I passed the time sipping some really nasty chai, which was the most appetizing thing on the menu, and watching the colors cast by the iridescent bead curtain separating the rooms. Louis-Cesare preferred to pace back and forth like a big cat in a cage. We were the only ones in the back at the moment, which wasn’t surprising as the coffeehouse didn’t usually rev up until nightfall. Since it was currently seven a.m. ’Frisco time, there weren’t too many people interested in bad coffee and worse poetry. After tasting the former and reading samples of the latter that the proprietors had scribbled on the walls, I decided to be long gone by nightfall.

“This is the most irresponsible—”

“Would you calm down?” He didn’t seem to be the patient type. “They’ll be here. And quit pacing. You’re making me dizzy.”

“And that could not possibly be the result of the enormous amount of marijuana you have smoked in the past eight hours, or the half bottle of tequila you called breakfast.”

“At least I didn’t snack on the owners.” I’d noticed the length of the handshake he’d given Alan, the taller proprietor with the tongue stud. The older vamps don’t have to use fangs to feed. A touch of skin or, in the case of really powerful ones, just proximity to the victim will do as well. Louis-Cesare had had to endure sun at the airport and in the taxi all the way here, and he’d been hungry. It hadn’t been hard to guess.

“That was well within the guidelines.” He meant that he hadn’t taken enough to be harmful and that the owner was none the wiser. It was the PC way to feed, and he’d managed it without a hitch. That didn’t make me view it as less of a violation.

I lit up the last of Claire’s joints and smiled at him. It was either that or ruin the Hedgehog’s back room trying to take him apart. “Whatever.”

“The point I was endeavoring to make,” he said after a moment, “was that unless your friends—”

“Acquaintances.”

“—are even more irresponsible than I was expecting, they should have called by now. There is a very good chance that they have absconded.”

I shook my head. “No way. Not that they wouldn’t double-cross the Senate or the Circle in a heartbeat, but they made an agreement with me. They know what I’d do if they broke it.” I got up and stretched, feeling my spine snap back into place. “Besides, they don’t know what the assignment is yet. After they do, we may need to watch them.”

Actually, I doubted that. I’d picked José and Kristie as much for their attitudes as their skills; they were the only two I knew crazy enough to think that going after Drac constituted a challenge. It also helped that they had never actually met him. Anyone who had would be a much harder sell.

“Then where are they?” Louis-Cesare was back to pacing again. I glanced at the clock and felt a slight twinge of concern. True, José might be passed out under a table in a dive somewhere, but that wasn’t Kristie’s style. And even if she’d gotten hung up, she’d have phoned. No way would she risk going back into the Circle’s tender care if she could avoid it. Unless something was wrong, she’d be here.

“Maybe they decided to drive and then broke down. José thinks he’s a mechanic and usually rides around in some old clunker he’s trying to fix up.” I didn’t really believe it, but it was vaguely possible.

“And neither have cell phones?” Louis-Cesare demanded.

“They just got out of jail,” I reminded him, but it didn’t ring true to me, either. Kristie had stayed a step ahead of both the Senate and the mages for years, dealing in all kinds of illegal magical items. She wasn’t the type to take chances. No way would she have agreed to cross the desert in one of José’s rattletraps without stopping at a convenience store for a prepaid cell phone first. “And my phone’s on the fritz half the time,” I added, trying to convince myself more than him.

Louis-Cesare looked pointedly at the phone sitting behind the bar. Okay, point taken. But pacing a worn spot in the rug wasn’t going to help.

“You know,” I said, getting to my feet, “I think breakfast sounds like a plan. I saw a bakery down the street when we came in—”

“You are not going alone,” I was informed.

“Suit yourself.” I picked up my big bag o’ toys and slung it over my shoulder. I told Alan we were going for a walk and to tell Kristie we’d be right back, if she showed.

“You want that eyebrow pierced later?” he asked. “It’d look good on you.” What a businessman, always trying to make a sale.

“I’ll think about it,” I assured him. Alan nodded cheerfully and I shook my head. A punk morning person was just wrong.

The bakery had the advantage of a few tables outside with a clear view of the Hedgehog’s front door. I let Louis-Cesare have the seat near the café’s wall, as it was the best shaded, and immediately regretted it. I felt the familiar prickle of nerves between my shoulder blades as soon as I sat down, the awareness of how bare my back was with nothing to cover it. I scooted my chair over until Louis-Cesare and I were practically side by side, and ordered three doughnuts, a croissant, a ham and cheese bagel and a real, honest-to-God latte.

