Ante had visited Zortea only a few times. Usually Dorothy simply told him what the Shadows wanted. Being dragged here meant something big was up. Dammit, he hoped he wasn’t being hired as an assassin again. He had no taste for it, not even when the bastard deserved final death.

  Eadburg waited in an enormous room with marble floors. In one area, sleek couches and chairs were arrayed in careful groupings. An oversized conference table dominated another section, and a separate work zone contained several glass desktops with computer screens. Eadburg—tall, blonde, and wide-shouldered—sat at the far end of the conference table, a smartphone in her hand. She wore a silver gown that looked as if it belonged at a society gala.

  “I’m going to get you a phone so we can contact you more easily,” she said without looking up from her phone’s screen.

  “Get me one if it pleases you, but I will throw it into the Bellagio fountain.”

  Eadburg scowled. “Come. Sit.”

  “I am not your pet puppy.”

  She was about to respond with something angry when Dorothy intervened. “He’s grouchy ’cause he hasn’t eaten. I promised him dinner.”

  “Very well,” Eadburg snapped. “Feed him. And then, Ante, I expect your rapt attention.”

  Dorothy led him down a narrow corridor lined with plain white doors. He’d never been this way and didn’t know what to expect. Certainly not what he found when Dorothy flung open one of the doors: a plain but pleasant windowless bedroom, where a naked young man lolled on the bed. The man rolled his head toward the door and grinned at them. “Heyyy. ’M I up, Dor?”

  Dorothy gave Ante’s shoulder a small shove. “Hurry up.”

  The boy—twenty, perhaps twenty-one—was thin and pale and stoned half out of his mind on something strong but otherwise looked fairly healthy. Tiny scabs dotted his neck and chest.

  “You?” he asked Ante. “That’s cool. I don’t get dudes real often. I like dudes.” That settled, he arched his neck invitingly.

  “How much blood has been taken from him?” Ante asked Dorothy with tight lips.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. You know we’re real careful around here.” She shoved him again.

  Ante was not convinced of the Shadows’ commitment to safe dietary practices. But he also wasn’t in the mood to argue. The sooner he fed and listened to Eadburg, the sooner he could get the hell out of here.

  He strode to the bed, knelt beside it, and tugged the boy close. He was uncomfortable with Dorothy watching, especially since the kid was fondling his own soft cock. Nonetheless, Ante dropped his fangs and bit into a carotid. The pulse was strong and the flow of blood excellent, which suggested that the boy hadn’t been drained too much. He tasted fine. Nothing special, although drugs lent a slight chemical tang.

  Ante drank a half pint, licked the wounds closed, and stood, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Thank you,” he said to the boy.

  The youth gave him a sloppy smile before closing his eyes and drifting off, hand still cupped over his groin.

  Without a word, Ante walked past Dorothy and back to Eadburg, who’d put down her phone and now stared at a stack of papers. He sat down kitty-corner from her. Dorothy remained standing but hovered nearby.

  “What kind of life does a boy lead that he wants to do… that?” Ante waved toward the hallway.

  Eadburg frowned. “What difference does it make? Humans find a million ways to ruin their lives without any help from us. We might as well take advantage of their stupidity. That boy, if he weren’t here, would end up OD’ing on something or catching a disease. Maybe both. We monitor his drug intake, make sure he doesn’t overdo it. We make sure he has decent food and a clean, safe place to sleep. We’re doing him a favor.”

  “You are like one of those people who insist animals are better off in zoos than in the wild.”

  She laughed sharply. “Well, maybe they are. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, not to us. Seven billion of them crawling on the planet. Like roaches.”

  “We were human once.”

  “We evolved.”

  He didn’t think that was the proper term, but he sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. “What do you want from me?”

  “It’s just a small thing. Quick and easy, but right up your alley. We’ll pay you five thousand dollars for it. That’ll keep you out of the vermin’s wallets for a while.”

  Money was a minor concern for him, which she knew. He always managed somehow, even when his pockets were empty. He waited silently until she finally lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “You know the rules. This is our territory. We tolerate you only because you’re occasionally useful. If the usefulness ends, so does our tolerance.”

  Maybe a few decades earlier, her implied threat would have frightened him. It didn’t now, even though he knew she wasn’t bluffing. Since he wasn’t quite ready to walk out and greet the sunrise, he decided to play along. One more time, perhaps.

  “What do you want?”

  She smiled, and even though her fangs weren’t visible, it was a very sharp smile. “We need you to find someone.”

  “Someone specific?”

  “An elf.”

  “Like cookies?” exclaimed Dorothy. Eadburg shot her a look that would have withered flowers, and Dorothy clamped her mouth shut and dropped her gaze.

  Ante raised his eyebrows. “An elf?”

  “Yes. I thought they were eliminated during the Battle of Buskerud—well before your time—but I was mistaken. Apparently a few managed to flee to the New World, and they’ve maintained a tiny population since.” She made a face as if she were discussing rats moving into Zortea.

