“For the last time, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I said, exasperated.

“Then why are you here?”

I felt like throwing his own words back at him, like telling him it was none of his damned business. But if I wanted answers, I was probably going to have to cough some up myself. And it wasn’t like there was any big secret.

“I’m freelancing on the smuggling task force. You know, the one you’re supposed to be helping with? And not because Mircea snapped his fingers. I happen to like the idea of the war ending early and the arms manufacturers dying poor.”

“And that’s all.”

“Yes! That’s all!”

Louis-Cesare frowned, and his hands stilled on my ass. “That is why you want the vampire? Because you suspect him of smuggling?”

“Well, it damn sure isn’t for the pleasure of his company!”

“Right back at you,” floated over from the duffel, which had landed by the wall.

“Why? What do you want with him?” I asked, thoroughly confused now.

“To buy back Christine!”

I blinked. Okay, that wouldn’t have been my first guess. Christine was Louis-Cesare’s former mistress, who had been kidnapped in order to blackmail him. A vampire who was accustomed to getting what he wanted had asked Louis-Cesare to stand in for him in a duel. One of his subordinates had challenged him, and if he lost the duel, he wouldn’t just lose his position, but his life.

That sort of substitution was allowable by vampire law, and Louis-Cesare had fought for other people in the past. But the man in question this time—Alejandro, head of the Latin American Senate—was known as a sadist who regularly did things that made even vampires blanch. The general consensus was that he wouldn’t be missed, and I guess Louis-Cesare agreed, because he told him to fight his own battles. So Alejandro had—by kidnapping Christine and vowing to return her only after his enemy was dead.

Unlike most vamps, Louis-Cesare seemed to have a problem with cold-blooded murder. He’d defeated Tomas, the challenger in question, but refused to kill him because the man’s only crime was trying to rid the world of a monster. So Alejandro had refused to release Christine. It was the sort of brutal politics vampire courts abound in, counting the lives that were ruined as insignificant as long as a sought-after goal was reached. I’d been burned by that sort of thing myself, and normally I’d have been sympathetic.

If it hadn’t all happened a century ago.

“That’s where you’ve been?” I demanded, squirming. He let me turn over, but didn’t get up. Which would have been nice if we didn’t have an audience of staring guards, and if I wasn’t close to livid. “We’re fighting a war and you’re off—God! She’s been missing for a century! What difference does a couple more years—”

“She doesn’t have a couple of years!”

The leader of the guards seemed to have recovered, because he put a hand on my arm. “Sir, would you like me to—”

Louis-Cesare knocked the man’s arm away. I used the moment of his distraction to get a knee in a sensitive spot and, when he flinched, roll out from under. I grabbed the bag, scrambled to my feet and fled down the hallway, in the opposite direction from the stairs. We were only two flights up, and I could do that jump easily—

Louis-Cesare grabbed the duffel’s strap and jerked, but I’d expected that. I already had a knife in hand and cut the thin nylon. He staggered back a pace, and I put my foot through the window—and almost got it blown off. “Goddamn it!”

“What is it now?” Louis-Cesare demanded.

“Cheung’s men. I thought they’d left.”

He took a quick peek out the window, prompting another volley from the vamps camped out on the sidewalk below. He shied back and rounded on the guards. “Why haven’t you cleared them out?”

“Sir!” The lead guard was beginning to show signs of stress. “The management felt that a dhampir on the premises was more of a concern than—”

“A party of mercenaries in the street, shooting out windows?”

“With all due respect, sir, they only blew out the window because they sighted her!” The vampire gave me a less than friendly look. I showed him some fang.

Louis-Cesare didn’t look much happier. He glanced at his watch. “Radu, my apologies. But I must—”

“Yes, yes, we’ll be fine. Go.” Radu waved him off.

“Running away again?” I demanded.

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Explain it to me,” I said, backing up. I put the bag between me and the wall. Ray’s big nose was stabbing me in the butt, but no way was Louis-Cesare prying it out of my hands.

“Dorina—”

“It’ll be faster to convince me than to fight me.”

He said something in French too colloquial for me to translate, which was probably just as well. But he seemed to reach the same conclusion himself. “Alejandro swore that Christine would live only as long as Tomas was no threat to him,” he told me abruptly. “For over a century, I was forced to keep him in thrall, virtually imprisoned at my estate unless he was with me personally. But a month ago, he managed to escape, and search as I might, I cannot find him.”

“Mircea says he’s hiding out in Faerie,” Radu chimed in from the doorway, before ducking back inside to avoid another volley of gunfire, which took out the last few knickknacks on the wall.

“Putting him beyond my reach,” Louis-Cesare added, his jaw tight. “To make matters worse, Alejandro learned that Tomas was free and informed me that I had thirty days to secure him again.”

“That’s why you left so abruptly last month,” I said. I had wondered. Our acquaintanceship hadn’t been long, but it had been… intense. A good-bye would have been nice.

“I knew if I didn’t find Tomas quickly, Christine’s life was forfeit.”

“And Ray knows where he is?” I asked, confused. I couldn’t see where a seedy club owner fit into all this.

“No. But I can exchange him for her.”

“Come again?”

Someone took that moment to lob in a grenade. Louis-Cesare caught it midair and lobbed it back, but it exploded close enough to break the rest of the glass in the window. And from the sound of things, several more besides. The remaining guards decided that maybe I wasn’t the biggest threat, after all, and went running downstairs. The sound of fighting from the street escalated a moment later, along with the distant wails of sirens.

“Alejandro knew that I would have people watching his every move,” Louis-Cesare told me quickly. “And he was afraid that I might be able to buy loyalty at his court. He therefore sent Christine to Elyas, of the European Senate, with whom he’d had business dealings.”

“And you couldn’t find her before this? You’re her master.”

“Not at present. Alejandro broke my hold and established his own.”

All right, I should have guessed that much. Master vampires traded servants from time to time, or lost them in duels or picked them up after their master died. And one of the first things they did with any new acquisition was to establish control by replacing the vamp’s master’s blood with their own.

“How did you find out he had her?”

“I didn’t. Last night, he contacted me and offered a trade.”

It took me a minute to get it, because it was so absurd. “Elyas will trade Christine for Raymond?”

“In a way. He wants one of the items Raymond recently smuggled in from Faerie. Elyas was involved in a bidding war for it, and he lost.”

“Let me guess. He doesn’t take losing well.”

“In that regard, he reminds me of your father.”

“Mircea was involved in this auction?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.

“Yes, but he could not go himself. It might have appeared awkward for the head of the new task force to be seen profiting from the smuggling trade. He therefore sent a proxy.” Louis-Cesare looked past me at his own father, who was peering out of the bedroom door again.

Radu’s turquoise eyes were worried, and he’d shredded most of the silken tassel on his robe. “Well, I didn’t know,” he said crossly. “He simply said he wanted me to bid on something for him.”