Days 13-17: 6,889 words; 28,812 total

Part 6: Lady of the Dance

For once, I actually managed to wake up early enough to make it downstairs before Dolores, Kirill's housekeeper, left for the day. For my efforts I got pancakes and eggs Benedict, not to mention ten minutes of running commentary on how pale I looked and why didn't I take better care of myself, complete with a discreet glance so that the nosy bitch could check whether Kirill had given me a ring yet. I don't think the word "vampire" ever penetrated that woman's brain, though she's a passable fortune-teller of her own.

The fact I endured all this with a silly grin on my face sent Anton into paroxysms of laughter so strong, he almost choked on a Pop Tart.

"What happened yesterday to warrant that level of celebration?" he asked me quietly when Dolores went into the other corner of the kitchen to fiddle with the coffee maker. "Next time, warn me to buy earplugs on the way home."

I kicked him under the table. "None of your business."

Kirill appeared in the kitchen the moment the front doors slammed behind Dolores. Fortunately she'd be back in the evening to tidy up upstairs while everyone was at work, which avoided abrupt wake-up calls.

He bent down to give me a morning kiss – not our first one today, but Anton didn't have to know all the reasons for my grinning like a loon – and helped himself to a cup of coffee. "How was work yesterday?" he asked Anton.

"Absolute hell would about cut it." Anton flashed his fangs in irritation. "I'm close to either losing my mind or ripping Michael's throat out. Can't we declare a vendetta on the IRS for the loss of face I'm sustaining in this audit?"

"Not until all other venues have been exhausted." Kirill hid his face behind the paper, but I heard the grin in his voice.

"Well, have fun doing that, because I'm taking over babysitting Rachel this evening."

"Hey!" I protested for appearances' sake.

"And how do you know she's not going straight to work?" Kirill shot back.

Anton lifted a manila folder from the empty seat beside him. "Because this arrived half an hour ago, and it includes her agenda for this evening. The postman was a cute petite blonde, had a kid with her in the car – ring any bells?"

"Genevieve Sands, and stop reading my mail," I pouted. "And pass me a grapefruit."

"Old terrorist habits die hard," he said, referring to his human-life involvement in Narodnaya Vola, the nihilist organization that had finally managed to assassinate a czar, but not before it got Anton a Siberia sentence. He threw me a grapefruit and watch me bite down, rind and all. "That's disgusting."

"Do I make any comments about blood?"

"From what I heard last night, they tend to go on the lines of ‘yes' and ‘more'."

"We need a soundproofing ward around the bedroom," Kirill remarked placidly.

"We have one," I mumbled through a mouthful of grapefruit pulp. "I need to adjust the decibel setting."

Anton turned back to his father. "It's settled then. I'm taking Rachel clubbing, and you get to ward off the evils of the IRS."

Once Anton went off to change, I offered Kirill my condolences.

"I don't think it'll be too hard," he said, his eyes riveted to the sight of me licking my fingers clean of the grapefruit juice. "I intend to deflect all questions on the basis that only Anton knows what's in the books."

Kirill being evil has always reduced me to a puddle, and that time was no exception. Unfortunately in our fervor neither of us remembered about the milk jug, and we both ended up having to take another shower.

An hour later, Anton and I were finally on the way to my apartment, since I had decided I might as well pick up everything I would need until the kidnapping affair was finished. After my little demonstration the previous night I didn't feel up to griping about his driving, so instead I finally got my hands on the materials Genevieve had dropped off.

Nice. I was holding typed-up summaries of all relevant conversations during the Council, plus information that could only have come from the private interviews in Arthur's office – all nearly verbatim, so she must have vampire-grade photographic memory. Then came short dossiers on all missing people, mostly information that I could have had Merle google for me anyway, but some of it juicy tidbits that meant Genevieve's Tribunal contacts were alive and kicking.

"You know what's the funny thing about these files?" Anton remarked as we waited for the light to change. "Maybe I'm biased after two days of digging through IRS interview forms, but they smell of US government training to me. Bureaucracy detail."

"I wouldn't be surprised. My bet would be CIA – they're the ones most likely to try and exploit shady characters."

"Shady? That blonde soccer mom thing?"

