Her lips were fever-hot and sweet, and when they touched mine silent fire spread out into my body and briefly consumed all thought. My arms closed around her—around Susan, so warm and real and . . . and so very, very here. My heart lurched into double time, and I started to feel a little dizzy.

Mouse’s growl rolled through the room, sudden and deep in his chest.

“Rodriguez,” Martin barked, his voice tense.

Susan’s lips lifted from mine, and when she opened her eyes, they were solid black, all the way across—just like a Red vampire’s. My lips and tongue still tingled at the touch of her mouth, a very faint echo of the insidious venom of one of the Reds. Bright red tattoos showed on her face, her neck, and winding down one arm. She stared at me for a moment, dazed, then blinked slowly and looked over her shoulder at Martin.

“You’re close,” he said, in a very quiet, very soothing voice. “You need to back down. You need to take some time to breathe.”

Something like rage filled Susan’s face for an instant. Then she shuddered, glancing from Martin to me and back, and then began disentangling herself from me.

“Sun’s out, and it’s warm,” Martin said, taking her elbow gently. “Come on. We’ll get some sun and walk and sort things out.”

“Sun,” Susan said, her voice still low and husky with arousal. “Right, some sun.”

Martin shot me a look that he probably hoped would kill me, and then he and Susan left the apartment and walked up into the morning’s light.

Molly waited until they were well away from the front door and said, “Well. That was stupid of you both.”

I looked over my shoulder at her and frowned.

“Call it like I see it,” my apprentice said quietly. “You know she has trouble controlling her emotions, her instincts. She shouldn’t have been all over you. And you shouldn’t have kissed her back.” Her mouth tightened. “Someone could have gotten hurt.”

I rubbed at my still-tingling lips for a moment and suppressed a flash of anger. “Molly . . .”

“I get it,” she said. “I do. Look. You care about her, okay. Maybe even loved her. Maybe she loved you. But it can’t be like that anymore.” She spread her hands and said, “As messed up as that is, it’s still the reality you have to live with. You can’t ignore it. You get close to her, and there’s no way for it to come out good, boss.”

I stared hard at her, all the rage inside me coming out in my voice, despite the fact that I tried to hold it in. “Be careful, Molly.”

Molly blanched and looked away. But she folded her arms and stood her ground. “I’m saying this because I care, Harry.”

“You care about Susan?” I asked. “You don’t even know her.”

“Not Susan,” she said. “You.”

I took a step toward her. “You don’t know a goddamned thing about me and Susan, Molly.”

“I know that you already blame yourself for what happened to her,” she said, spitting out the words. “Think about what it’ll be like for her if she gets lost in a kiss with you and realizes, later, that she ripped your throat open and drank your blood and turned herself into a monster. Is that how you want your story, Susan and Harry, to end?”

The words made me want to start screaming. I don’t know what kept me from lashing out at the girl.

Other than the fact that she would never believe me capable of such a thing.

And she was right. That might have something to do with it.

So I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and fought down the rage again. I was getting tired of that.

When I spoke, a moment later, my voice sounded raw. “Study with a wizard has made you manipulative.”

She sniffed a couple of times, and I opened my eyes to see her crying silently. “N-no,” she said. “That was my mom.”

I made a sound of acknowledgment and nodded.

She looked at me, and made no move to wipe the tears from her face. “You look awful.”

“I found out some things,” I said.

She bit her lip. “It’s bad. Isn’t it.”

I nodded. I said, “Real bad. We’re . . .” I shook my head. “Without the Council’s support, I don’t see how it can be done.”

“There’s a way,” she said. “There’s always a way.”

“That’s . . . sort of the problem,” I said. I looked at the hopelessly organized bookshelf nearest me. “I . . . think I’d like to be by myself for a while,” I said.

Molly looked at me, her posture that of someone being careful, as if they’re concerned that any move might shatter a delicate object. “You’re sure?”

Mouse made a little whining noise in his throat.

“I’m not going to do anything desperate,” I told her. Not yet, anyway. “I just need some time.”

“Okay,” she said. “Come on, Mouse.”

Mouse watched me worriedly, but padded out of the apartment and up the stairs with Molly.

I went to my shower, started it up, stripped, and got under the cold water. I just stood there with it sheeting over me for a while and tried to think.

Mostly, I thought about how good Susan’s mouth had felt. I waited for the cold water to sluice that particular thought down to a bearable level. Then I thought about Vadderung’s warning about the Red Court.

I’ve taken on some tough customers in my time. But none of them had been godlike beings—or the remnants of them, or whatever the Lords of Outer Night and the Red King were. You couldn’t challenge something like that in a direct confrontation and win. I might have powers, sure. Hell, on a good day I’d go along with someone who said that I was one of the top twenty or thirty wizards on the planet, in terms of sheer magical muscle. And my finesse and skill continued to improve. Give me a couple of hundred years and I might be one of the top two or three wizards on the planet.

Of course, if Marcone was right, I’d never make it that high. And the boss predator of the concrete jungle was not stupid. In fact, I’d say that there was an excellent chance I wouldn’t live another two or three days.

I couldn’t challenge the masters of the Red Court and win.

But they had my little girl.

I know. It shouldn’t matter that she was my little girl in particular. I should have been just as outraged that any little girl was trapped in such monstrous hands. But it did matter. Maggie was my child, and it mattered a whole hell of a lot.

I stood in the shower until the cold water had muted away all the hormones, all the emotion, all the mindless power of blood calling to blood. After thinking about it for a while, I decided that three courses lay open to me.

The enemy was strong. So I could show up with more muscle on my side. I could round up every friend, every ally, every shady character who owed me a solid. Enough assistance could turn the tide of any battle—and I had no illusions that it would be a battle of epic proportions.

The problem was that the only people who would show up to that kind of desperate fight were my friends. And my friends would die. I would literally be using them to shield myself against the crushing power of the Red King and his court, and I had no illusions of what such a struggle would cost. My friends would die. Most of them. Hell, probably all of them, and me with them. Maybe I could get to the kid and get out, while my friends gave their lives to make it possible. But after that, then what? Spend my life running with Maggie? Always looking over my shoulder, never stopping in one place for longer than a few days?

The second thing I could do was to change the confrontation into something else. Find some way to sneak up close enough to grab the girl and vanish, skipping the whole doomed-struggle part of option one. That plan wouldn’t require me to get my friends killed.

Of course, to pull it off, I’d have to find some way to get more clever and sneakier than beings with millennia of practice and experience at just such acts of infiltration and treachery. You didn’t survive for as long as they had among a nation of predators without being awfully smart and careful. I doubted it would be as simple as bopping a couple of guards over the head, then donning their uniforms and sneaking in with my friends the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Woodsman.