He smiled then. “Admitting you’re tempted?”

Ignoring that challenge was hard, but Eavan had been too close to the edge with him for weeks. If she didn’t know he was a monster, she’d want him. I do anyhow. If she had been thinking clearly, she wouldn’t be talking to him at all. I’d miss it. If she didn’t want to stay human, she’d take him to her bed and kill him tonight. I am not a monster.

She reached out and lifted the girl’s eyelid to peer into her extremely dilated pupil. “I’m taking her with me.”

“Fine.” He relinquished his hold on the girl. “There are dozens more just like her.”

Chastity was swaying, barely sober, and soon to attract attention. She was so far gone that Eavan wasn’t convinced she could be saved. Anger threatened to surface—at herself, at him, at the inability to make a real difference.

Daniel stepped closer, invading the bubble of personal space she usually kept between herself and regular humans. “You need to start saying hello when you arrive at the clubs, or say good-bye and come home with me…”

Despite her growing anger—or maybe because of it—Eavan enjoyed his aggression. Something about him made her want to push the rules a bit further, made her want to see how close to forbidden she could get without crossing over. Nice girls don’t hunt; human girls don’t like murder. She knew the boundaries; she knew she wanted to stay on the right side of them. He’d be such fun to kill though.

Daniel’s smile made clear that he sensed her interest, even though he undoubtedly read it as merely sexual. He was close enough that she could taste scotch on his breath. “Can I give you a lift tonight? Anywhere you want to go. Or we’ll call someone for her so we—”

“No.” She moved so the girl was farther out of his reach, so she was farther out of reach too. Glaistigs drank down a mortal’s last breath. He’d sweetened his with a peaty scotch.

I’m not hunting him.

“We could go to the Chaos Factory.” He reached out and ran a finger over her bare midriff. “Tell me what you want, Eve. What’s it going to take to get you home with me?”

“It would be a bad idea,” she said—not a lie, but not an answer. She stepped backward, retreated from him. Not everything was about dominance. She’d rescued Chastity; she’d taken the prey from his hands. Now she needed to get away.

“So we’ll do this another night.” He leaned in and brushed a kiss over Eavan’s lips, unknowingly teasing her with his sweetened mortal breath. “Unless you’re planning on running already?”

“I’ll be back.” She couldn’t do otherwise, and they both knew it. “I’ll be at your clubs.”

“And I’ll find you.” And then he vanished into the crowd of feverishly dancing mortals. It was easy to see why people came willingly to his feet. He was everything a man should be—dangerous, sexy, and just ever-so-slightly aware of it. In many cases, he’d be the alpha predator.

Which is why I want to kill him.

Logic insisted that her macabre fixation on him was basic animal law, but it was outside logic to stalk Daniel. He dealt in magicks that made the Other community—at the prompting of Eavan’s own matriarch—set a geis, a ban forbidding fraternizing with him. That ban on contact with Daniel was as law for Others.

But Eavan wasn’t purely Other. Glaistigs were female only, each one born of a human father and glaistig mother. Unless she crossed the two lines into adulthood, she was technically mortal—with a few extra traits. Geasa don’t apply to mortals. That was her excuse, at least. Not that I’m going to “fraternize” with Daniel. No sex. No death. I can do this.

2

Muriel opened the door before Eavan could knock. She didn’t quite scowl at the sight of the mostly unconscious girl in Eavan’s arms. Her usually welcoming expression vanished, but she kept her tone light. “For me? You spoil me.”

“I’m sorry.” Eavan carried the unconscious girl inside the apartment. “She’s…I know better. I know we talked about it…I just…Daniel had her and—”

“Later.” Muriel’s blue robe was the only color in the black and white room. It made it impossible not to stare at her as she closed the door. The generous bit of bare skin didn’t help matters.

“I had to,” Eavan whispered.

“I know. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Muriel took the girl and carried her into the den.

As with every other time, Eavan went to the kitchen and fixed herself a drink. She couldn’t drink on the hunt, but afterward she was shaky enough that she needed a few fingers of whiskey. Tonight was worse than usual. It had been growing worse every time she saw Daniel.

Chastity whimpered.

Muriel’s voice was too muffled to make out the words, but the tone made clear that the words were some comforting lie. Muriel could do that, lie at will. Eavan didn’t have that luxury: partially fey things could lie sometimes, but it wasn’t a predictable sometimes.

After glancing toward the closed door of the den, Eavan emptied her glass.

If Chastity survived, she’d be slipping into withdrawal soon; if she didn’t survive, she’d still be better off than with Daniel. Girls like Chastity went to bidders with sadistic habits that Eavan couldn’t bear pondering…not when so many Chastitys had been sold already. They had no control over their sexuality. Drugged to the point of being zombies, they were reduced to nothing more than sex toys to be used until they were destroyed. The beauty of sexuality was something she cherished—and couldn’t have; to have it sold for base coin was beyond intolerable.

Or Muriel’s right and I just have a fucking savior complex. Several more ounces of whiskey splashed into the glass. Or a death wish.

Eavan hated that there wasn’t a better answer to the problem, but if not for Muriel, she wouldn’t have much of a solution at all. Muriel drank enough of the girls’ blood to pull the poisons out. If they survived, Muriel had ways to get them wherever they needed to go next. Alive and out of reach: those were the goals. Beyond that, there were no constants.

It depended on who Chastity really was. If she had a home and resources, Muriel would have one of her coven use those funds to set the girl up in a new city. If not, Muriel would see her to a shelter or halfway house under some pretext. Or she’ll put her into the ground. There were far too many that ended up dead despite Eavan’s efforts. That was how Muriel got involved in the first place: the vampire had a system for dealing with corpses. Eavan had needed that system one night, and the only other resource she’d had for disposal of bodies was her grandmother, and asking Nyx for such a favor had too high a price.

Muriel’s willingness to remove the toxins was an added bonus—one that gave Eavan the ability to try to rescue girls who were much further gone on Daniel’s drugs. If not for Muriel, Eavan would’ve been at a crisis months earlier. Even with Muriel’s help, the situation was akin to attempting to hold back a wave with a single hand: it was impossible. Eavan couldn’t stop Daniel from destroying people; she couldn’t stop herself from hunting him; and she couldn’t see any way to avert the disaster that would follow if something didn’t change.

Eavan poured a drink for Muriel as the petite vampire came into the kitchen. “Well?”

“She’s alive.” Muriel took the glass and emptied it. She swished the whiskey around her mouth and spit it into the sink before adding, “You’re going to have to ante up something clean if you’re going to keep asking me to drink all these toxins, or”—she gave a coquettish grin—“you could give me a taste.”

Eavan blushed and looked away. “No.”

“You can’t really kill me, and maybe it doesn’t count as sex if it’s—”

Eavan shook her head. “Sex with women is real sex, and we’re not crossing that line. Casual sex wouldn’t be my thing even if—”