Louis-Cesare watched the load the waiter set before me a few minutes later with slightly widened eyes. “Metabolism,” I said, before he could ask.

He leaned back in his chair as I slathered butter on the bagel. A shaft of sunlight was seeping through a gap in the awning, but he didn’t move to avoid it. Show off.

“Are you really going to let that man prick you?” he finally asked.

I choked on my latte. “Excuse me?”

“With the needle. Comme ça.” He gestured at his forehead.

I laughed in spite of myself. “No. I heal too fast.” He looked a question. “The one and only time I tried earrings, I had to tear them out of my flesh after it grew over them. It took about an hour.” I really didn’t want to know what ripping off half my eyebrow felt like.

“You heal faster than a human, but slower than a vampire, yes?”

I stared at him suspiciously. I hoped he wasn’t asking for future reference. “Depends on the vamp.”

“Then your kind gains in power over the centuries, as we do?”

I didn’t feel like doing Dhampir 101. Especially since the answer in my case was no. “Depends on the dhampir.”

To my surprise, Louis-Cesare took the hint and backed off. “There are other types of jewelry,” he commented, as if that thought had never occurred to me.

“Bracelets and necklaces rattle at inconvenient times and are hazards in a fight,” I told him shortly. I’d found that out the hard way, when a vamp almost succeeded in strangling me with my own choker.

“You do not have to fight every day.”

“I don’t have to eat every day, either, but I get really cranky when I don’t.”

“Comment?”

“Never mind.” I could live without rehashing my physical inconveniences. “Hair color is the only ornamentation both my body and my profession can handle,” I added, to forestall more questions.

“Ah.” He looked like something I’d said had finally made sense. “That explains the purple.”

“Aubergine.”

Louis-Cesare looked like he was going to argue the point, but thought better of it. “Who is Claire?” he asked after a moment.

I narrowed my eyes. What was with the twenty questions all of a sudden? Was he trying to psychoanalyze me, find some sort of weakness, by asking about my life, my friends? Had he forgotten already who Daddy was? If any form of mind games worked on me, Mircea would have had me fetching his slippers long ago. I gave him a flat look and munched bagel.

“If we are to work together, we should know something about each other,” he noted calmly. He probably thought he was hiding it, but the lazy regard held cool, critical assessment. Apparently, my new partner wasn’t convinced that Mircea hadn’t saddled him with a liability. That made two of us.

I returned the appraisal, looking him up and down in a deliberately brazen way. A sunbeam was dancing on his hair like a captured flame, highlighting a few shorter strands that curled just below the strong line of his jaw. The color went well with the creamy cashmere and the eyes, which, at the moment, were a guileless, angelic blue. I concluded my own assessment: sophisticated, dangerous and sexy as hell.

Something must have shown on my face, because he smirked slightly. Smug. Good looks aside, I decided furiously, Louis-Cesare really didn’t have much to offer. He was a judgmental, condescending, self-important son of a bitch. Like every vamp I’d ever known, come to think of it.

I leaned back in my chair, stretching luxuriantly, deliberately letting my jacket fall open. Predictably, his eyes moved down my body—some things outlast even the change. I grinned and he looked away, a rueful smile twitching at his lips. I finished breakfast in peace.

When I’d polished off the last, calorie-laden bite, I pulled out my pathetic excuse for a cell phone. As expected, it had gone belly-up yet again. Portals play hell with anything magnetic, not to mention that the evil thing had come with a couple of built-in quirks. On Drac’s trail, the last thing I could afford was faulty equipment, but my nerves were in no shape for fine-tuning anything. I went through the usual routine, and when it still wouldn’t come on, I slammed it down on the table and glared at it.

Louis-Cesare picked it up. He looked it over, then quirked an eyebrow at me. “If I can repair this . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Then I choose the topic of conversation.”

I gave him a look. Most centuries-old vamps didn’t even know what a cell phone was, much less how to fix one. Technological troglodytes, almost every one. “You think you’re up to it?”

“Are we agreed?”

“Sure. Go for it.”

He regarded the small white devil for a moment, then turned it over in his hands. He pressed, poked and fiddled with the quiet assurance of a man who thinks he knows what he’s doing. I watched him, secure in the knowledge that there was no way he’d be able to—