Sean didn’t express incredulity, and he didn’t comment on Layla’s family’s behavior. He’d seen worse in his long life, but he hadn’t seen worse done to someone he cared about as much as he cared about Layla LaRue LeMay.

“Does she call you?” Sean asked.

“Yes, she does, from time to time. She’ll call here, or she’ll call the station to talk to Will, to find out if Carver’s out yet.”

“And is he?”

“Yes. After four years, he’s off all supervision now. He’s footloose and fancy-free.”

“And is he living here?”

“No. He left town right away.”

“She saw him,” Sean said out loud.

“Oh, no. Where?”

“At a party, where we were dancing.”

“Did he approach her?”

“No.”

“Did he see her?” Judith had hit the nail on the head.

Sean said slowly, “I don’t know.” Then he said, “But I have to get back. Now.”

Will said, “I hope you’re planning on being good to her. If I hear different, I’ll come back and track you down with a stake in my hand. She’s had enough trouble.”

Sean stood and bowed, in a very old-fashioned way. “We’ll see you in Florida,” he said.

He left Pineville, pushing the rental car to its limit, so he could make the last plane that would get him into the city in time to find a daytime resting place. There was a safe apartment very close to the airport, maintained by the vampire hierarchy. He called ahead to reserve a coffin, and got on the plane after making sure there was an emergency space in the tail where he could wait if sunlight caught them. But all went well, and he was in a room with three other occupied coffins by the time the sun came up.

Chapter 7

The personnel of Blue Moon Entertainment and Black Moon Productions were draped around the big practice room in various positions of weariness. It was a scant hour after darkness had fallen, and some of the vampires looked sluggish. Every one of them clutched a bottle of synthetic blood. Most of the humans had coffee mugs.

Rue had come in full disguise. The more she’d thought about the glimpse she’d had of the man who’d looked so much like Carver Hutton IV, the more spooked she’d gotten. Between that fear and her upsetting spat with Sean, and the remembered tingle she’d felt when they kissed, she hadn’t been worth anything during the weekend so far. She’d performed her regular weekend chores, but in a slapdash fashion. She hadn’t been able to study at all.

When Sean came in, wearing sweatpants and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, her pulse speeded up in a significant way. He folded to the floor by her, his back against the glass of the mirror as hers was, and scooted closer until their shoulders and hips touched.

Sean was silent, and she was too self-conscious to look up at his eyes. She’d half expected to hear from him the night before, and when the phone hadn’t rung and there’d been no knock at her door, she’d felt quite disconcerted. Men had seldom walked away from her, no matter how rocky their relationship had grown. I am not going to ask him where he’s been, she swore to herself.

Sylvia was talking on the phone and smoking, which all the human dancers detested. She was doing it to prove she was the boss. Rue made a face and tried to arrange herself so her back was comfortable. The wall wasn’t friendly to her spine, which had been jolted when she caught Megan after Charles Brody had shoved her. Megan was moving a little stiffly. Hallie looked subdued and David seemed healed, as far as Rue could tell. She hoped this week would be a better one for the entertainment troupe as a whole.

Rue sighed and tried to shift her weight slightly to her right hip. To her astonishment, in the next moment she felt herself being lifted. Sean had spread his legs, and he put her down between them, so her back rested against his stomach and chest. He scooted his butt out from the wall to give her a little incline. She was instantly more comfortable.

Rue figured if she didn’t make any big deal out of it, no one else would either, so she didn’t say a word or betray the surprise she felt. But she relaxed against Sean, knowing he would interpret that signal correctly as a thank-you.

Sylvia hung up at last. A black-haired female vampire with beautiful clear skin and dead eyes said, “Sylvia, we all know you’re top dog. Put out the damn cigarette.” The vampire waved her elegant hand at Sylvia imperiously.

“Abilene, tell me how you and Mustafa are doing,” Sylvia said, blowing out smoke, but then she stubbed out the cigarette.

A tall human with a full mustache, Mustafa had more muscles than any man needed, in Rue’s opinion. He was very dark complexioned, and a slow thinker. Rue wondered about the dynamics of this team, since the vampire half was a woman. How did that work? Did she do the lifts? Belatedly, Rue realized that in Black Moon’s form of entertainment, lifting was probably irrelevant.

“We’re doing fine,” Abilene said. “You got any comments, Moose?” That was her pet name for her giant partner, but no one else dared use it.

“The pale woman,” he said, his voice heavily accented and deep as a foghorn. Moose seemed to be a man of few words.

“Oh, yeah, the last gig we did, the party for the senator,” Abilene said. “The wife of one of the, ah, legislators... I don’t know how she got there, why her husband brought her, but she turned out to be Fellowship.”

“Were you hurt?” Sylvia asked.

“She had a knife,” Abilene said. “Moose was on top of me, so it was an awkward moment. You sure I can’t kill the customers?” Abilene smiled, and it wasn’t a nice smile.

“No, indeed,” Sylvia said briskly. “Haskell take care of it?”

For the first time, Rue noticed the sleek man leaning against the wall by the door. She seldom had dealings with Haskell, since the Black Moon people needed more protection than the Blue Moon dancers. Haskell was a vampire, with smooth, short blond hair and glacier-blue eyes. He had the musculature of a gymnast, and the wary, alert attitude of a bodyguard.

“I held her until her husband and his flunky could get her out of there,” Haskell said quietly.

“Her name?”

“Iris Lowry.”

Sylvia made a note of the name. “Okay, we’ll watch for her. I may have my lawyer write Senator Lowry a letter. Hallie? David?”

