“But you wouldn’t be where you are in your job if you railed against the system too much,” he said knowingly.

“This is true. I pick my battles and I don’t fight when I know I cannot win. But I will speak up. I will protest. Even if it’s just to complain. Otherwise I use my voting ability and other such methods to express my agreement or disagreement. It seems in vampire land, there’s no such thing as a protest. A protest goes against the queen. Going against the queen gets you in trouble.”

“These are all false assumptions,” he said with a wry chuckle. “You are jumping to conclusions about us. We do not punish you for speaking your mind or protesting our ways, we only punish you if you physically or politically try to undermine the queen. And when I say politically I mean a rebellion of massive proportions. Rather like what the phants are trying to do now. Speaking against the queen is one thing, trying to overthrow her is something else entirely.”

“Okay so…what else? What other vampire laws are there?”

They had reached the parking lot and he let her out of the elevator before him, guiding her toward where he had parked in case she didn’t remember.

“One is we don’t discuss vampires outside of the building unless it is an emergency. It is too easy for someone to listen in on a conversation.”

“Wait, what about the vampires who don’t live here?”

“This rule is specific to each of their locations. No vampire is allowed to live out in the world alone. They must work out of a protected environment.”

“That sounds very restrictive.”

“There are protected environments all over the world. Vampires can live in many places and can travel anywhere for short periods of time. They could conceivably live outside of a protected environment, but they would never be allowed to say the word ‘vampire’ to anyone else. That kind of life would be too isolated. So every vampire lives in a protected environment. Also, it allows us to sleep easy when there are phants out there looking to attack us.”

“I see. But phants have the freedom to do anything they wish?”

“Phants have their own protected environments. But we hunt them actively. There are very few safe places they can lay their heads without the threat of an authoritarian or a bounty hunter on their ass.”

“You have bounty hunters?”

“For very special cases who manage to elude the authoritarians or who have inside knowledge of our working government. We recently lost someone who gave in to the sickness. We believe that’s how the phants learned of the treaty.”

“Who was he?”

“His name was Roth. Is Roth. He’s still out there…if Halo hasn’t gotten to him yet. Halo’s one of the best bounty hunters we have, so it’s conceivable he’s already gotten Roth and I just don’t know about it yet. Roth’s betrayal was a bad one. We still don’t know why he gave in to the sickness of sycophanthropy. Then again, why does anyone?”

“So this Roth guy was important?”

“Yeah. Really important. If he’s found his way to Killean, the damage will be massive…as you can see by Killean just learning about the treaty and the fallout you are caught up in because of it. Roth was pretty high up in the queen’s service. He had access to a lot of sensitive information, not the least of which was the queen’s entire schedule. The logistics and personal inconvenience of her being forced to change her entire routine was a nightmare.”

“And Roth’s stomping grounds before all of this was here in this building? In Midtown?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Well, if he’s gone rogue, he sounds a little like my perp.”

He frowned deeply. “All the more reason to stay away from this.”

“So you think it could be him?”

“It could be. He matches the description you gave me, looks like your picture.”

“Then it could be him! We have to stop him!”

“He’ll be stopped. As I said, we have our best bounty hunter on his tail. If it is Roth he’s being dealt with. But it could just as easily be a vampire wholly unrelated to all of this speculation.”

“I know. It just seems very coincidental that you have a vampire go rogue one day and the next bodies start popping up.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just saying there are hundreds of sycophants out there. It could be any of them.”

“True,” she admitted. They got into the car and buckled up. “So once we leave this building we can’t discuss vampires?”

“That’s the idea.”

“But I have so many questions,” she said with a frown.

“Just use the word ‘friend’ instead of vampire. Try it.”

“All right. So when you told me all about vampires, er, friends while sitting in the middle of a restaurant, you were breaking the law?”

“Yes. But telling you about friends was the worst crime.”

They drove out of the parking structure after she gave him the address.

“What else?”

“I can’t think of anything more important than what we’ve already discussed.”

“But there are other things.”

“You’ll learn those along the way. These are the ones with the stiffest penalties.”

“So let me get this straight. It’s possible you can be put to death just for talking about va—friends outside of this building?”

“It is a serious infraction. No mention of it in emails. Texts. Over the phone. None of it. All of these things can be compromised.”

“All right. But what about your treaty? How did you tell all those other princes in all those other territories about your treaty?”

“It is carefully worded in an electronic format that is protected by very advanced encryption. The words ‘friends’ and ‘nation’ are used in place of the word ‘vampire.’ ”

“Ooh, you said the word,” she teased.

“It’s the last time, I assure you.” He reached across the gearshift and took hold of her hand. He brought it to his lips, kissing the back of it. It was oddly intimate all of a sudden and she flushed warmly with unexpected pleasure. She didn’t know what to make of the reaction. She wasn’t one to get all flighty and fluttery over a man’s attentions. She was a practical woman. Down to earth. She didn’t swoon or whatever it was they did in romance novels. Hell, she’d never even read a romance novel. Not on purpose anyway. She’d read stories with sex and romantic elements, but not one geared specifically for romantic fluttering.