"Did you look into her eyes?"

"No." He grinned. "What would I see?"

"Someone with a body count higher than yours," I told him as I put the files away and dug in the gloves compartment until I came up with a pair of sunglasses. The evening and morning exercises had left me a little dizzy from blood loss, and it had been a while since I'd been up and about in the bright sun at three in the afternoon anyway.

Anton whistled as he pulled the car back into gear. "Nice. Anyone got dibs yet?"

"Arthur, maybe. And you don't do girls anyway," I reminded him.

"I make exceptions for those with high body counts." He made a sour face as I simpered. "Unless they happen to be sleeping with my father."

"Your virtue's safe. I only go for the short and bleached type if they come with boobs."

"Like Genevieve Sands?"

"Maybe," I offered. I had thought about it, but right now any such thoughts circled back to my tall, dark and handsome Russian pain in the ass, and judging by little Sheldon's not quite PC language, I didn't think Genevieve would be amenable to a threesome.

"What's she, anyway?"

"Formally freelancing for Arthur. Tribunal connections though, and you never get clear of those." As our conversation under the rowan tree had amply proved.

Anton shook his head. "I'll never understand that Tribunal thing – all you have to do is say the name and most mages shit their pants. It sounds like some conspiracy theory out of a Ralph Green novel."

"I thought you didn't read those?"

"I had to kill the time yesterday somehow, and sleeping was out due to some people having way too much fun. Drivel was better than insomnia, even if he does state that the royal Ethiopian family in the fourteenth century were the descendants of Mary of Magdala."

I rolled my eyes. "Lay off already. Anyway, unlike such pinnacles of civilization as vampires, mages don't have councils and city rulers to make sure no-one goes off on a rampage or takes over the president's mind. So instead, there's the Tribunal, and they have to be badass enough to kick the ass of any wannabe evil overlord. That amounts to a degree of power that can put the fear of God into just about anyone."

"But they do have the no-killing rule? Lucian's Principle and all that? I don't see how that's so scary." He shrugged. "Pain can only go so far."

"They don't torture." I looked outside, at the sunlit crowds. There was a street sweeper dealing with a pile of golden leaves, his broom moving in short hypnotic swipes over the same fragment of pavement, over and over again. "They don't kill. In accordance with the Daylight Concordat, all are given a chance to repent their sins."

"So what's the punishment for rampaging through Tokyo?"

"No-one knows for sure."

He turned the wheel abruptly and swung us into a side street, one of his arcane shortcuts. The wheels squealed in protest, and someone behind us leaned on the car horn. "I think you do," he said.

Maybe it was the sweet lassitude in my muscles, or Tango Milonga still running through my head, but I told him. "Sleep, in crystal coffins. And the chance to think of all your sins, over and over again."

I kept my eyes on my hands, and then his fingers joined mine. He squeezed my wrist briefly. "Thanks. Thanks for telling me."

I grinned. "It's just a story to scare the children."

"Snow White, wasn't it?"

"Exactly." I pushed the memory of rows upon rows of crystal boxes out of my mind.

"So you think Genevieve's a Tribunal special agent? One of those who can bring down a building by blowing on it and catch bullets in flight?"

"Now you're talking fairy tales again." Well, no catching bullets anyway. "But no – she barely has any magic, and definitely not the kind of boosted telekinesis Tribunal specials have."

Another bleep of a car horn turned Anton's attention to the road, leaving me free to think. I wondered how much the average Night folk knew about the shadowy Tribunal specials – Anton was a vampire aristocrat, after all – and how much of that was primitive fear and superstitions.

There are a thousand varieties of magic, though they tend to get grouped under major headings: hermetism, alchemy, fortune-telling, Kabbalah, hedge-witchery, shamanism and so on. Most of them are codified, structured and researched to death, even those concerning calling on often unpredictable spirits, demons and saints. But telekinesis is the one that comes straight from the reptile brain, and that one can't be controlled.

Once in a while, a kid at puberty – girls about three times as often as boys – will start flinging things around. Other things come with it, including inducing fear and prophetic trances, and strange impulses to bite and touch and fornicate. It passes in a year or two, if the child survives that long without being killed by its family.

