gentle, almost pitying. “With what we do, I mean.”

I almost said, “You could be with a coven learning how to do witch stuff,” but I caught myself. Just in case she didn’t know what she was. “Where are you from?”

Bliss lifted a shoulder, and I realized she was wearing a silky gauze top that laced across the front like an old-timey corset if it had been put on backward. Her small breasts were pushed up and fully visible through the cloth, a necklace dangling between them. Suddenly I felt like a voyeur. “I was raised in foster care, so that means I’m from everywhere and nowhere.”

So that meant she might not know she was a witch. Katie knew, didn’t she? Couldn’t vamps smell witch? I’d have to ask. “I have trouble with it, yeah.” I looked around the table, making eye contact. We had finished our salads, and I didn’t have to be told that the meal was more silent than usual. Without even volunteering that I’m a predator, I make people wary.

“Any of you have an idea who the rogue vamp is? Maybe someone’s been acting different? Maybe something weird about one of Katie’s vamp customers? She has vamp customers, right?” They all nodded, and from the force of it, I gathered that Katie had a lot of vamp customers. “A vamp acting weirder than usual? Even someone who smells different?”

“They all smell weird,” Bliss said.

“No, they don’t,” a dark-skinned woman said. “But you’d have to define weird in totally different ways to cover some of Katie’s clients.” I was pretty sure her name was Najla.

“How do they smell?” I asked.

The other girls looked at Bliss. She said, “Like old leaves. Sometimes mold. If they haven’t bathed in a while they can smell like old blood. You know. Like a woman in her period. I have a really good sense of smell,” she insisted.

I’ll bet you do. I could tell this had been a sore point with the others. “Do any of them smell sick? Infected?”

“No.” Bliss glanced around the table. “I know you think I’m crazy, but they all smell.”

Before any of them could reply, I said, “Najla, right?” to the dark-skinned girl. She had an on-again, off-again accent that I couldn’t place, but then accents weren’t my strength. Like Bliss, I was better at scents. “Let’s talk weird. First, where are you from? Wait,” I said as the girls laughed and Najla narrowed her eyes at me. “That didn’t come out right. What I meant was, I want to hear about weird and vamps, but first, I’d like to know where you’re from.”

“None ’a your business,” she said.

“Katie says it is,” Miz A said as she shuffled back into the room. She was pushing a cart that smelled of spices, charcoal, and meat. Beast rumbled appreciatively. “Anything she wants to know, you tell her.”

Najla tossed her head. “My parents and I emigrated here from Mozambique when I was four.” I rotated my fingers, giving her a little tell-me-more gesture, and she said, “From a place called Namaponda. You might find it on a map. If the map was big enough.”

“And your parents?”

“Dead.” When I waited, she grudgingly said, “Car crash when I was fifteen. Katie took me in. Don’t look at me like that. I was turning tricks on the street to buy food. She brought me in, made me finish high school before she would let me work. Tried to send me to college. But I was good at making men happy.” Whatever she saw on my face made her bristle. “I want to retire before I’m forty. What other job can you name where a girl fresh out of high school can pull down two hundred K a year and retire in less than twenty years? Name me one.”

“Modeling. Acting. Music business.” Grudgingly I added, “If you’re lucky.”

Najla nodded emphatically. “I never had a lucky day in my life except the day Katie found me. I got close onto a mil in stocks and bonds and gold. I’ll have two mil, easy, in five more years, with compounding interest and dividends, assuming the market goes where I think it will.”

I was shocked. Two million for turning tricks? Najla laughed. “I can see it now. You think a girl should work hard and retire at sixty-five. That’s bullshit.”

Miz A slapped Najla on the shoulder as she set a plate in front of her. “Miss Katie don’ allow dirty talk at the table.”

Najla rubbed her shoulder. “Sorry,” she mumbled. Miz A put a plate in front of me. The steak hung off at ten o’clock and four o’clock and leaked bloody juices into the trough of the china and onto a larger plate beneath. The potato was stuffed with all sorts of goodies, including bacon and sour cream. I smiled, my mouth watering. “Thank you. This looks wonderful.”

“Nearly two pound of Black Angus, yeah. Tom say you like meat.”

“Tom is my hero. So are you. So is the cook.”

Miz A chuckled and finished serving the girls. I had enough etiquette training to know I had to wait until we were all served before I dug in. And enough self-restraint to resist Beast, who woke up at the scent and wanted me to eat the meat with my hands. “You may eat,” Miz A said. I watched and picked up the proper fork and the serrated knife. And cut into the steak.

When I put the first bite into my mouth I groaned. The girls all looked at me. “Sorry,” I said as I chewed. “This is the best piece of meat I ever put in my mouth.” Which made the girls break up and dig into their own meals, laughter reflecting off the walls like tinkling silver.

Inadvertently, I might have just made friends. Bordello humor. Who’d a thunk it?

CHAPTER 9

I really love rock and roll

I learned little that was useful over dinner, at least not about the rogue. If I ever needed to tie up a lover and whip him, however, I had plenty of info. I think the girls just liked to see me blush.

Katie hadn’t arrived by the time I finished my meal, so I left without seeing her. However, on the way out, I took a circuitous route, openly scoping out the place, and found Troll in her office. He was leaning over that ancient desk, bent over papers, his laptop turned so I couldn’t see the screen. That seemed significant, so I pulled on Beast’s stalking attributes and stepped into the room, silent as the predator Katie had called me.Troll turned as I approached, which gave credence to the old legend that when a vamp willingly shares blood, some of its speed and extra-keen senses get passed along. Faster than I could focus, Troll hit a key and the screen went blank, but the man himself smiled, a welcoming expression that surprised me.

I said, “I see you removed the camera from the back fence. Any reason why Leo Pellissier would spy on Katie?”

He frowned. “Leo didn’t put up that camera. He couldn’t. Spying is against the Vampira Carta.”

I laughed, a sharp cough of sound. “The what?”

“The Vampira Carta.” He lounged back and I spotted the .45 on his other side, within reach. Troll was antsy or scared or something worse. I guessed that getting one’s body drained of blood could do that to a guy. “What do you know of vampire history?” he asked.

“Frankly, except for finding new ways to kill them, vamps don’t interest me much.”

The easy humor left his face. “In Katie’s presence you use the term ‘vampire’ or the more proper term, ‘Mithrans.’ ‘Vamp’ is insulting.”