“Who let you in?” he demanded.

Every time they changed the guards, it was the same story. And it was always worse with the older ones. They recalled the good old days when dhampirs were killed on sight, preferably slowly. Their attitude pissed me off, considering that I’d been working here for over a month now, and the nightclub scene had left me spoiling for a fight. Vleck hadn’t been nearly enough of a challenge.

But damn it, I’d promised a certain someone to be on my best behavior. “I’m here to see Mircea,” I told him, instead of punching the vamp through the pretty brocaded wallpaper.

“Lord Mircea.”

“Whatever. I have a delivery,” I said, pushing past.

And found my arm seized in a bruising grip. “You can wait in the alley with the rest of the garbage until sent for.”

“I’m tired, I’m hungry and I have a head in a bag,” I warned him. “Do not fuck with me.”

He slapped me, hard enough to rock my head back, so I nailed his hand to the wall with a knife. He pulled it out, the slice through his palm healing instantly, and lunged. And ended up dangling off the floor like an errant puppy.

“Best behavior?” someone asked. I looked up to see the pleasant goateed face, curly dark hair and gleaming brown eyes of Senator Kit Marlowe. His agreeable expression didn’t stop him from squeezing the guy’s neck hard enough to make his eyes pop.

Since Marlowe hates me only marginally less than, say, bubonic plague, the smile made me nervous. I suspected that was why he did it, but it worked every time. I shrugged. “I didn’t stick it in his heart.”

“Perhaps you should have,” he said mildly, and opened his hand. The vamp hit the floor, jumped to his feet and went for me again in a blur of speed. So I grabbed him by the neck and punched his head through the pretty brocaded wallpaper.

“Bring her in, Mikhail,” someone called from off to the right.

Mikhail must have been the one with his head in the plaster, because nobody moved. I released him and he pulled out, pale eyes glittering with hate. I smiled. It’s always so much easier when the vamps I deal with despise me. It’s the ones who profess anything else that confuse the hell out of me. Mikhail and I understood each other; he’d kill me if he got the chance, and I’d make sure he never did. Easy.

“I’ll take her,” Marlowe said, while Mikhail stared at him.

“My lord. She attacked me!”

“If you are foolish enough to assault Lord Mircea’s daughter while he is on the premises, then you deserve what you get,” Marlowe told him shortly.

I raised an eyebrow. “While he’s on the premises?” I repeated.

That disturbing grin widened.

I followed him through the open doorway. We passed through a sitting room and into an office with more of the same, decor-wise: hand-carved moldings, a soaring ceiling and a mural of fat cherubs that gazed down on visitors with smug superiority.

There was also a desk. It was a massive old mahogany masterpiece with carved this and original that, but it didn’t draw the eye nearly as much as the man seated behind it. Unlike Vleck, Senator Mircea Basarab knew how to rock the tall, dark and handsome thing, and tonight he’d gone all out in full white-tie regalia. He gleamed, from the top of his burnished head to the toes of his perfectly shined shoes.

“All you need is a red-lined cape,” I told him sourly, dropping my duffel bag onto the desk. It squelched a little. He winced.

“Your word is really quite good enough, Dorina,” he informed me, as I fished out the remains. “I do not require a physical specimen unless I wish to question him.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Vleck was dripping onto the nice marble floor, so I set him on the desk. But that didn’t work either. He rolled and Marlowe had to jump to rescue some papers before they were ruined. I glanced around, but there were no handy baskets. So I stuck him onto the dagger-shaped memo holder. There was still some dripping, but at least he wasn’t going anywhere.

I looked up to find two unhappy vamps looking at me. “Okay,” I said, “it’s all the same to me. I just want my check.”

Mircea took out a leather-covered checkbook and started writing, while Marlowe regarded Vleck thoughtfully. “I’ve always wondered, how do you get out?”

“What?”

“Of the club or the house or what have you.” He waved a hand. “As soon as a master-level vampire dies, every one of his children knows it. Even if they are old enough and powerful enough to have been emancipated, they feel it here”—he tapped his chest—”like a blow. Yet you regularly kill such vampires and escape the premises without your own head ending up on a pike. So I ask again, how do you get out?”

“I walk.”

He frowned. “I am serious. I would like to know.”