‘Carrie' is the one daylight horror story all mages find just as frightening as the laymen do.

Rumor has it that the Tribunal found a way to harness and prolong the telekinetic period, and that is how Tribunal agents are created – made in some underground laboratories out of children screaming and twisting, torn between primal instincts created in the reptilian, antediluvian part of their minds. Rumor has it, I thought.

Anton had to knock on the passenger-side window to make me notice we were already parked under my building.

"Do you think we're in danger of running into the pink menace?" he asked as he helped me out of the car.

I looked up at Mandii's living room windows, which adjoined my own, just like our kitchen windows were neighbors on the other side of the building. "Nah. She always opens all windows when she's home. She must be still at work."

"Some place actually hired her?"

I wondered if he had a previously unexplored phobia of the color pink. "Magdalene Publishing. She's the office secretary."

"Isn't that the one that puts out the Ralph Green books?" Anton demonstrated his photographic vampire memory.

"I guess so. They're expanding pretty fast, which is no wonder if they've got a cash cow like him." I recalled Mandii's employment offer. "I think they've got some kind of community program going – they take unemployed people and offer them training. That probably gets them more devoted workers."

Anton snorted. "No wonder. No-one but cultists could print Green's rubbish with a straight face."

"That rubbish sells," I pointed out.

"To Daylighters and Americans. They're not exactly known for their intelligence."

I just shook my head and made a note to check the Russian bestseller lists. Anton's sense of patriotism could rear its head at the strangest times.

Once we got inside, packing my clothes and books I might need took a surprisingly short amount of time. I had never had the opportunity or inclination to acquire a lot of belongings. Maybe it was a subconscious preparation for fleeing at any moment, an instinct to disappear into the undergrowth and leave no traces behind.

I used the cats' indignation at having been fed only once in the previous two days, and that by a guy smelling of dogs, to distract Anton while I removed a box from the smallest drawer my vanity table. I remembered my dawn revelations, and I knew that the snake was right a lot of the time. I slipped it into my only handbag; I rarely wore bags, but I felt the occasion called for one. There are only so many spell components you can carry around in your pockets anyway, especially when you're a modern business witch with cellphone and ID card and all the other work-related trash I need to haul around.

I excavated a last battered briefcase from under the bed and put Anton to work carrying all my packages down. He tottered and complained under his breath, since during daylight his strength was no more than that of a regular twenty-year-old, but we managed to stuff everything in the trunk and the back seat.

"Now we need to-" I started.

"I know, library." He threw me a dirty look. "Just because you've been sleeping with my father for eight years doesn't mean you get free slave labor."

"I'm sure he'd daze someone for me if I asked nicely," I said distractedly as I made a mental list of all things I needed to have. Then I did a double-take. "What do you mean, eight years?"

Anton opened the car door for me. "It was since Agnes, right? Eight years in January."

He went around the car to get into the driver's seat, and I smiled at my memory as I wondered how the hell I'd missed the fact it had been eight years already. Agnes' suicide had driven Kirill into a spectacular four-week funk that had threatened the stability of the company, and I'd drawn the short straw to bring him documents that simply had to be signed. A lot of screaming and several bottles of a good wine later, he had insulted my ancestry, and for some reason I'd started to reenact Shylock's monologue while wildly gesturing with a letter opener. I never got past "if you prick us, do we not bleed?"

Good times.

I still fixed Anton with a disbelieving look when he got in and started the engine. "So that makes my working time here-"

"Nine years next May. You lost track?"

"Something like that." Nine years was-

Longer than I've stayed anywhere since Katanga, which was a scary thought indeed.

"Hey." He touched my arm. "It's not like you're getting older, dear stepmother."

I knew that was supposed to cheer me up and provoke another friendly quarrel, but I just grumbled something indistinct and curled up with my legs propped against the glove compartment. I could feel Anton's worried eyes on me all the way to the library.

The first thing that hit me once we came inside was about three feet tall, inscribed with neon-red ideograms and hyped up to the gills on either sugar or crack. It then proceeded to sit down on the floor and cry its head off.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," I swore as I rubbed my bruised thigh. I threw Anton a dirty look. "Some bodyguard you are."

