Jon shook his head. “I don’t know, Meen. Letting the prince of darkness into the apartment, when you said he was going to kill me? And then letting him bite you? Again? It’s very minion-like behavior, if you ask me.” He lowered his voice so Alaric couldn’t overhear. “And it doesn’t look very good for me, you know, with this job thing.”

“Job thing?” Meena looked bewildered.

“You know,” Jon said. “If I’m going to get a job with the Palatine. I can’t have a sister who’s sleeping with the enemy. You have to cut it out.”

Comprehension dawned. Meena’s expression became sarcastic. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I forgot this whole thing was all about employment opportunities for you, Mr. Can’t Keep It in His Pants.”

Jon’s jaw dropped. “One time,” he whispered, holding up an index finger. “And I told you, it was the middle of the night! I really had to pee! How was I supposed to know a cop was going to pull up right at that exact second, in front of that exact Subway shop?”

Wulf came back, buttoning his shirt. “How much did you tell him?” he asked.

“Who?” Meena asked, blinking up at him.

Wulf rolled his eyes. “The enemy of the light.”

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Meena said. “And stop calling him that. He’s not like that.”

“She told him everything,” Wulf said knowingly to Jon.

Jon raised his eyebrows. “She just said she didn’t-”

“Your neighbors will be moving out.” Wulf finished the last of his buttons. “I hope they didn’t borrow your sugar bowl, because you’re never going to see it again.”

“I don’t know why you won’t listen to me,” Meena said, glaring at him. “Lucien isn’t like other, er, vampires you might know. He’s kind and warmhearted and generous and was horribly abused by his father, who made him what he is. He didn’t have any choice. It’s his brother, Dimitri, you should be going after. Did you know he tried to kill us the other night? Or he sent a colony of bats to do it for him. He wants to destroy Lucien so he can be the prince of darkness, or whatever it’s called. And if that happens, the world is really going to be in trouble.”

Wulf looked over at Jon, his expression bored. “I’ll take that coffee now.”

“Oh, sure, coming right up,” Jon said, hurrying to get him a cup.

“Suck-up,” Meena said to her brother accusatorily. Then, following Alaric to the mirror by her dining room table, where he’d gone to make sure he hadn’t missed any spots shaving, she said, “Lucien is the one who’s making sure none of the Dracul and the rest of the vampires out there kill anymore. I mean, yes, they drink human blood…but only from willing donors.”

“Try telling that to Caitlyn,” Wulf said.

“Who’s Caitlyn?” Meena asked blankly.

“My name for our killer’s latest victim,” Wulf said, sipping the coffee Jon had rushed over to deliver to him.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Meena asked impatiently. “Lucien’s trying to figure out who’s killing those girls and stop him, just like you are. Why can’t you judge him for what he does, not what he is?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wulf had pulled out a chair to sit down at the dining room table, reaching for a piece of Jon’s bacon.

“I mean, you’re judging Lucien just because of what he is, which, I’ll admit, is a vampire,” Meena said. “But he doesn’t act like one.”

“Doesn’t he?” Wulf inquired, his gaze going pointedly to her neck. Meena’s face flushed red as her scarf.

“That’s just…just-” she stammered. “We were just messing around.”

“You might have been messing around,” he said, picking up a knife and fork and beginning to eat the pancakes Jon had made. “But I can assure you, it wasn’t ‘messing around’ to him. The fact is, if you let a vampire in one time, he’ll never go away. They’re like an unemployed, homeless relative.”

“Hey,” Jon protested.

“No offense,” Wulf said, taking a bite of toast.

Meena looked down at his plate.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Wulf asked. “I have a long day ahead of me, guarding you to make sure you don’t do anything else stupid. I’m obviously going to need my strength. Because I have a feeling you’re going to try to do many other very stupid things.”

“We don’t have time for that now,” Meena said, sounding exasperated. “We have to go. Unless you’re up for letting me out of the apartment on my own.”

Wulf lifted a single blond eyebrow. “That’s hardly likely. And just where do you need to go so urgently?” he asked.

“That was Yalena on the phone just now,” Meena said, looking at Jon. “She finally got away from her boyfriend. I promised I’d go and get her.”

Chapter Forty-five

12:00 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

Shenanigans

241 West Forty-second Street

New York, New York

Alaric didn’t quite understand how he’d come to be sitting in a chain restaurant called Shenanigans in Times Square at noon on a Saturday.

But if he was ever asked to offer his idea of hell on earth, it would be Shenanigans.

“I’ll have a large Diet Coke,” Meena was telling the waitress from behind her nine-page-long-literally, it was nine pages long-menu.

The waitress, in her green polyester pants and visor, looked disapproving. This clearly was not a big enough order to satisfy her.

Or justify their taking up a booth in one of the window seats looking out over Times Square, so Meena could watch for the arrival of this Yalena person she kept insisting they had to save.

“What about some Taco Torpedoes?” the waitress suggested. “Or the Spicy Potato Stax are on special today, twelve for five ninety-nine.”

“Just the Diet Coke,” Meena said with a smile. She had her red scarf back on, set at a jaunty angle. It made her look like an American actress’s idea of how a French girl would dress.

Kind of like this place was some soulless corporate conglomerate’s idea of how a restaurant should be.

The waitress turned to Meena’s brother, Jon.

“I’ll take the Torpedoes and the Stax,” he said. “And also the Paprika Curly Fries and the Sticky Wings and the Onion Brick.”

Meena shook her head. “You suck,” she said to her brother. “I hate you.” Alaric had no idea what this exchange meant. Perhaps she resented her brother for his lack of caloric restraint?

Jon smiled at his sister. “Oh, and a Coke,” he said to the waitress.

The waitress beamed at him approvingly, took his menu, and smiled down at Alaric. “And you?”

“Coffee,” Alaric said, handing her back the menu. It was as heavy, he suspected, as the Onion Brick. “Black.”

The waitress lost her smile. “Coming right up,” she said, and disappeared.

“Tell me one more time,” Alaric said, leaning his elbows against the sticky tabletop. “Who is Yalena?”

Meena glared at him. It was clear he wasn’t her favorite person. “She’s a girl I met on the subway,” she said. “She’s new to this country. I gave her my number and told her to call if she got into trouble, because I could tell her boyfriend was going to try to kill her.”

“Unlike with us,” Jon said bitterly, gesturing to himself and Alaric. “When Meena gets one of her visions about her boyfriend trying to kill someone, she just invites him in and sleeps with him and lets him bite her on the neck.”

Now Meena was glaring at her brother. “Lucien is only going to kill you in self-defense. If you don’t try to kill him, then he won’t have a problem with you and so won’t-”

“I want to go back to talking about the girl on the subway,” Alaric interrupted, placing a thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. “I’m tired of hearing about how wonderful Lucien is. Also the two of you fighting all the time is giving me a migraine.”

Spending the night on the couch hadn’t helped, either.