Alaric, stepping across the broken glass and shredded clothing from Meena’s closet, shook his head.

The Dracul would certainly never have to worry about being mistaken for Rhodes scholars.

There was not the slightest chance, of course, that they had left anything living in this apartment. Wherever Meena’s dog was, he was undoubtedly dead. Alaric didn’t even know why he was bothering to look.

Except that he wanted to see the corpse for himself. He felt that the sight would give him just that much more reason to hate the enemy and do to them the kinds of things he’d been fantasizing about doing to them since entering the apartment.

He was inspecting the contents of Meena’s appliances-he wouldn’t have put it past the Dracul to have broiled or, alternately, frozen the dog to death-when he heard a voice from the doorway to 11B, which he’d most definitely locked behind him.

“Yoo-hoo,” a woman called. “Knock-knock. Anybody there?”

Alaric, who was of course clutching Señor Sticky in his hand, fell into a defensive stance, ready to slice off the head of the female vampire who stood in Meena’s entranceway, blinking at him. She was a tall blonde wearing a fantastical outfit that included a pair of platform heels, some kind of sparkly gaucho pants, and a blouse that appeared to be made out of feathers.

If his eyes didn’t deceive him, it was Mary Lou Antonescu, the socialite.

And while she appeared startled by the sight of the sword, she wasn’t half as startled as he was. How had she gotten there? He hadn’t heard a key turn in the lock.

Was it possible she, like the prince, had the ability to turn to mist? Had she come in from beneath the door?

“Oh, hey there!” she cried in a friendly way. “You must be the Palatine guard who’s trying to catch the prince. You’re not going to whack my head off with that thing, are you?”

Alaric stared at her in horror. If she possessed the ability to turn to mist, she must be an extraordinarily powerful vampire.

And yet she looked as if she’d just come from a shopping trip to a suburban mall.

“Why shouldn’t I?” he asked.

“Because this top is Gucci, and it cost a fortune,” she said. “It would be a shame to ruin it by turning me all to dust. Besides, we’re on Meena’s side. I saw the lights come on, and I figured it was you. I knew you’d just cut Emil’s head off and ask questions later. I didn’t think you’d be quite as quick to kill a lady. Are you here for the dog?”

Alaric couldn’t quite believe that he was actually standing in Meena Harper’s kitchen having a conversation with…well, with a vampire.

A vampire who was dressed to the nines in designer clothes, flinging her long-nailed hands around as she spoke like a starlet on a late-night talk show, promoting her latest Hollywood release.

Was this some kind of trick?

But vampires weren’t smart enough to stoop to such tricks. Not even the Dracul. Tricks like dropping down on him from a secret air duct in the ceiling and eating half his face off, yes.

But a conversation?

This was a first.

“Yes,” he said finally. He didn’t lower the sword, however. “I came for the dog.”

“We’ve got him over at our place,” Mary Lou said. “He’s fine. Lucien asked us to come get him after we heard about that little altercation at Shenanigans. We weren’t sure it was you all, but better safe than sorry. We figured Meena might have some…well, unpleasant visitors, and Jack might not be safe over here.”

She looked around the apartment, shaking her head.

“Such a shame,” she said, tsk-tsking. “She had a sweet little place. And they just tore it all apart, didn’t they? We heard them doing it, of course. But there was nothing we could do. I mean, if we didn’t want to be next. We were going to leave town to get away from them-and you, of course-but then we decided to wait. I suppose we could have dumped the dog off at a kennel, but that just didn’t seem right somehow.”

Alaric, still keeping the sword aloft, narrowed his eyes at her. What was this?

“I know what’s going on here,” he said. “You’re a succubus, aren’t you? You’re going to try to seduce me, then suck out my soul. Well, it won’t work. I’ve dealt with your kind before. And I always win.”

Mary Lou, surprised, threw back her golden head and laughed. It was a happy sound in an otherwise dismal place.

“A succubus,” she said. “Oh, honey, that’s a good one. Wait ’til I tell Emil. I’ve been mistaken for a lot of things in my time, but never one of those! No, sweetie, I’m a vampire, just like the rest of them. Well, not just like the rest of them. I’m on your side, like I said.”

“Yes, well, that’s not possible,” Alaric said. He crept forward, Señor Sticky aimed at her throat. She, in turn, backed up until her spine was against the front door. “Humans and vampires don’t mix. Vampires kill humans. And so it’s my job to kill you. All of you. No matter how beautiful.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, looking pleased by the compliment. “Thank you. But not all vampires kill humans. I don’t. Why, I used to be a human once. But I gave it up. You know why?”

“No,” Alaric growled. “And I don’t care.”

“Love.” She raised her heavily made-up lashes to look at him. “I fell in love with a vampire. My husband, Emil. I’m not saying he’s perfect or anything. He’s not. No one is. But he loves me. He loves me so much that he was willing to give up killing humans just because I asked him to…and that was before the prince ever became the prince and issued his command that we all stop killing them. When Emil did that for me, I knew I’d found the love of my life. And I was willing to give up everything I loved-my family, pecan pie, sunshine, the chance to ever have babies-just to be with him.”

“That’s too bad,” Alaric said flatly. “If you’d just have contacted someone in my office instead, we could have helped you. It’s our job to keep women like you from falling prey to soul-sucking demons like him. But it’s too late now.”

“Well,” Mary Lou said, putting her fingers delicately on his sword blade to push it a few inches down and away from her neck, “it’s a good thing I didn’t. Because I’ve never regretted my decision. Emil’s my everything. If you think I’d rather have babies and pie than that, all I can say is I feel sorry for you. Because you have no idea what love is.”

Alaric considered her words carefully. Did he know what love was? His partner, Martin, had told him that he’d known he’d found his true love-the man with whom he shared the parenting of Simone-when the two of them discovered their mutual fondness for Belgian waffles and a certain German rock band from the nineties. Alaric had always found this a bit…odd.

It was true Alaric wasn’t that familiar with the sensation of loving or of being loved. Who had he ever had in his life to love or to be loved by?

But you couldn’t miss what you had never known, and so Alaric hadn’t been particularly bothered by this.

Until quite recently. He’d realized this when Meena Harper had insisted on following him through the rectory and then tied that ridiculous scarf of hers around his wrist.

It was then that he had found himself almost blurting out the truth. Not all of it, of course. But the part about his idea of how she should come and work for the Palatine.

What had he been thinking? He had almost revealed something that up until that moment he had been trying to play close to his chest.

He still had the scarf tied around his wrist, even though it wasn’t particularly comfortable. What man wore a scarf around his wrist? What had she even been thinking putting it there?

But she had said it was for luck. And then she had kissed him.

So he didn’t dare remove it.

He had a sinking feeling that he really was a fool, just as Holtzman had accused him of being.

He looked the vampire in the eye. She said he had no idea what love was?