"Some things are beyond me," he shot back as he looked around for any objects that could possibly constitute my attacker's caretakers. No-one seemed to find the increased decibel level interesting.

I knelt down by the little monster, who looked to be of a female persuasion. "Do we need to call an ambulance here?" I demanded.

The crying stopped as if I'd spelled her mouth shut. "What would an amb'lance do?"

"Stick a big plastic tube in your throat, and then poke you with very thick needles so that they could draw your blood and see what drugs you were on to run around in a library like that."

She considered that for a moment. "We don't need to call an amb'lance."

"Good." I helped her up. Now that she was behaving in a halfway civilized manner, I could see that she was a pretty cute kid. Her hair was done in cornrows and pinned with Powerpuff Girls pins. "Now, do you have a mother, father, other relative or person taking care of you around here, or can I take you to the back room and perform human sacrifice? Baby blood works best."

She looked at me as if she wasn't sure whether to believe me. Smart kid – baby blood does work best with certain spells, but for others it's a dud.

"Mommy's looking for a book," she volunteered. "It's a red book and they showed it on the tee-vee, and the skeliton man with all the metal doesn't know what it is. So mommy told me to go off and play while she screamed at him."

Anton snickered. "I think Nathaniel needs a rabbit's paw. Or patron-repellent."

"So what else is new?" I rose to my feet. "Come on, Miss Speed Demon, we need to rescue someone. We'll dangle you as bait in front of the Mommy-dragon and hopefully it'll entice her to abandon the fair librarian in distress."

"Do we have to?" The girl hid behind my leg and peered shyly at Anton. "He's got funny hair."

"Like you're the fashion plate." I pulled at the curly end of a cornrow. "Come on, let's not make the nice man tear you to bloody pieces."

"Why do I have to be the bad cop?" he pouted.

"Because you don't know how to deal with kids." At least not as well as I did, though those were probably the Jewish-mother genes from my grandmother. Having had four younger step-sisters had come in handy more than once. Monsters, all, they had been, and ash now, ash over the Karpaty mountains.

We found the kid's mother predictably menacing Nathaniel at the circulation desk. She let off him and gave a shriek of horror as soon as she saw us with her little speeding angel, who had grabbed my hand with her sticky paws on our way through the library.

"Let go of my child!" she screamed. "How dare you! There is no-"

The kid interrupted her unceremoniously. "Mommy, they told me to tell you that if you don't stop screaming, they'll sacrifice you to..." She looked at me. "What was that, scary lady?"

"Baal Zebub of the Flies," I supplied helpfully.

The dragon bitch spluttered. "That's – ungodly! Heathen! I bet you don't even believe in Jesus!"

I rolled my eyes. Why did that type of people always had to drag ol' Jeshua into things? On the rare occasions when I managed to call up a saint – they're just another kind of powerful spirit, really, and often want to talk to a mage in an attempt to convert them – they always seemed mortified of the Jesus freaks.

"I'm Jewish," I said curtly.

That took the wind out of her sails nicely. I did get a cheery wave and a decidedly not inside-voice ‘Bye scary lady!' from the little girl as her mother tugged her away.

"Do you think we could hire you as permanent bodyguards?" Nathaniel asked hopefully.

"You couldn't afford my wages."

"Something to repeal the rabid Ralph Green fans, then. You're good at that stuff."

I preened. It's always nice to hear a confirmation of the fact I'm damn ace at wards. "Can't interfere with the Daylighters, not unless you want the Tribunal on our asses. Now, backroom?"

Nathaniel hung around once we got to the Library Magical, clearly not eager to go back upstairs and deal with irate customers who think every library employee should be able to read minds. In which they would be partially right, but there are prohibitions on using these kind of skills on the lay populace.

I buried myself in a stack of books, trying to trace the connections between various objects used by our shadowy enemies. For all I knew they might have just raided an antiques shop, but since I'd heard of no such robbery, and large purchases of artefacts always draw attention, I thought the avenue of investigation might prove promising. I managed to tune out Nathaniel and Anton's friendly bickering until I heard something creaking.