“I’m sure you would,” I said sarcastically, as Mircea tore off the check. Marlowe ran the Senate’s intelligence organization, and he’d probably vastly prefer to keep matters like Vleck in the hands of his own deadly little hit squad. But he couldn’t afford to risk them in wartime on nonessential missions.

The conflict between the Silver Circle of light mages and their dark counterpart had been going on for a while now, and just to confuse the hell out of everyone, the vamps had decided to ally with the light. But it stretched their manpower, and they seemed to have more trouble taking care of the Vlecks of this world than I did.

I intended to keep it that way. This was the best money I’d made in years.

“Every vampire in that nightclub knew the moment their master died, yet you simply walked out,” he said resentfully, refusing to let it go.

I put on my innocent face, which seems to annoy him about as much as those damn smiles do me. “Yeah. I guess I got lucky.”

“You do it every time!”

“Really lucky,” I amended, trying to take the check. But Mircea held on to the other end.

“Have you by any chance seen Louis-Cesare recently?”

“Why?”

He sighed. “Why can you never answer a simple question?”

“Maybe because you never ask any. And what would the darling of the European Senate want with me?”

Louis-Cesare and I had met only recently, despite being members of the same dysfunctional clan. It wasn’t too surprising since we came from opposite ends of the vampire world. I was the dhampir daughter of the family patriarch, the little-known stain on an otherwise immaculate record. Dhampirs are feared and loathed by vampires for obvious reasons, and most families who accidentally end up with one quickly bury the error. Why Mircea hadn’t done so was still something of a mystery. Maybe because I occasionally proved useful.

Louis-Cesare, on the other hand, was vamp royalty. The only made Child of Mircea’s younger and far stranger brother, Radu, he had been breaking records almost since birth. He’d become a master, a rank many vamps never reached, before he’d been dead half a century. Another century had elevated him to first-level status, on par with the top players in the vamp world. And within a decade after that, he’d become the darling of the European Senate, feted for his looks, his wealth and his ability on the dueling field, which had gotten them out of many sticky situations.

A month ago, the prince and the pariah had crossed paths because we had one thing in common: we were both very good at killing things. And Mircea’s bug-eyed, crazy brother Vlad had needed killing if anyone ever had. But our collaboration had had a rough start. Louis-Cesare didn’t like taking orders from a dhampir, and I didn’t like having a partner, period. But we eventually sorted things out and got the job done. He’d even learned some manners, before the end. And I had started to think that it was kind of… nice, having someone to watch my back for a change.

Sometimes I could be really stupid.

“Radu mentioned that the two of you had grown… close,” Mircea said carefully.

“Radu was mistaken.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Marlowe observed. “Have you seen or had any contact with Louis-Cesare in the last few weeks?”

“Why? What’s he done?”

“Nothing… yet.”

“Okay, what are you afraid he’ll do?”

Marlowe glanced at Mircea, and they held one of those silent conversations vampires sometimes have, the kind I’m not supposed to know about. “I would merely like to ask him about a family matter,” Mircea said, after a moment.

“As you’re constantly reminding me, I’m family. Tell me and maybe I can help. Or does the family thing only work when you want something?”

Mircea took a deep breath, which he didn’t need, to show me how much of a pain I was being. “It’s about his family, Dorina, and is not my story to tell. Now, have you seen him?”

“I haven’t heard from him in a month,” I said flatly, suddenly tiring of the game. I didn’t need another reminder that, as far as my status as family was concerned, it was and always would be second-class.

“Should that change, I would appreciate receiving word,” he told me.

“And I’d appreciate receiving my check, or are you planning to hold it all night?”

Mircea raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t let go. “I may have another commission for you tomorrow.” He pushed a folder across the desk, careful to avoid the blood splatter.

“May have?”

“It has yet to be decided. Will you be available?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“And, Dorina, should I choose to go through with it, I will need this one alive.”

“Will the handy-dandy portable size do?” If I didn’t stake the heart, a master vamp could live in pieces anywhere from a week to a month, depending on his power level. And it was a lot easier to sneak out a head in a bag than a whole body. Plus, there was something about decapitation that made even the most obstinate vamp feel chatty.

“That will be sufficient,” Mircea said, gazing cynically at Vleck. The ex-vamp’s mouth had slipped open and his tongue was hanging out. At least he wasn’t drooling, I thought, and snatched the check.