“The putty’s in there.”

“What putty?”

“The putty I was going to use to blow up the portal at your office,” I panted, finally realizing that he had the damn seat belt on. A bullet parted my hair as I worked frantically to get it undone.

“So don’t shoot at it and we’ll be—”

“It doesn’t need to be shot!” I told him as the seat belt slithered free. “If it comes into contact with a portal’s energy, it detonates automatically. And that much would not only kill us, but take out a full city block!”

Ray paled. “Then you might want to turn here,” he said as a familiar flash split the air right ahead.

I swerved hard to the right, sending his hairy butt tumbling into the passenger seat. We plowed through a park bench, skidded into a road and were back on asphalt, if not out of trouble.

I leaned over the seat. “Where to?” I yelled.

Louis-Cesare shot me a pained look. “Vampire hearing!”

“Human adrenaline!” I shouted back, just as loud. “Where?”

He swallowed and faced the inevitable. “We have to report this.”

I nodded and shifted gears. For the first time in my life, I was actually relieved to be headed to vamp central.

Chapter Nineteen

It was an hour later and Elyas was still dead. We were back at the mansion, and things were starting to get a little creepy. Not so much because of the dead body, but because of the ones that remained alive. So to speak.

Exhibit number one was in the hall outside the study. The vamp must have been young enough not to have much power of his own, because without his master’s to aid him, he was little more than an automaton. He had a broom in one hand and a dust pan in the other, and he’d been sweeping the same patch of already-gleaming floor over and over for the last ten minutes.

I had this crazy vision of him standing there, sweeping and sweeping, until he dried up entirely and began to crumble. Until he became dust himself. If his arms go last, he could sweep himself up….

“How long does it take to find a freaking bullet?” The crabby voice jolted me out of an exhausted haze.

Ray was exhibit number two in the creepy undead department. He, Christine and I were in the sitting room next to the study, waiting until the big shots decided we were needed. I’d taken the opportunity to dig the bullet out of Ray’s skull before the wound healed over. But so far, I wasn’t having much luck.

“I’m working on it,” I told him. I had him in my lap, catty-cornered on a towel. But if he strained, he could manage to glare up at me. He’d been straining a lot.

“Well, work faster. I’m getting a migraine here.”

“It’s not my fault. The knife blade’s too wide. I can’t get it far enough in.”

“Then use something else!”

“I don’t have anything else,” I said, yanking it out of his skull. Christine suddenly jumped up and fled the room. “What’s wrong with her?”

Ray gave an eye roll. “Who cares? I got an emergency here. You don’t find that damn thing, and I’m gonna have to go to a bokor. And I hate those things.”

He was referring to the legal sort of necromancer. They worked for the vamps instead of against them, smoothing out damage to vampire flesh the way a cook would knead bread dough. “What’s wrong with going to a bokor?”

“They’re nothing but hacks. And don’t believe those ads they run, either.”

“What ads?”

“You know, in the backs of all the papers.”

“Guess I must have missed them.”

“The ones that promise to make things bigger.”

“What things?”

“You know. Things. The one I tried charged me a fortune, and all he did was make it lumpy.”

“Oh.” I’d seen Mr. Lumpy; Ray should have sued.

Christine came back a minute later with a sewing basket over her arm and proffered a knitting needle. “Will this help?”

“Couldn’t hurt.” Our fingers brushed as she passed it over, and she jerked back like she’d been burned. “I’m not going to bite you,” I told her impatiently.

“I’m sorry.” Her eyelashes fluttered, and one hand went to her hair, nervously. She seemed horrified to learn that it was still down, and quickly pinned it back into a chignon. The hairstyle left the bones of her face bare, but they could take it. “I… I have never before met a dhampir.”

“Lucky you,” Ray muttered.

“How do you know what I am?” I demanded.

“Louis-Cesare informed me.”

“Really. What else did he say?”

“Ow! Watch it!” Ray groused. I looked down to see that I’d jabbed him in the eye.

“He did not say anything else,” Christine said, sitting back down. She’d changed out of the bloody nightdress as soon as we returned, with a squeamishness that seemed a little odd in a vampire. The new ensemble was a deep rose gown with scads of antique handmade lace around the low neckline. It complemented the glossy dark hair, delicate features and big brown eyes.