I raised my head and grinned at the sight. Anton had Nathaniel backed up against the nearest bookcase, which was creaking and threatening to come down in more of a mess than even that library werewolf free-throw that Nathaniel always reminded Anton about. But this time Nathaniel wasn't of a mind to protest, as his mouth was otherwise occupied, and Anton's hands were busy unbraiding the librarian's hair even as my vampire friend did his best to kiss the other man into incoherence.

I took a moment to appreciate the tableau, because the two of them did look gorgeous together. Anton must have had a fencer's grace even as a human, and the vampirism augmented it, lending a predatory laziness to his movements; the aristocratic Rossov bone structure added to a debauched angelic expression in a face that would eternally be twenty-one. Nathaniel was tall and lithe, with a tense reserve that just tempted to shatter it, and the disheveled look suited him as well as I thought it would. I was also not in the least upset with the fact that Kirill now owed me an unspecified favor, because he had been of the opinion that Anton would not manage to get Nathaniel to do anything untoward in the library itself.

The bookcase creaked again, and since I saw a thick volume tottering on the highest shelf, I decided that throwing a pen at them was preferable to the more abrupt wake-up call of being brained with the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

"There are backrooms here," I informed Anton as he broke off the kiss and snarled at me. "Or tables in other research alcoves, where you can do it without bringing half the library down on your heads."

Nathaniel made a distraught noise as his librarian sense of duty tried to reassert itself, but Anton's hands gave him no chance to do so.

"How long do I have?" Anton asked, a little breathlessly, before tonguing Nathaniel's labret stud, which action drew a moan loud enough I started wondering whether someone wouldn't come over to investigate. This wasn't the Daylight part of the library, where the silence rules had long been abandoned in despair.

"Charlie's opens at half past eight," I told him. "I want to talk to Charlie, so we need to be there at opening time."

"Good." He touched Nathaniel's dazed face and bared his fangs. "I definitely want to take this past sunset."

Nathaniel paled before Anton dragged him off to another research alcove, but I figured he only had himself to blame. You get frisky with a vamp, you'd better expect to lose some blood. And it's not like it's such a bad thing, I thought to myself, touching my neck and remembering Kirill's teeth.

I fumbled through my handbag to find my phone and send a message, as well as collect several others – Merle had been the one with the bright idea of pushing this Blackberry thing on everyone from the secretaries up, and I was only grateful the lack of a full keyboard on my phone gave me an excuse not to answer the e-mails unless I had no other choice. I'd be damned before I put my hands on one of those ugly full-keyboard terminals, anyway.

Returning to my studies, I managed to isolate several regions that came up repeatedly when searching for origins of the various artefacts: Italy, Ethiopia and England. The first of those predominated, with numerous items that took their forms, names and souls from the Renaissance that had been of the Art before it had been of the arts. Thumbing through a Daylight-published album of items from the Castello Sforzesco, I came upon a familiar face immortalized in marble and it made me smile. I wondered if the marble would crumble into dust before Lucian gave up on his obsession to live and serve the magical society that didn't appreciate him beyond the lip service of swearing in his name.

The library trip had not been in vain, I decided as I closed the last of the books almost four hours later. I even managed to locate an obscure Ethiopian cult, one of those boutique mixtures of shamanism and Christianity, that could easily have produced the gigantic Africans who had attacked me on Sunday. The name, the Iron Hands of St Jacob, fit like a glove.

Anton slunk in just as I was about to go looking for him. He looked bonelessly satisfied, and his cheeks shone with a healthy blush that told me there was one librarian in the place walking around light-headed with blood loss.

"Had fun?" I asked absentmindedly as we navigated our way back to the surface. The way out of the Library Magical could be accomplished without a guide, though it was nigh impossible to do so the other way around.

He licked his lips. "Lots. Top this off with some dancing, and I might even be able to face the monsters of the US tax code later on."

"You're planning on going back to work tonight?" I was surprised. In fact, I'd been planning to goof off in his company – not that I don't like my job, but I'm not crazy enough to prefer it over free time.

"The audit's serious." He paused as we exited the library and used his reflection in the glass door to adjust his hair. "I can't afford to let Michael and his band of merry men out of my sight for a whole day."

I frowned. "How serious? You know I'm not up to date on all that business-type stuff. I just keep the bad vibes away."

