With a nasty-ass grin, he sauntered off, his body to be coiled, his muscular shoulders rolling like he was headed into a fight. Or wanted to be.

"Sounds like you want a date, Lash," Qhuinn barked. "Good deal, 'cause you keep that shit up, you're going to get fucked, buddy."

Lash stopped and glanced back, the lights from overhead pouring down over him. "Hey, Qhuinn, tell your father I said hi. He always did like me better than you. Then again, I match."

Lash tapped beside his eye with his middle finger and kept going.

In his wake, Qhuinn's face closed up, just went straight to statue.

Blay put his hand on the back of the guy's neck. "Listen, give us forty-five minutes at my house, k? Then you come pick us up."

Qhuinn didn't respond right away, and when he finally did his voice was low. "Yeah. No problem. Will you excuse me for a sec?"

Qhuinn dropped his books and walked back to the locker room. As the door eased shut, John signed, Lash's and Qhuinn's families are tight?

"The two of them are first cousins. Their fathers are brothers."

John frowned. What's up with Lash pointing to his eye?

"Don't worry about-"

John gripped the guy's forearm. Tell me.

Blay rubbed his red hair like he was trying to rustle up a response. "Okay… it's like… Qhuinn's dad is a big deal in the glymera, right? And so's his mom. And the glymera doesn't do defects."

This was said as if it explained everything. I don't get it. What's wrong with his eye?

"One's blue. One's green. Because they aren't the same color, Qhuinn's never going to get mated… and, you know, his father's been embarrassed by him all his life. Not a good sitch, and that's why we're always at my house. He needs to get away from his parents." Blay looked at the locker room door as if he could see through it to his friend. "The only reason they haven't kicked him out is because they were hoping the transition might clear it up. That's why he got to use someone like Marna. She has very good blood, and I think the plan was that it would help."

It didn't.

"Nope. They're probably going to ask him to leave at some point. I've already got a room ready for him, but I doubt he'd use it. Lot of pride. Rightfully so."

John had a horrible thought. How did he get the bruise? The one on his face after his transition?

At that moment the locker room door opened and Qhuinn came out with a solid smile in place. "Shall we, gentlemen?" As he picked up his books, his bravado was back. "Let's bounce before the good ones are taken at the club."

Blay clapped the guy on the shoulder. "Lead on, maestro."

As they headed for the underground parking lot, Qhuinn was in front, Blay behind, John in the middle.

As Qhuinn disappeared up the bus's steps, John tapped Blay on the shoulder.

It was his father, wasn't it?

Blay hesitated. Then nodded once.

Chapter Eighteen

Okay, this was either cool as hell or scary as fuck. As Jane walked along, it was like she was going through an underground tunnel in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. This setup was straight out of high-budget Hollywood: steel, dimly lit from inset fluorescent lights, infinitely long. At any minute Bruce Willis circa 1980 was going to come running by on his bare feet wearing a ratty muscle shirt and a machine gun.

She glanced up at the fluorescent panels in the ceiling, then down to the polished metal floor. She was willing to bet that if she took a drill to the walls they'd be half a foot thick. Man, these guys had money. Big money. More than you could get if you were dealing prescription drugs on the black market or servicing coke, crack, and crank addictions. This was government-scale money, suggesting vampires weren't just another species; they were another civilization.

As the three of them went along, she was surprised they'd left her unrestrained. Then again, the patient and his buddy were armed with guns-

"No." The patient shook his head at her. "You're not in cuffs because you won't run."

Jane's mouth about fell open. "Don't read my mind."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to, it just happened."

She cleared her throat, trying not to measure how great he looked standing up. Dressed in Black Watch plaid pajama bottoms and a black muscle shirt, he was moving slowly, but with a lethal confidence that was a knockout.

What had they been talking about? "How do you know I won't run for it?"

"You won't bail on someone who requires medical attention. It's not in your nature, true?"

Well… shit. He knew her pretty well.

"Yeah, I do," he said.

"Cut that out."

Red Sox looked around Jane at the patient. "Your mind reading coming back?"

"With her? Sometimes."

"Huh. You getting anything from anyone else?"

"Nope."

Red Sox repositioned his hat. "Well, ah… let me know if you pick up shit from me, k? There are some things that I'd prefer to keep private, feel me?"

"Roger that. Although I can't help it sometimes."

"Which is why I'm going to take up thinking about baseball when you're around."

"Thank fuck you're not a Yankees fan."

"Don't use the Y-word. We're in mixed company."

Nothing else was said as they continued through the tunnel, and Jane had to wonder whether she was losing her mind. She should have been terrified in this dark, subterranean place with two huge escorts of a vampire nature. But she wasn't. Oddly, she felt safe… as if the patient would protect her because of the vow he'd given her, and Red Sox would do the same because of his bond with the patient.

Where the hell was the logic in that, she wondered.

Gimme an S! A T! An O! A C! Followed by a K-H-O-L-M! What's it spell? HEAD FUCK.

The patient leaned down to her ear. "I can't see you as the cheerleader type. But you're right, we both would slaughter anything that so much as startled you." The patient straightened again, one giant testosterone surge plugged into shitkickers.

Jane tapped him on the forearm and crocked her forefinger so he'd lean back down. When he did, she whispered, "I'm scared of mice and spiders. But you don't need to use that gun on your hip to blow a hole in a wall if I ran into one, okay? Havaheart traps and rolled newspapers work just as well. Plus, you don't need a Sheetrock patch and plaster job afterward. I'm just saying."

She patted his arm, dismissing him, and refocused on the tunnel ahead.

V started to laugh, awkwardly at first, then more deeply, and she felt Red Sox staring at her. She met his eyes with hesitation, expecting to find some kind of disapproval thing going on. Instead, there was only relief. Relief and approval as the man… male… Christ, whatever… looked at her and then his friend.

Jane flushed and glanced away. The fact that they guy was obviously not pulling a best-friend pissing contest with her over V should not have been a bonus. Not at all.

A hundred yards later they came up to a set of shallow stairs that led to a door with a bolt-based locking mechanism the size of her head on it. As the patient stepped up and put in a code, she imagined they were going to walk into a 007 kind of deal-

Well, not hardly. It was a closet with shelves of yellow-lined legal pads and printer cartridges and boxes of document clips. Maybe on the other side…

Nope. It was just an office. A regular middle-management kind of office with a desk and a swivel chair and file cabinets and a computer.

Okay, no Jerry Bruckheimer/Die Hard here. Try a commercial for Allstate insurance. Or a mortgage company.

"This way," V said.

They went out through a glass door and down an unmarked white corridor to some stainless-steel double doors. Beyond them was a professional-quality gym, one big enough to host a pro basketball game, a wrestling match, and a volleyball exhibition at the same time. Blue mats were laid out across the glossy honey-colored floor, and there were punching bags hanging from under a stacked row of elevated bleachers.