Death had been too kind. It had been a kindness I’d been forced to visit on those twelve empty shells.

I gagged.

Desmond sat straight up, surprised by the sudden reaction. I did it again and he moved to help me, but I placed a hand on his chest to stop him.

“What is it?”

I closed the book and wiped a stray, unwelcome tear off my cheek. I didn’t remember it happening on my birthday. Somehow, I’d disconnected the two things in my head so my birthday wouldn’t be tainted by the horrible deaths of a dozen people. But I had all the important points in front of me now, and all I had to do was draw a line.

If Holden stood accused of killing a protected elder on that date, I could prove he didn’t do it. He’d been violating a different set of laws that night, by helping me dismember a sect of rogues and bury the skeletons from their closet.

I pushed the book away from me, letting it fall with a thump onto my carpeted floor.

“Get dressed,” I whispered. “We need to go.”

I left Desmond behind, still struggling to get his left shoe on, and was halfway down the block when he caught up with me. I stopped walking and did an about-face, nearly colliding with him.

“Wha—?” He looked confused.

I had dressed in such a hurry I was wearing my shorts from earlier in the week and the discarded Yankees shirt Desmond had left at my front door. This had forced him to grab the first shirt he could find in his duffel bag, so fresh there were still fold marks in the white cotton tee. The button on his jeans was undone, and his hair stuck up to one side in fond remembrance of the pillow we had just left.

I brushed past him, digging through my purse. “Hold,” I said as I handed him my gun, which he took but held uncomfortably. I knew Desmond could handle a weapon because he’d taken mine from me in the past. I think it was the idea I was carrying a 9mm pistol in my purse that made it so off-putting for him.

I found what I was looking for and hauled the keys out of my purse. With one push of the key fob, a pair of headlights blinked at us, and my car announced itself with a chirpy honk. I’d almost forgotten I had the stupid thing.

“Is that—?”

“I’m borrowing it.”

We looked at each other, and he handed the gun back to me. I checked the safety, then slid it into the back of my pants, letting the looseness of the shirt hide it perfectly.

“Lucas would look pretty goofy in a yellow convertible,” he said, moving around to the passenger side. Farther down the block I could see his vintage Dodge Challenger sitting forlorn in the night.

I doubted I’d ever get used to being able to drive places in the city. New York was a town ruled by pedestrian law. Drivers ranked below cyclists in the hierarchy of the streets.

I got into the driver’s seat and the car purred to life.

Then again, there was nothing not to love about that sound.

Twenty minutes later we were pulling up to the Plaza Hotel, and I was loathing New York streets and cursing myself for not walking. I handed the keys off to the eager valet, while Desmond clambered out the other side, having survived the diatribe of my sailor’s tongue the whole way here.

At the front desk a stout woman with water-colored eyes and a painfully tight bun of mouse-brown hair stared at the pair of us. Her expression was like a visual sigh.

“Yes?” she deigned to address us. She would have gotten along swimmingly with Melvin over at Rain Hotel. We had skipped right over the Welcome to the Plaza, how may I assist you today? and directly into the condescending glares.

“Residential elevators, please.” I knew I was in the right place, although I’d never had to make this particular visit in the past.

“Residential…” She looked perplexed by my question.

“I need to get to someone’s apartment.”

“No one—”

“I don’t have time for this,” I grumbled.

Desmond gently pushed me aside, then leaned against the counter with casual grace. He smiled at the lady in a way that would probably feed her fantasies for months to come. She blushed and he hadn’t even spoken yet.

“Beverley,” he crooned, glancing at her nametag. “Can I call you that?”

“Yes.” Her gaze darted over to me. I didn’t have people skills. Not the same way the men in my life seemed to. Women generally didn’t like me, and I was fine with that under normal circumstances.

“Beverley, my friend and I are trying to visit someone. We understand the need for residents here to maintain their privacy.” He winked at her conspiratorially, and she fell for it hook, line and sinker. “But if you could point us in the direction of residential access, we’ll be on our way.”

“Take the elevator to twenty-six. Take the third door to the left. There’s a second elevator there, and it goes directly to the resident floor of your choice. They’re labeled.” Desmond might as well have enthralled her, the answer was so precise.

How was his question different than mine? Sure, it was more eloquently phrased, and he was flirting instead of yelling at her, but still.