"Nothing that would shut us down, but if worst comes to worst, the financial duties will be crippling to the US side of the business." He touched my jacket – I'd gone for the rawhide with fox fur. "You might have to do with less noticeable clothes for a while on this side of the ocean, just so we do not draw their attention again."

"Damn," I muttered. "And Kirill promised me a Jag."

"You can drive?" His eyes widened comically as we reached the car.

"Hundred and ten through St Germain within running distance from midnight, and without crashing the car like some people I could mention."

He stopped, then grinned and threw me the keys. "Let's see how you do at eight p.m."

The Lexus SC might not be as fancy as a Jaguar S-Type R, but it handled just fine as I peeled off into the traffic. I grumbled a bit about the automatic transmission just for show, but hey, it beat driving around in a Land Rover Minerva. I cut off a pack of coked-up teenagers in a pick-up truck and threw a thankful look to the police-repellant charm hanging on the Lexus' rear-view mirror. These are technically illegal as a way of manipulating laymen's minds, but what the Tribunal doesn't know won't hurt them, and what's the good of having magic if you can't get any benefits out of it?

Anton whistled. "Nice handling."

"You haven't seen nothing yet." I turned into an alley and found a secluded parking spot that was usually open. I might get around by taxi most of the time, but that doesn't mean I'm blind.

Charlie's was a minute's walk away, in a back street two blocks from St Germain. Outside the only sign was a graffiti tag of the name and a line already some twenty people long.

"It's just eight," Anton said. "What's the line like at ten?"

"A little longer. The place is a hit on both sides of the fence, but most people go there to ogle the cage dancers, and there's no set time for that. Right now there'll be a small crowd at the dance floor and some people at the bar, but it really gets busy after midnight."

"You come here often?"

"It only opened three months ago. But yeah, mostly every week if I can make it. It's a hangout for the slimier side of town, so I can learn stuff I wouldn't catch at the Alhambra."

"I guess so." Anton looked distracted by the pretty people in the line, though they were scowling as I skipped them and went straight to the door.

"Miss Malory." Rock was on the door, all six foot nine of muscle and red leather and a face that drove the Nightfolk part of Charlie's customers to conclusions about trolls in his ancestry. I happened to know that in fact, his great-grandfather was an elf.

"Rocky, be a dear and let us through?" I mock-shivered despite my warm jacket. "I'm freezing my ass off."

He thought about this for a while before he nodded, causing groans in the queue. I made to go past him, but then his slab-sized fingers closed around Anton's arm. "No blood-letting on the promises. And no fighting," he rumbled quietly enough not to be heard by the eager club goers outside."

Anton flashed fangs. "If I'm in the mood, try and stop me."

I elbowed him. "Antosha, manners. Rocky, don't mind him, the Butor clan never could behave."

My name-dropping had the desired effect, as Rocky let go of Anton's arm in a hurry. The Butor might have been dead for over a century, but the legend of a blood clan that massacred ten thousand people in their beds in a single night takes a lot longer to die. Rocky turned to frisk a vamp groupie with enough mascara to make a spider fall in love at first sight, and we made our way inside.

Charlie's main dance room took up the entire ground floor of a building that used to house stage coaches in the nineteenth century. Successive owners had not torn down the stable stalls along the sides, preferring to keep them as booths or private rooms depending on the nature of their business, and now the stable atmosphere was reinforced by ropes that hung down from the ceiling, dividing the space into table sectors concentrated around the currently empty cage stage, walkways and the dance floor itself. A horseshoe-shaped bar divided the two main sections, and chains of garlic adorned it, adding the quaint flavor of old school vampire chic.

Between the tables and the dance floor I saw just about every kind of people you could meet in New Granada, from a bouquet of vanilla Daylight humans through a large contingent of mages, surprisingly few vampires, a few more werewolves and a smattering of the much rarer true-magic races like elves, trolls, dryads or imps. There were even a couple of incarnated demons, and I made a note of them as their kind keep up to date with all local gossip just to make sure there aren't any idealist exorcists in town.

I looked back to make sure my bodyguard was still with me as I made my way over to the bar. Anton was still grinning about the encounter at the door, but then he stilled and looked intently at someone at the bar.