  Ante was aware that there were other nonhuman sentient creatures besides vampires. Not long after he rose, he’d bumped into a Velebitska vila, one of the fairies who lived in the rugged mountains near the Croatian coast. He’d also had a brief encounter with some werewolves in Poland and had once met a werewolf from Oregon who was visiting Vegas with his husband. But he hadn’t exactly tried to catalog which mythological supernatural beings truly existed, and he’d never heard of genuine elves.

  “Why must this elf be found?” he asked. “Is it planning to take over a casino?” He pictured a gaming floor decorated with giant mushrooms, where all the employees wore green tunics and had pointed ears.

  “Stop smiling, Ante. This is serious business.”

  “How so?”

  Instead of answering right away, she stood and began to pace the length of the table, her long legs covering ground quickly despite her high heels. Her gown swished as she walked, and the fabric glittered under the room’s strong lights. She fancied herself an ice queen, perhaps.

  “Elves are… problematic,” she said at last. “Do you know anything about them?”

  “I’ve seen Lord of the Rings.”

  She growled. “That’s fiction. Tolkien gave no more truth to them than Stoker did to us.” She looked as if she wanted to spit, and for once, Ante didn’t blame her. He’d never met a vampire who didn’t loathe Bram Stoker. In fact, the only author more universally detested by his kind was Stephenie Meyer. Fucking sparkles.

  “So tell me about elves,” he said.

  “They are beautiful and skilled at seduction.”

  “So? I seduce men quite easily.”

  “I know.” She frowned, but Ante didn’t know whether it was due to his sexual activity or men in general. He had no idea what Eadburg’s sexual tastes might be.

  She stopped in front of him and pointed a long finger, as if she were a schoolteacher and he an inattentive student. “The seduction I don’t much care about. Elves also have an affinity for magic, and that does trouble me. But the most significant thing is what they can do with humans.”

  “Which is?”

  “They can read minds and influence thoughts.”

  Ante was incapable of going pale, for which he was profoundly grateful at the moment. But his stomach clenched so tightly that he feared he might vomit for the first time since he’d died. “Read minds?” he rasped.

  “Not ours, but humans’.” She pulled out the chair next to his and folded herself gracefully onto it. “Do you comprehend what a useful tool an elf could be for us? For example, we’re having some problems right now concerning a new property we have in the works. Zoning and that sort of thing. If we could exert some extra influence on the city planning commission, that would expedite matters.”

  Keeping his face as neutral as possible, Ante said, “So you want this elf to help you build a new casino.”

  “And other things.” She leaned in closer and dropped her voice. “We have enemies. Even you must be aware of this. An elf can help us defeat them. But if he were to get into their hands instead, well, he could help them defeat us.”

  “You’re either with us or you’re against us,” Ante quoted quietly.

  Looking satisfied, Eadburg leaned back in her seat. “Precisely.”

  They were both silent for a moment, Ante gnawing thoughtfully on his lip. Dorothy pretended to be examining an abstract painting that hung on one wall, but she was obviously eavesdropping. From behind one of the closed doors in the hallway, he heard a man and woman’s muffled laughter. Ante couldn’t tell if they were human.

  Finally he spoke. “What makes you believe this elf exists?”

  “He’s here in town. A couple of our operatives have seen him. They didn’t know what he was, of course, only that he was working the crowds.”

  “Working?” Ante asked, as if he didn’t know exactly what she meant.

  “Cheating at cards and scamming people out of their winnings. He’s kept a low profile, it seems—going after small fish instead of whales.”

  “What makes you believe he is an elf and not just a con man?” There were plenty of those in Vegas. Fully human and largely irrelevant to the Shadows.

  “I had my suspicions once I got a full description, so I had my operatives get closer. He eats enough for four men, they say. And he smells… different.”

  Like a picnic in the forest, Ante thought. Although he didn’t say so.

  Eadburg shrugged. “I met elves a few times when I was very young. That describes them to a tee.”

  “Fine. He is an elf. Why do you need me?”

  “Because you, Ante, have your eyes open in places where we do not. As I said, he’s keeping a low profile, so he’s not easy to find. And we don’t want to cause a public fuss when we… convince him to come chat with us. I think you can accomplish that better than some of the oafs who work for us directly.” She shot a baleful look at Dorothy, who sulked.

  Well, it was true—subtlety was not the watchword of any of the Shadows. But… Peter!

  “What if I just told him to go away?” Ante offered. “I can scare him from Vegas and he will no longer pose a threat.”

  “But he’d also no longer be an asset. Lee wants him.”

  Ante shuddered involuntarily. “Lee gets what he wants.”

  “He does,” she replied with an incline of her head.

  Although Ante wanted to run away, he remained seated. Working for the Shadows wouldn’t necessarily be such a bad thing for Peter, he told himself; there were worse fates. And if Peter truly did possess such useful powers, someone was going to snap him up sooner or later.

  Fine. If Ante was going to sell Peter out, it wouldn’t be for what amounted to pocket change to the Shadows. “Thirty thousand,” Ante said.

