“Have you had that cuteness patented yet?” I asked. Annoyed at the lack of additional raisins, Chaos didn’t deign to reply but scampered back down my body to tell her troubles to Nixon the Eggplant as she forced him—with a protesting blat—into a favorite hidey-hole next to the entertainment center. I could hear the toy uttering sporadic squawks and squeaks as Chaos bit and shoved it.

My attempts to rescue Nixon from the lair were interrupted by a phone call from Edward about a half hour after sundown. He purred his delight at my desire to meet. We agreed on eight o’clock at the After Dark—barely the shank of a winter evening for a vampire. I wished Quinton could come along as my bodyguard, but I knew Edward wouldn’t approve and I didn’t want him in a bad mood, however much I despised the necessity of going.

After dinner, I got dressed up as nicely as I could stand for the temperature—nice wool trousers instead of jeans and a better quality of sweater with dress boots instead of my usual urban hikers—and tucked the ferret back into her cage. I left her moping in her collection of old sweatshirt scraps as I headed out.

I had to stop by my office again before meeting Edward, and I needed a little extra time.

CHAPTER 8

The After Dark club lies at the bottom of a circular marble staircase behind an iron gate that always seems to be locked. It’s the social club, audience chamber, court, and coliseum of the local vampire community—or pack, as I prefer to think of them. I’d let Quinton know where I was going and when—just in case I didn’t come back. I thought I could keep myself out of Edward’s clutches, but everything’s a bit of a crapshoot with vampires. They don’t have the same motives, fears, or taboos that humans have, and it’s all too easy to make a wrong assumption and end up a meal—or a toy, as one of my clients had discovered. I’d have to keep a tight rein on my recurring annoyance at the mornings scene with Will, too, or I’d be easy prey while distracted.

Even at a distance, I could feel their presence as a boil of fire and ice that sent billows of red and black into the Grey around the door. I took a couple of deep, steadying breaths of the frigid air and started down the stairs. The gate clanged shut behind me, cutting off a few hardy idiots who’d decided to come down to Pioneer Square to party in the densely packed clubs, bars, and restaurants the area was famous for. They wouldn’t have liked the reception at the After Dark, even if they’d gotten past the doorman, who opened the black lacquered doors as I reached the bottom landing.

He wasn’t quite a vampire, as far as I could tell. The usual aura of death, blood, and magic wasn’t the right density and he didn’t exude the psychic stink I associated with bloodsuckers. He was even a bit nondescript—which was something most vampires didn’t bother to cultivate. He looked me over with a flick of his gaze and held the door for me. “Ms. Blaine.” He put out his hand for my coat, but I didn’t surrender it. I never had before and I wasn’t going to this time, either; the undead don’t care what the air temperature is and there wasn’t much warmth to the air that crept from the open doorway. I didn’t know how long it would take to get the information I needed, but I’d be damned if I’d court hypothermia for it.

After a moment of wondering if he should allow such cheek on my part, the doorman let me pass into the club proper.

Just stepping past the foyer doors made me feel a little ill. The low-lit room looked a lot like a nightclub from a forties-era film, but this one was populated with flickering images of the past as well as the vampires, wrapped in black-and-red energy coronas. They watched me cross the room with unconcealed curiosity, every stare a blade. I was pretty sure they all knew who I was and that I had some status with Edward. They also knew I was off-limits unless things changed. Some of them must have hoped it would.

The normal grid of the Grey’s energy lines seemed slightly skewed and blurred, though I didn’t know why, nor had I noticed it the only other time I’d been here. But I’d been a little busy on that visit and hadn’t had the concentration to spare for studying the oddities of the ether. I also realized that there were very few ghosts, in spite of the thick presence of death. I pushed aside speculation and fear and headed deeper into the room, toward a corner booth where I’d spotted Edward and a few of his cronies.

I caught myself frowning as I drew closer. There were three people with Edward: two men in suits who seemed to be flunkies of some sort and a thin woman with long strawberry blond hair. They were all vampires, but the woman had a very dim aura devoid of the heavy blackness of most and she was dressed in a romantic sort of gown made of a floating white fabric—not Goth-y, but more like a costume from a Pre-Raphaelite painting. With that thought I recognized her and stopped a little short of the table, surprised.

Edward glanced up at me, already waving the men away. He still looked like a shorter version of Pierce Brosnan frozen at an unaging forty—and had the accent to go with it. “A moment, if you don’t mind,” he said. Then he turned his attention back to Gwen.

He may have been as fixed as Dorian Gray, but Gwen had changed a lot since I’d first seen her wafting, almost as insubstantial as a ghost, around the Grand Illusion movie theater. Where she had been colorless and fading in the Gray before, her energy signature was now taking on threads and swirls of red and black. It was still a very small aura, but it was discernibly there. She had been sickly and I hadn’t then realized that she’d been starving to death in a strange way, slowing fading from both worlds and spiraling down to apathy, madness, and self-destruction. That was not the case now.

I didn’t know if I was pleased at the prospect of any vampire gaining strength, but I wasn’t entirely unhappy to see someone who had been so pathetic reversing the downward trend of her… unlife? I don’t suffer the self-pitying too well and “Lady Gwendolyn of Anorexia” had been among the worst. Boredom I could understand, but most vampires tend more toward arrogance than ennui, and a vampire with a total lack of interest in survival seems contrary to their nature—at least so far as I could understand it.

I watched Edward whisper something in Gwen’s ear and then kiss the back of her hand before shooing her on her way. Gwen smiled and edged out of the booth, turning the expression on me as she stood. A sharp-toothed smile I didn’t like one bit.

“Hello,” she murmured in a breathy voice. “I’m so pleased to see you again.”

I gave her a small nod. “You seem to be doing well,” I observed in as neutral a voice as I could manage.

“I am,” she replied, nodding with enthusiasm. “I am. I don’t drink tea anymore.”

“You still go to movies and play role-playing games?”

“Oh, no. I’m much too busy. I miss the movies, though. Before winter’s over, maybe I’ll go to some again. Long nights offer so much more to do.” I’m sure.

She glanced back at Edward and chuckled, touching her tongue to her front teeth, before floating away.

I slid onto the nearest seat of the booth, keeping close to the outside.

“Taking on more projects?” I asked Edward, arching an eyebrow.

“Still mending fences—as you forced me to do.”

“As if that was such a bad idea.” The cold and nausea I experienced in the company of vampires was tempered with a roaring sexual heat Edward put out whenever he looked at me. I kept my distance both physical and emotional, maintaining a pointed cynicism as a ward against his routine manipulations. I didn’t care to be the next plaything in Edward’s collection. Gwen seemed to be recovering from that—depending on your definition of “recovery.” Most of his casual toys didn’t do so well.