‘Sorry, Ms Taylor,’ he whispered, still huddled at the back of the booth. ‘You took me by surprise, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Apology accepted. Now, can I go in?’

He nodded vigorously and I strode through the double doors and into the club’s interior. The circular space was empty of Moths—and anyone else, other than the usual human girl sitting stoically at the cloakroom counter next to the door marked ‘Office’. As for where the Moths had got to, well, I had a choice of the restrooms, the private rooms behind two doors marked 1–15 and 16–30; the gift shop—DVDs of the vamps lying in their coffins were on special offer!—or the glass double doors opposite me.

The doors led into the Room of Remembrance. The room was set up like a church nave with about twenty glass coffins on top of ornate marble plinths, arranged either side of a wide aisle instead of pews. And a raised stage at the end where the chancel would be. A few vamps, dressed in a variety of military or heroic outfits, were up and milling about among the first few members, so the coffins were empty, but on the stage was another coffin, the blood that smeared its sides glittering in the spotlights. It had to be where the staked Fyodor was stashed. Nobody appeared to be taking much notice, so maybe he wasn’t going to be the draw Mad Max hoped.

The Moths descended on me again from out of the gift shop.

‘Darius has Room Eleven.’ Rissa waved an electronic keycard. ‘We ’ave booked him for a private party.’

‘We’ve phoned Yana to let her know, so she’s coming over.’ Viola gave me a big grin.

‘So exciting, isn’t it?’ Lucy jumped up and down. ‘I can’t wait to see him.’

‘Great,’ I smiled, ‘but I’m not into the whole, you know—’ I did the crooked fingers thing next to my neck. Nor was I up for the mini-orgy Darius and the girls were likely to have to celebrate their reunion. ‘So why don’t you all go on and I’ll join you in a bit?’

‘Sure thing, Genny.’ Rissa swiped the keycard and the door opened into a long, carpeted corridor indistinguishable from any cookie-cutter hotel. They all ran off, whooping, towards door number eleven.

Now to find Mad Max.

I walked over to the cloakroom. Usually I waited for the security guard to take my bagged blood and give me a receipt, but this time I hopped up on the counter and swung my legs over. I landed with a soft thud behind it and the coat-check girl jumped up in surprise. ‘Hey, you can’t—’

I reached out and touched her face, entering her mind as easily as driving through an open gate. ‘Hi’—I checked her name badge—‘Cheryl. Can I have your keycard, please?’

She reached down, unclipped it from her belt and held it out to me.

‘Thanks,’ I smiled, taking it. ‘That’s great. You just forget about me now, and carry on with whatever you were doing.’ I reversed out of her mind just as easily and let her go.

She sat back down again.

I swiped the card down the lock and pushed open the ‘Office’ door. The room inside was a standard security centre doubling as a staffroom. One wall held a row of grey metal lockers; the other wall was banked to the ceiling with TV monitors showing shots of the club above a long bench full of blinking lights and switches. I quickly scanned them: entrance, coffin room, gift shop, the toilets—yep, the loos really were coffin-shaped!—and what had to be the vamps’ private rooms. Sitting bolt-upright in front of the TV screens was the human security guard with his eyes fixed intently on the monitors. A cup of tea was steaming on the bench in front of him.

He ignored me.

But of course. Mad Max was expecting me.

I walked past him to the door on the opposite wall, opened it and strolled inside.

‘Cousin, how nice to see you again.’ Mad Max stood and came round the desk to pull out one of the guest chairs for me. My backpack sat on the other. He gave me a wide beam of a smile and said, ‘Please, come and have a seat.’

As offices go it was pretty basic: desk, grey chairs, grey carpet, grey filing cabinet, a flat-screen LCD—currently showing the cloakroom girl—instead of a window. There was nothing to say vampire, or even well-heeled executive about it, other than Mad Max himself. His bright red Hussar jacket, worn over white shirt and blue trousers and with highly polished black boots made him look like he was playing dress-up, which of course he was.

‘Thanks,’ I said and sat. Of course, there was one thing that said vampire: the three bags of my blood sitting on the desk, one of which was squashed into a clear pint tankard with coffins decorating the outside. A black curly straw was sticking out the top. Nice—all it needed was a paper umbrella!Next to the bags of blood was my phone.

‘Glamouring a human carries the death penalty, Cousin,’ Max said cheerfully, waving at the cloakroom girl on the screen as he sat opposite me. ‘Or were you not aware of that particular law?’

Ignoring him, his threat, and my blood, for now, I reached for the phone and called Malik, or rather, Sanguine Lifestyles, his 24/7 answering service. A woman’s voice answered with a tentative, ‘Ms Taylor?’

‘Yes, it’s me, and I’m fine,’ I reassured her before she could ask, keeping my gaze fixed on Mad Max who was still beaming his hundred-watt smile my way. ‘Could you repeat the last message you were given, please?’

‘Certainly, Ms Taylor,’ she replied efficiently. ‘Mr Maxim Andrei Zakharin called, and his message was: “ Genevieve Zakharinova has honoured us by becoming a VIP member of our club. Sadly, the excitement was too much for Dear Old Dad, and I think it might take him three days to recover. Genevieve kindly consented to having a family portrait taken to celebrate our reunion.”’ The woman paused. ‘We received the photo of the gentleman and yourself, Ms Taylor, plus the one—’

A beep sounded, and I stopped listening to the woman as Max’s beaming smile cut out and was replaced by an almost panicked expression. He produced a remote, pointed it at the flat-screen and the picture of the cloakroom girl switched to one of strange, amorphous red and blue shapes shifting around a dark interior. Two red figures were huddled together in one area, and another red figure was merged with the only blue figure. I frowned, puzzled, until it clicked: I was looking at the new state-of-the-art CCTV monitoring system the vamps were touting on all their websites, supposedly designed to keep the humans safe. It showed a computer overlay of enhanced heat signatures, so basically, the red figures were humans, and the vampires, having a lower core body temperature, showed up as blue.

Max jumped up and rushed out of the office, leaving the door swinging.

‘… give Mr al-Khan your message along with the others when he checks in,’ the woman’s voice was saying in my ear.

Worry tied a knot in my gut. ‘Thought you said he checked in at sunset?’

‘Normally, yes. Not tonight. Is there anything else I can do for you, Ms Taylor?’

‘Thanks, not just now.’ I cut her off, and stared at the screen.

Now I knew what I was looking at, the figures looked more like people and less like blobs. The red figures were two upright humans huddled together. The other human was on the ground, with the vamp on top, and the blue vamp was slowly turning red— It didn’t take a genius to work out something was badly wrong. Then I saw the flashing number in the screen’s corner.

Room Eleven: Darius’ room.

I looked in horror at my blood on the desk.

Surely Mad Max couldn’t be stupid enough to take it all? Hadn’t he heard what had happened at Christmas, when Darius had gone rabid and fallen into bloodlust?

Fuck!I grabbed the two unopened bags of blood, knocking the tankard over in my haste, but it didn’t spill. Oddly, the bag was still unbroken. I grabbed that one too, and stuffed them all back into the padded compartment of my backpack. Then I ran after Mad Max.