“Don’t you?”

“Well, not just for fun.” I bent the file’s front cover back, showing him the photo that had been paper-clipped to the inside.

His eyes crossed as they focused on the image of his own narrow face, overgrown nose and sulky expression. “This is a hit?”

“If it was, you’d be dead by now.”

“What the hell do you call this?”

“Temporarily inconvenienced. A fifth-level master can live for up to a week without a head.”

“And how do you know that’s what I am?” he asked haughtily. He’d probably been telling people he was third or something. There are rare vampires who can hide their true levels, appearing stronger or weaker than they actually are. But this joker wasn’t one of them.

“Because it’s in the report,” I told him patiently. “Not to mention that a senior master wouldn’t be glaring at me while he bled out. He’d—”

The body’s left leg abruptly jackknifed, dumping me on the floor and allowing it to get a hand around my throat. So I stuck a knife under the breastbone, pinning it to the stained linoleum. Instead of pulling my weapon back out and trying to stick it into me, the hands fell away to flap against the floor, like fish out of water.

He was so fifth-level.

I flipped open the folder. “Raymond Lu. Born in 1622, the result of a beachside union between a randy Dutch sailor and the slowest Indonesian woman in her village.”

“It was a love match!”

“Sure.” I moved back a little to keep the creeping bloodstain off my boots. “You earned a tenuous living thereafter as part of the most inept band of pirates ever to sail the seas, and only became a vamp because you robbed the wrong guy.”

The head said something, but it was indecipherable because it had slipped down the side of the bowl and ended up with its nose in the drain. I fished it out and wedged it snugly beside the faucet. It thanked me by trying to take a bite out of my thumb.

“These days, you pose as a respectable Chinese businessman despite the fact that you aren’t respectable, you aren’t Chinese and your ‘business’ consists of running errands for the undead version of the Hong Kong mafia.”

“It’s a living.”

“Not for long. You’ve been a very bad boy, Raymond. The Senate would like a word.”

“Wait. You’re working for the Senate?” He looked almost relieved. Since the Vampire Senate usually made vamps quake in their designer shoes, that was a little strange.

“I’m freelancing,” I informed him.

“But you’re a dhampir!”

“Like you said, it’s a living.”

“God! I thought… Never mind.”

I unzipped the roomy main compartment of the duffel. “We’re going to go see the senator in charge of fey affairs. He has some questions about that illegal portal you’ve been running to Faerie.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. People walk in and out of here all the time, and some of them leave carrying nasty fey weapons. You cough up the location to the portal, we blow it up and everybody lives happily ever after.”

“I still won’t have a head!”

“There are people who can fix that—assuming you have all the requisite parts. I’ll leave the body here; I’m sure your boys will take good care of it. And as long as you come through, you and it will be happily reunited in a couple of—”

A handsome young Asian guy burst through the door energetically enough to send the lock flying. He was in the black jeans, boots and muscle shirt of a bouncer, the latter untucked to hide the gun at his back. He started to say something, then stopped, gaping. His eyes flicked from the body on the floor to the head in the sink, then back to the body. His mouth dropped open.

“Don’t just stand there!” Raymond spluttered. “Kill her!”

The vamp jumped at the sound of a voice coming from the gory head, but his eyes obediently made the rounds again, looking for a target. And passed over me without so much as a pause. He saw me, but assumed I was human, which put me in the same threat category as the paper towel dispenser.

I gave a little wave. “Dhampir,” I added helpfully.

He blinked and finally focused on my face. He took in the delicate bone structure I inherited from my human mother, the dimples I received from the iffier side of the gene pool and my unimpressive height. “You are not!” He sounded almost offended.

“No, really.”

“You don’t look like a dhampir!”

“You’ve met one?”

“No, but… a dhampir would be taller. And you’d have a tail.” His eyes flicked downward for a second, and he looked almost disappointed at my human- looking butt.

“That’s a myth,” I told him gently.

He still looked skeptical, so I flashed my tiny fangs. They’re vestigial in my kind, since we don’t drink blood, but they got the message across. His eyes widened, and he retreated a step before he caught himself. “Dhampir!”

“Out of curiosity, what did you think had decapitated the boss?” I asked, as he went for his gun. I’d expected that, and mine was out before he’d completed the gesture. The reflexes aren’t a myth, or I’d have been dead a long time ago.

He looked at my Glock. It’s a.45. He’d pulled out a tiny little.22.

“Size really does matter,” I observed, and he scowled.

“Oh for—Go get help!” Raymond ordered.

The vamp’s eyes shifted back to his master, and some of his initial panic returned. “But sir. Lord Cheung is here!”

“What?” Raymond suddenly looked more freaked out than when I’d decapitated him. “But he’s not due until midnight!”

“I believe his plane arrived early.” The vamp’s eyes kept flicking back and forth between the two parts of the boss, as if unsure which one he should be addressing. He finally settled on the head. “He commands your presence, sir.”

“Oh, shit! Oh, shit!” Now Raymond was the one looking around wildly.

“What’s your master doing here?” I demanded.

But Ray wasn’t listening. “If he’s here early it must mean—Oh, shit!” His body gave a sudden heave and wrenched itself off the floor, only to stumble into the side of the sink, slip on some blood and go back down.

“Must mean what?”

“That you’re too late! He’s going to kill me before the Senate gets the chance!”

“That’s why you were cowering in the bathroom?” For once, I hadn’t had to go round the perp up. He’d already been in here when I arrived. I’d thought it convenient, but I had wondered. It’s not like vamps actually need to use the facilities.

He shot me a purely venomous look. “I wasn’t cowering! I needed someplace quiet to think. To figure out how—” His lips abruptly snapped shut, and those pale eyes narrowed on my face.

I sighed. Why did I get the feeling that this nice, easy assignment had just gone pear-shaped? “And your master wants to kill you because…?”

“There may have been a slight… misunderstanding… about some merchandise.”

“You stole from the vampire mafia?”

“Something was misplaced, and it wasn’t my fault!”

“Of course not.”

“Look, all you need to know is that—” He stopped, staring past me at the guard. “What are you doing?”

The vamp looked at the gun he’d aimed at my head. “I’m going to kill her?”

Raymond rolled his eyes. “Oh, for the love of—Can you at least try to keep up?”

The vamp lowered the weapon and stood there looking awkward.

“What do I need to know?” I prompted.

“That there’s not one portal,” Ray said hurriedly. “There’s a whole network, and I know where they are. Well, most of them. More than you’re likely to find on your own—that’s for sure. You get me out of this, and I talk. You leave me here and I die, and don’t think you’re going to find anyone else to squeal!”

Great. I should have known Mircea wouldn’t give me two easy jobs in a row. But this was going to be a real bitch. For one thing, it meant I couldn’t leave the body behind as I’d planned. Ray was already decapitated; all his master had to do to be rid of him was to stake the heart. And a lumbering corpse was going to be a bit harder to hide than a head in a bag.