I went back to work, but I could feel those eyes on me, like a weight.

I sighed. I’d known this was coming. She could probably smell Louis-Cesare all over me and vice versa. And while it wasn’t a servant’s place, even a favored one, to criticize her master, I was fair game.

I looked up, waiting for it, but she didn’t say anything. She just sat there, her gaze steady on mine. And weirdly enough, there was no challenge in it. If anything, it held a kind of childish wonder.

“Take a picture; it’ll last longer,” Ray told her.

She blinked. “I’m sorry,” she told me again. “I did not mean to stare. But I must admit that I find you fascinating.”

What I found fascinating was that the needle just kept going in. Half of it had disappeared inside Ray’s skull, and it hadn’t hit anything yet. Well, nothing hard anyway. I tried wiggling it around, but it made his eyes cross so I stopped.

“Any particular reason why?” I asked Christine.

“You kill vampires.”

“Only the bad kind,” I told her, to prevent another freak-out.

“They’re all bad.”

I would have thought she was kidding, but that beautiful face was perfectly serious. “You’re a vampire.”

“Yes.”

“So you’re evil?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s a novel approach.” She tilted her head to one side in a question. “Most vamps I’ve met are like anybody else,” I explained. “They find ways to justify what they want to do so it leaves them the hero of the story.”

A small frown appeared between those lovely eyes. “But that would be useless. Denying what we are does not change it. Evil is evil, regardless of the face it wears.”

This conversation was getting a little surreal. And that was from someone used to talking to Radu. “So you’re a self-professed evil vampire?” A nod. “And I kill evil vamps.” Another nod. “Should I just kill you then?”

“Oh, not yet,” she told me earnestly. “I have done little to redeem myself.”

“Elevator don’t go all the way to the top, does it?” Ray muttered. And then his eyes lowered to half-mast, and he started to grin, lazily. “Oh, yeah, baby. Right there. That’s the spot. Hit that a—”

I hastily pushed the needle a little farther in, and he shut up.

“I thought you believed that vampires lost their souls,” I reminded her. “How do you get redemption after that?”

“It is not easy,” she told me seriously. “For years I could not understand why God would allow this to happen to me. I felt betrayed, lost, unclear what path I should take. I hated my master for making me like this, for giving me these terrible cravings—”

“But you got over that.” I didn’t bother to hide the sarcasm, but Christine didn’t look like she’d noticed.

“Yes. He did not mean to hurt me, merely to change me into what he was. And he does not see himself as a monster, did you know?” she asked, apparently amazed.

I stared at her. “If it hadn’t been for that ‘monster,’ you’d have been dead a long time ago!”

She sat forward, nodding eagerly. “Yes, yes, precisely. That is what I finally realized, too. Louis-Cesare was doing God’s work, although he did not know it. I was meant to live this life, to have this chance. You understand, don’t you?”

“Well, I’m glad you worked through all that pesky guilt,” I told her. And then the point of the needle popped out the back of Ray’s head on a little gout of blood.

Christine and I stared at it for a moment. “Is it… supposed to do that?” she asked.

“Do what?” Ray rolled those eyes up at me. “Did you get the bullet out?”

“Um.”

“Dorina!” Mircea’s less than pleased voice cut through my dilemma. He’d been in a pissy mood since we showed up on his doorstep with a headless naked guy, a terrified hostage and a bunch of vampires claiming that Louis-Cesare was a murderer.

Go figure.

I tucked Ray’s head under my arm and wandered next door, where Mircea, Marlowe and some older vamp I didn’t know were bracketing the dead man. Louis-Cesare sat on a sofa off to the side, with his head in his hands, looking about like I felt. I doubted it was good old-fashioned fatigue on his part—more like the depth of the shit he was in had finally impressed itself on his mind.

Good, I thought evilly.

Mircea had gone casual today, in a midnight blue suit with a slash of pearl gray for a tie. He had the suit coat off and the shirtsleeves rolled up. He had examined the dead man and hadn’t wanted to ruin the Armani, I guessed. “We are ready for your evidence,” he informed me.

“There’s no time for this,” Marlowe said, running a hand through his already-messy curls. He was dressed in his favorite deep burgundy, although it was rumpled enough to make me wonder if he’d had to dress quickly.