To Evan I said, “How ’bout you give the kids a bath?” To Eli I said, “And make sure everything is locked in the safe room.”

The guys looked at the kids and then at each other. Eli said, “Message received.” He would put all the guns in the hidden room where we kept our armaments, and do it while the children were upstairs and not able to see the secret room.

Without another word, I spun on a heel and took the side door into the dark, heading for Katie’s. The chill hit me, a wet, cold slap of air. I had once thought that Louisiana didn’t have a winter. I had been wrong. It was just winter Deep South–style, wet, icy air, a little road ice, the cold spells broken up with long periods of warm springlike air. We had been in the wet icy part for the last three days, and it would be later in the week before the seventies hit us again, a tropical storm front raging in off the coast. We’d have rain, rain, and then maybe a little rain. Some wind. Maybe some lightning. And some more rain. Inches of it. But at least it would be warm.

I jumped to the top of the splintered boulder pile in my backyard, grabbed a jutting brick as a handhold, and leaped, pulling myself over the wall, swinging across and dropping down. It wasn’t a move a human could’ve made. Sometimes being human was overrated.

I knocked on the back door of Katie’s Ladies and felt myself being viewed through the dynamic camera anchored overhead—a security upgrade I had installed when I first came to the Big Easy. There was another camera, smaller and better hidden, in the corner. Most people would never look for a hidden camera once they saw a big, obvious one. And most robbers, rapists, kidnappers, and general bad guys wouldn’t think about a hidden camera after they had disabled the obvious one. The door opened—a steel door with no windows, a far better security arrangement than the glass door originally installed. Troll looked down at me from his six-feet-plus height and grinned. “Little Janie. Come on in. Katie’s waiting for you in her study. You know the way.”

“Little Janie,” I grumbled. But I was getting used to the moniker. I was also called Legs, by some of the security experts in the city. Maybe it was dumb, but nicknames made me feel at home, welcomed, in some obscure way. And helped to alleviate some of the discomfort I always felt in Katie’s presence. I had never been comfortable with her, but, to make it worse, she had fed on me not that long ago, and it’s hard to excuse that kind of thing, even for me—and I understood a predator’s drive to dominate and feed.

I blew out a breath, shook off the memory, and turned left, meandering down the hallway to Katie’s office. Katie was the heir to Leo Pellissier, the Master of New Orleans and the Southeastern U.S., except for Florida. She was dominant, strong, and a little scary, with less control than the MOC, less charisma, but, possibly, more raw power. Katie was the first sane vamp I’d ever met, and her office was the first place I had come when I got to New Orleans.

Her office was much as it had been then, though the walls were now painted a cooler, darker seafoam green, and the hardwood floor was covered with a new silk Oriental rug, a burnt persimmon background woven with green waves along the border with a darker green and burnt orange sea serpent crashing through the waves in the center. The rug was modern and luxuriant and probably cost more than I had in the business’ checking account, which was a lot. The leather sofa still faced the desk, two leather chairs to either side. The bar and minifridge were on the left wall, and Katie’s ancient blackwood, hand-carved desk with the leather center was to the right, lit by a brass lamp in the shape of a swan, its neck arched back to ruffle its half-lifted wings.

Also on the desk tonight, however, and totally unexpected, was a computer monitor. Katie was a Luddite. She didn’t understand the modern world. She hated changes. She more than hated the electronic changes. And yet she was sitting behind the desk, her eyes wide and entranced—in the human manner, not vamped-out—studying the wide screen.

“Uhhh. Katie?” Great entrance. Almost as if I’d practiced it.

She looked up and tinkled a laugh. It was delicate and soft and feminine and nothing like my own laugh, which was more of a donkey bray. “This is fascinating,” she said. “I have no idea why I feared it for so long.” One fragile-looking hand waved me closer. “Come. See. This is marvelous!”

I stuck my hands into my pockets and stepped around the desk. Katie, wearing a dark orange-red sheath dress with her hair coiled up in a chignon, was staring at some sort of financial spreadsheet, one with dollar amounts upward of five figures—not counting the pennies. And the total at the bottom of the page was in the high six figures.

My eyebrows rose all by themselves. “Yeah. Cool.” I mean, what else could I say?

“Since I rose again, for the second time, this new world is no longer a fearful place.” She whipped her head to me, and her fangs snicked down. “In fact, I fear nothing and no one.”