In the elevator I pouted a little, but he beamed at me with I-told-you-so variety pride.

“What are we doing here, anyway?” he asked.

“We’re here to see a woman about a vampire.”

“And she lives at the Plaza?”

“I know.” I shifted my gaze to him. “How can you trust someone who lives in a hotel, right?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sig’s daytime servant, Ingrid, was no fan of mine.

There should be some sort of support group for people who disliked me. Ingrid wouldn’t be leading the meetings, but she’d still sit in a metal folding chair with her Styrofoam coffee cup and say, “Hello, my name is Ingrid, and I hate Secret.”

Nevertheless, when I arrived at the front door of her personal apartment with a werewolf in tow, she didn’t think twice about letting me in.

For a seven-hundred-year-old milkmaid from Germany, Ingrid had held up well. She was human, but the bond she shared with Sig meant she’d inherited his longevity. As long as Sig lived on, so would Ingrid. She had traded a life in service to him for immortality, and it didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest.

She had been in her late teens when she’d met Sig, and retained the youthful roundness of her face and figure. Her cheeks had a ruddy, flushed complexion from hours spent in the sun with no fear of cancer, and her blonde hair looked especially flaxen this season. I hated her for her daytime privilege.

“Secret,” she acknowledged, stepping away from the front door. “Won’t you please come in.”

The gesture, while unnecessary, was flattering. Full vampires couldn’t enter a human residence without invitation. Since I was not a full-blooded vampire, the rule didn’t seem to apply to me, but I appreciated that she offered it.

“Wolf,” she said in the tone of someone speaking to a pet rather than a person.

“Desmond,” he corrected, and extended a hand to her. They’d met once, but the circumstances hadn’t been ideal for introductions.

Ingrid looked at him like he’d performed a particularly humorous trick, and then rewarded him by shaking his hand. “Ingrid.”

“Now that we’re done playing name that paranormal creature, can we get on with it? I don’t think you want us here all night.” And I wondered why Ingrid disliked me.

“Surely not.” Her smile remained bemused as she continued to look Desmond over. “But Sig did tell me to expect you, and therefore I will do my utmost to make you feel welcome.”

We followed her through the small foyer and into a sunken living room with huge picture windows overlooking Central Park. She had no balcony, but the view was worth the sacrifice. The city gleamed like an unbroken promise, beautiful and safe.

For the first time I noticed how casual Ingrid appeared tonight. Her hair was tied back in a messy fishtail plait, and she wore a pair of skinny black jeans and a long black tank top. If Audrey Hepburn had a perpetually cranky German cousin, Ingrid would be it.

She indicated the sectional sofa, which wrapped around three sides of the sunk-in area. On the fourth side was a large flat-screen television and a fancy stereo which was playing Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” through hidden speakers all over the apartment. That Ingrid predated the original performance of the symphony was not lost on me.

“Sig told you we were coming?” I sat on the sofa, and Desmond found a comfortable place next to me. He was perfectly at ease in the room, having been raised in the opulence of life with the Rain family. I, on the other hand, would never be comfortable surrounded by such obvious displays of wealth. You couldn’t grow up in a town like Elmwood and make a smooth adjustment to things like driving BMWs or having an original Rothko hanging in the dining room.

“He knew you’d sort things out eventually.” She sat opposite us and smiled. “What have you brought me?”

I pulled the journal from my purse, opened it to the correct page and held it out to her. She read it, saying nothing, then closed the book, placed it next to her on the couch and waited for me to continue.

“If I understand Sig, and what he told me the other night, then one of the protected vampires was killed on December sixth of that year.”

Her smile thinned, and she brushed her hand over the cover of the book. “Perhaps.”

“Then Holden couldn’t have done it. He was with me.”

“And the Tribunal will take the word of a half-breed, why?” She wasn’t attacking me, I realized, she was testing me. I was prepared to answer this question; I just hadn’t expected her to be the one to ask it.

“The death of the three rogues I killed is on record. I had to stand before the Tribunal to account for the unsanctioned assassinations. Holden’s account was given the same night as mine.” My eyes flared defiantly. Take that.

“It is as Sig feared.” Ingrid picked up the book, then rose from the couch and took it into another room. I don’t know what she did with it, but when she returned, the journal was gone.