I turned to follow his gaze and saw that Leslie had drawn his attention. I wasn't surprised; I could remember the first time I'd laid eyes on that narrow face, killer cheekbones and mass of honey-blonde hair. Leslie's habit of wearing an open jacket over a bra-less pair of D-cups that were a credit to the surgeon's art did not exactly serve to repel looks.

"Guy or girl?" Anton moved closer to whisper in my ear.

"Answers to both." I whispered back. I wasn't too sure about it myself – despite the female elements, there was always something about Leslie that didn't match. The effect was intentional, I thought, and it didn't help that the snake always read him as male-strange-dangerous in its painfully simple world-view that divided most things into danger or prey.

Leslie has the crowd awareness that belies Special Ops experience, so those pale eyes were on us way before we made our way over to the bar. Daylighter or not, this was someone I wouldn't want to be on the other side in a fight.

"Malory." Leslie pronounced it Mal'ray, close to the French Malheureux I'd picked it up from. "You're early."

"Or just a little too late." I perched on the counter, putting myself between Leslie and Anton. "Charlie's here? We need to talk."

"Maybe." Leslie's hair looked tangled, and I saw a fresh scratch between those bare breasts. "You didn't use to bring bodyguards in."

"I prefer the term escort." Anton was fairly purring, which was a bad sign. I'd been hoping he'd latch on the female cues and treat Leslie with his usual chivalry, but apparently they'd both chosen to be in macho male mode instead.

I put my hand on Anton's shoulder. "These are dangerous times, Leslie. I'm just looking out for Number One. Where's Charlie?"

"Right here." The voice was a low drawl, a black coffee and cigarettes sound right out of an old movie, and the looks matched. Charlie's looks matched, with large dark eyes and sculpted features, the impossible lovechild of Lauren Bacall and Rudolph Valentino.

Then I looked down and saw the bandaged hand instead of the usual white gloves that went along with the black tuxedo. I'd been hoping that Leslie's scratches would turn out to be the product of over-enthusiastic bedroom activities.

"What the hell happened?" A glass had materialized by my elbow and I took a drink. Grapefruit and pineapple, and at least bartenders never complained about how weird the combination was.

"I was hoping you'd tell me." Charlie fumbled one-handed for cigarettes, and Anton gallantly lent a hand, lighting the cigarette with an engraved lighter I hadn't known he carried. "Thanks."

I shot Leslie a look and saw a frown of pure catty jealousy. I resisted the impulse to roll my eyes. I'm of the opinion that gender doesn't matter when people are being obstinately stupid, and between these three I was being rapidly proven right.

"Sunday, I left here with Olson. Someone either eavesdropped on us or prepped Olson before, but either way they had to have a recon of the place and knew it's a hunting ground of mine," I said bluntly. "Suspicious characters, white or black, before Sunday possibly including a three-pack of fat rednecks in Dallas Cowboy t-shirts. Ring any bells?"

"Any relation to the two-pack of fat rejects from a voodoo movie who showed up here last night and tried to thrash the place?" Leslie matched my tone.

"Did they have broken wrists?"

"One each, though two hands were enough to give us trouble throwing them out. Your work?"

"What do you think?" I drained the glass. "I repeat. Suspicious characters on Sunday or before?"

Leslie looked at Charlie, who nodded. "There are many people here on any given night, and many are suspicious characters." A small smile was probably intended to mean I got classed under that heading as well. "We did get some people who looked uncomfortable looking at the dancers and didn't dance themselves. But they didn't stand out – just average people. I'm afraid I didn't pay much attention; most of my time is taken up with dealing with the colorful characters. A few weeks ago some girl in sweet Loli drag spent two hours trying to convince me that I needed to repaint the place pink."

I chewed on my bottom lip. I could have guessed that – Charlie's place was busy enough for anyone to get lost in the crowd, and whoever we were facing wasn't short on lackeys. I could assume our visit would be reported as well.

"Malory?" Charlie passed gracefully around Anton and was now right in front of me. "What's going on?"

"Bad stuff, kiddo." I reached out and tucked one short-cropped lock of hair behind an ear. "You two watch yourselves."