“We’re fine,” David said briskly. Rue looked down at her hands. No reason to relate the incident, even though it had ended with a death...a death that hadn’t even made the papers.

“Rick? Phil?” The two men glanced at each other before answering.

“The last group we entertained, at the Happy Horseman—it was an S and M group, and we gave them a good show.”

They weren’t talking about juggling. Rue tried to keep her face blank. She didn’t want her distaste to show. These people had shown her nothing but courtesy and comradeship.

“They wanted me to leave Phil there when our time was up,” Rick said. “It was touch-and-go for a few minutes.” The two vampires were always together, but they were very different. Rick was tall and handsome in a bland, brown-on-brown kind of way. Phil was small and slim, delicate. In fact, Rue decided, she might have mistaken him for a fourteen-year-old. Maybe when he died he was that young, she thought, and felt a pang of pity. Then Phil happened to look at Rue, and after meeting his pale, bottomless eyes, she shivered.

“Oh, no,” said Sylvia, and Phil turned to his employer. “Phil?” Her voice became gentle. “You know we’re not going to let anyone else touch you, unless you want that to happen. But remember, you can’t attack someone just because they want you. You’re so gorgeous, people are always going to want you.”

Sylvia braced herself in the face of that continued, terrifying gaze. “You know the deal, Phil,” Sylvia said more firmly. “You have to leave the customers alone.” After a long, tense pause, Phil nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“So, you think we need another minder, like Haskell? For nights when we’re double-booked on Black Moon shows?” Sylvia asked the group. “Denny’s a great guy, but he’s really just a lifting-and-setup kind of fellow. He’s not aggressive enough to be a minder, and he’s human.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to have someone else,” Rick said. “It would’ve taken some of the strain off if there’d been a third party there. It looked like it was going to be me against all of them for a little while. I hate to injure the client base, but I thought I might have to. People who like that kind of show are ready for a little violence, anyway.”

Sylvia nodded, made another note. “What about you Blue Moon people?” she asked, obviously not expecting any response. “Oh, Rue. Only a couple of the Black Mooners have seen you in your dancing clothes. Take off the other stuff, so they can see what you really look like. I’m not sure they could recognize you in a crowd.”

Rue hadn’t planned on becoming the center of attention, but there was no point of making a production of this request. She stood and unbuttoned the flannel shirt, pulled off the glasses and stepped out of the old corduroy pants she’d pulled on to cover her practice clothes. She held out her arms, inviting them to study her in her T-shirt and shorts, and then she sank down to the floor again. Sean’s arms crossed over her and pulled her tightly against him. This was body language anyone could understand—“Mine!” The Black Moon people almost all smiled—Phil and Mustafa being the exceptions—and nodded, both to acknowledge Rue and to say they’d noted Sean’s possessiveness.

Rue wanted to whack Sean across his narrow aristocratic face.

She also wanted to kiss him again.

But there was one thing she had to say. “We had some trouble,” she said hesitantly. She could understand David and Hallie’s silence. They hadn’t been on a professional engagement—and a man had died. But she couldn’t understand why Megan wasn’t speaking out.

Sylvia said, “With whom?” Her eyebrows were raised in astonishment.

“Guy named Charles Brody. He got mad when Megan wouldn’t take money to meet him afterward. He mentioned your name, Sylvia, but he wouldn’t...he didn’t accept it too well when we told him we didn’t work for Black Moon. He acted like it was going to be okay, that he accepted Megan’s refusal, but when he turned to leave, he shoved her down.”

“I don’t recognize the name, but he could’ve hired us before,” Sylvia said. “Thanks, I’ll put him in the watch-for file. Were you hurt?” She waited impatiently for Megan’s reply.

“No,” Megan said. “Rue caught me. I would’ve said something, but I’d pretty much forgotten it.” She shrugged. She clearly wasn’t too pleased with Rue for bringing up the incident.

“I want to speak,” Sean said, and that caught everyone’s attention.

“Sean, I don’t think you’ve spoken at one of these meetings in three years,” Sylvia said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Rue, show them your stomach,” Sean said.

She rose up on her knees and turned to look at him. “Why?” She was stunned and outraged.

“Just do it. Please. Show the Black Moon people.”

“You’d better have a good reason for this,” she said in a furious undertone.

He nodded at her, his blue eyes intent on her face.

With a visible effort, Rue faced the group and pulled down the front of her elastic-waist shorts. The Black Moon people looked, and Abilene gave a sharp nod of acknowledgment. Phil’s dark eyes went from the ugly scar to Rue’s face, and there was a sad kinship in them that she could hardly bear. Mustafa scowled while Rick, David and Hallie looked absolutely matter-of-fact. Haskell, the enforcer, averted his eyes.

“The man who did this is out of the mental hospital, and he’s probably here in the city,” Sean said, his Irish accent heavier than usual. Rue covered her scars, sank to her knees on the floor and looked down at the linoleum with utter concentration. She didn’t know if she wanted to swear and throw something at Sean or...she just didn’t know. He had massively minded her business. He’d gone behind her back.

But it felt good to have someone on her side.

“I got a human to find a picture of this man in the newspaper and copy it.” Sean began to pass around the picture. “This is Carver Hutton IV. He’s looking for Rue under her real name, Layla LeMay. He knows she dances. His family’s got a lot of money. He can get into almost any party anywhere. Even with his past, most hostesses would be glad to have him.”

“What are you doing?” Rue gasped, almost unable to get enough breath together to speak. “I’ve kept all this secret for years! And in the space of five minutes, you’ve told people everything about me. Everything!” For the first time in her life, Rue found herself on the verge of hitting someone. Her hands fisted.