I managed not to take three quick steps back, which was smart because hunting predators chase things that run away. I held my hands up and open in the universal “peace” gesture and tried to control my breathing and heart rate. “Good by me, Katie. No woman should ever have to be afraid.”

“Yes. Exactly.” Her fangs flipped back into the roof of her mouth with a faint click. She hadn’t vamped out—her eyes had remained fully human. It was a demonstration of control I hadn’t seen in her before, one worthy of a master. Katie had been injured not long after I arrived in NOLA, and to save her undead life, she had been buried with the blood of all the clans of New Orleans, some of which no longer even existed. She had risen crazy strong. And maybe just crazy, until a couple of months ago when she seemed to be settling in. Sorta.

But I was wasting time. It was nearly seven thirty, the kids’ bedtime, and I needed an update on Molly. I wanted to be at home. “Troll tells me you have some missing girls?”

“Bliss and Rachael went to a private party last night at Guilbeau’s Restaurant. They called their driver at exactly two twenty-three this morning. When their driver arrived four minutes later, there was no sign of them. Find them. When you discover who took them, kill him. Funds have been placed at your discretion, though I require a detailed expense accounting, of course.”

My mouth opened. And closed on the words I was about to say. Calling a vamp insane might not be the wisest course of action, especially when it hadn’t been demonstrated that she was fully in control of her predatory instincts. When I opened my mouth again, I said, “I’ll find the girls. But I’m not a hired killer.”

“Of course you are. Don’t be foolish.” She turned back to the screen. “We all must accept our natures, and you are a predator.” She sniffed the air without looking at me. “You smell of wild places and violence and blood. You will kill. It is your nature and it is what you have been paid to do.”

The reality of her statement hit me like an icy fist, right in my midsection. Her words were almost like the ones Beast said to me when she called me a killer. Words I denied. Still wanted to deny. Slowly, carefully, I said, “Unless the person or persons who has them is being violent, refuses to let them go, or tries to do them, my team, or me harm, I won’t be killing anyone.”

Katie’s head inclined, a snakelike movement no human spine could mimic. Her face moved half into shadow, and the other half brightened into creamy gold; the dim bulb shaded her hair into honey with pale highlights. Her eyes met mine, dark in the lamplight and full of compulsion. She held me with her eyes, and a deeply twisted gleam brightened her gaze as she parted her lips, the motion slow and sensual. “This I shall accept: You will find my girls. You will free them. You will return them to me, with the names of the ones who took them. I will take care of the rest.”

I knew what she meant. She would take the names I gave her, track them, drain them, and kill them. She would leave their dead bodies where no one would ever find them. And it would be my fault. Totally my fault. As much as if I took their lives myself.

Katie smiled sweetly as the facts found a place in my brain, and returned her attention to the computer screen. “Tom has all the information you will need to locate my employees. You are dismissed.”

I didn’t know how to reconcile her demands, and though my Beast fought me to challenge her, predator to predator, and fight it out on the desktop, here and now, I shoved Beast down and walked away. Katie was my employer and landlady, the owner of my freebie home. Katie was a vamp no one crossed, and if I wanted to keep my own peace of mind and my own blood in my veins, I would need to find a way to deal with Katie wanting to kill the kidnappers—which would totally be my fault, if I gave her the names. But I could worry about that later. Was I a Scarlett O’Hara or what?

Inside me, my Beast—the soul of a mountain lion I had dragged into me during an act of accidental black magic, when I was five years old and fighting for my life—turned her back to me, a predator insult of the worst kind. I held in the frustration the gesture brought on.

Troll, whose real name was Tom, and who was Katie’s primo blood-servant, was waiting for me in the hallway, his face like a stone bust, emotionless and cold. He had been listening.

Dumbly, I followed him to the kitchen, where Deon, Katie’s three-star Jamaican chef, was putting a rack of lamb into one of the commercial ovens he supervised. We sat at the kitchen bar, my right foot on the floor, the other on the bar stool footrest. Troll handed me a paper with all the pertinent info about the missing girls written on it in his neat block printing.

“Is she . . .” I stopped, not knowing what to ask.

“Sane?” he said softly. “I don’t know, but I’m careful around her, treat her with kid gloves. Her girls are careful. According to Mithran definitions, and within Mithran parameters, she’s fine. She’s not drained anyone. She’s injured no one.” He rubbed his bald pate in consternation. Troll wasn’t the most communicative man, but even I could tell he wasn’t finished. “But she’s powerful and strong and different from what she was before the blood-burial.”