Charlie nodded, then glanced sideways, where an early drunk was trying to touch the breasts of a woman I recognized as one of the cage dancers, though at the moment she was in normal street clothes. "Excuse me. Managerial duty calls."

I nodded, my eyes already searching out guests who might be worth having a word with. Rokita was the most promising lead, between his low intelligence and street smarts worth a Nobel prize.

Charlie hesitated before walking off, then put a hand on Anton's arm. "Your name?"

I could see the stage lights glinting in Anton's eyes. "Anton Kirillovich Rossov."

Charlie matched him grin for grin. "I'm Charlie. Don't be a stranger." And then there was just the dark tuxedo, quickly walking away.

I avoided looking at Leslie behind me. "She's not trying to be cruel," I muttered. "It's just who she is."

"I know." Once I did turn, Leslie didn't look mollified. "Until this is resolved, stay away."

"Maybe I will, maybe I won't." I winked. "See you on the flipside."

I grabbed Anton's arm before he could do anything but preen at being hit on, and dragged him off from the bar.

"She?" he asked me. "You mean-"

"Things are not always what they seem," I said. "Trust me, Charlie's a bio-girl. We've been to a sauna together."

Anton drooped a little. "Pity."

"Hands off, anyway, because I like both you and Leslie and I'd rather you both stayed in one piece."

"Yes, mother."

Unfortunately, he said the last line when we were already by Rokita's table, and the crummy devil heard it. "What, you breeding now?" he demanded in the rustling sounds of the language I'd spoken in primary school. "Rashka, tell me it ain't true."

"STEPmother," Anton corrected himself cheerfully in English; his spoken Polish isn't worth a broken penny, but between Russian and Belarusian he understands it fine. "Rachel, who's the bum?"

"A loser they kicked out even from downstairs, Antosha. Ever heard of Rokita?"

He cocked his head. "Didn't willow trees come into it at some point?"

"At your fucking service." Rokita had a dozen shots of vodka lined up in front of him and now he downed one with a loud exclamation. I've never figured out why the curse of choice in that part of the world is "whore" – at least "fuck" or "shit" make some sense.

I sat down and grabbed the demon's arms. "Goldie, I know you're on vacation from the wonderful heretical mess you've managed to cause back home, but I'm betting you're keeping an eye out for trouble. Throw one to me."

"Fuck you."

Anton obligingly bared his fangs, making Rokita blanch. Good vampire.

"Again," I said.

"Bitch." Rokita was giving me a crooked smile, though. I heard he was a serf once, and he still has a penchant for being ordered around. "Ain't heard nothing. Except the fact someone's after the bloods and the dogs, says they're going down."

"And mages?"

"Just the ones who get in the way. Someone's dropping money big-time, hiring all the no-brained Night-sider muscle from here to Tijuana. Dunno who it is, though the minions are mostly average Joes, no magic worth mentioning."

"See, it wasn't that hard." I shared a look with Anton. It was nice to get a confirmation that we might be paranoid, but someone was really out to get us.

"This one's free, Rashka," Rokita said quietly. "This smells old, really old. And your name's on the shit list. Prize money."

I closed my eyes. "Thanks, you old coot. You staying to enjoy the show?"

"Skipping town tonight." He pointed at the stage. "Came to see Charlie dance once more time. She got any idea yet?"

"About her magic?" I turned to look at the stage as well. The club was quieting down as word traveled that someone had managed to talk Charlie into dancing to start the show. "Most oblivious act I've ever seen. She thinks people keep coming here because of the ambience."

The lights were dying now, with just one column of light in the middle of the stage. The music changed, a slow drumbeat with a counterpoint from a tortured violin.

Charlie's arm moved into the light first, slim and gold-tanned, describing a circle in the air. Then a foot, a flash of glossy hair, the triangle of bare skin at the nape of her neck. I knew what to expect, but I still felt the heat flow through me with each slow movement of the figure on the distant stage.

It could have taken a minute or an hour, and no-one would have looked away until the lights came on again.

"Ishtar-blessed," I whispered to no-one at all. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Anton was not looking at the stage, but at his phone. I shook my head to clear it. "What is it?"

"One of Damien's girls," he said, his face a pale shadow in the darkness. "Rayyven. She's dead."