  “What?”

  “I will bring him to you, but you will give me thirty thousand dollars.”

  Eadburg appeared more amused than offended. “And what will you do with that kind of money?”

  He gestured at her dress. “Maybe I will buy some new clothes.”

  Then he stood and crossed to the door. “I will find him,” he said without looking back. And then he left.

  Chapter Six

  IT turned out that finding an elf in Vegas wasn’t easy.

  Ante began at the Lucky Chalet, but he saw no sign of Peter. He even asked a few of the employees and spent several hours haunting the coffee shop, but no luck. He widened his search, but the city had a lot of casinos. Although Ante skipped the ones run by the Shadows—he reasoned that Eadburg would find Peter without his help in any of those properties—he wandered fruitlessly through many more.

  “They should change the saying,” he grumbled to himself a week after meeting with Eadburg. “Instead of a needle in a haystack, make it an elf in Las Vegas.” It was midday, and too exhausted to think straight, he’d checked into a room at the Chalet. He hadn’t fed well in days, which didn’t help his cognitive abilities. After a shower, he stood in the bathroom and stared into the mirror where his reflection would be, talking to himself.

  “Perhaps he has left the city.”

  The idea had crossed his mind already, and it made some sense. Someone with Peter’s looks and talents could scratch out a living anywhere, and his encounter with Ante might have scared him away. In fact Ante hoped Peter had run, hoped he was now in the process of charming some Kansans or Wyomingites. Then the Shadows would no longer be a problem for him.

  Except… Ante missed him. Which was ludicrous, considering they had shared only a few hours together. And considering Ante was a vampire, while Peter was something else altogether. Magical. And not in a sinister, bloodsucking way.

  “Idiot,” Ante accused his nonreflection. And then he swore at himself in Croatian, although it didn’t make him feel any better.

  Still naked and slightly damp, he left the bathroom, pulled the bedcovers back, and collapsed inelegantly onto the mattress. He needed to get a few hours of sleep before finding someone to eat and then resuming his search.

  But his spinning mind refused to quiet. It churned with thoughts of Peter. Not just speculation about where he might be, but also less useful considerations. For instance, was Peter truly unaware that he was not human? How so? He’d accepted Ante’s identity with surprising ease. That was unusual. And now that several days had passed, did Ante enter Peter’s mind at all?

  “Now you are acting like a stupid lovelorn teenager,” Ante scolded himself. It was a bit late to be experiencing a second adolescence.

  What if Peter was gone? That didn’t necessarily mean he was out of harm’s way. Las Vegas wasn’t the only city where the Shadows lurked, and the Shadows weren’t the only vampire organization on the planet. Others might become aware of Peter’s presence as well. Or if the Shadows wanted him badly enough—which they seemed to—they might send hunters after him.

  Growling, Ante stood and stomped to the window. In daylight the city appeared worn and tawdry, an aging whore with smeared makeup. It made him long for cloudy skies over soft ground, the scents of fresh growth, the feel of damp breezes against his skin. Or the sea! The ever-shifting greens and blues and grays, the briny tang that reminded him of blood.

  “Peter will be better off with the Shadows,” Ante told the city. “He is valuable, and they will keep him safe.” Eadburg and most of her compatriots weren’t unnecessarily cruel. They were coldhearted, yes, but rational. So long as they got what they wanted, they didn’t make others suffer. Except for Lee, of course, who—

  No. Ante would not think about Lee.

  After an hour or so of frenetic pacing, he finally dropped onto the bed for a few hours of fitful dreams. He woke at sundown, ravenous and still fatigued. It took him only a few moments to get ready, which he supposed he ought to be grateful for. Vampires’ grooming needs were minimal. Even bathing wasn’t strictly necessary since he didn’t sweat, but hot showers were a luxury he’d never experienced while alive and now enjoyed immensely.

  It was a slow evening on the gaming floor. Ante wandered for an hour or so in search of likely prey, but most of the gamblers were too sober to bother with. He did find a group of drunken bridesmaids, but women weren’t to his taste. Besides, separating one of them from her friends would be problematic at best.

  Fine. He’d go to another casino, one with more people. He could continue his search for Peter there. But halfway to the front doors, he heard someone call his name. He spun around to find Peter, standing hipshot and grinning, several yards away. Today his shirt was lemon-colored.

  “Hi,” Peter said.

  Ante hurried over and grabbed his arm, as if Peter might disappear otherwise. “I have been looking for you.”

  “Yeah? You don’t look especially happy to see me.”

  “I have… important matters to discuss with you.”

  Peter gave him a long look. “Okay. That’s intriguing. Come buy me dinner and I’ll listen.”

  Peter tried to walk in the direction of the coffee shop, but Ante held him still. “Not yet. I must feed first.”

  “And I’m guessing a burger and fries isn’t going to do it for you.”

  Ante shook his head. “I will try to find someone here, but—”

  “How much do you need? I mean, you don’t drain people dry, do you?”

  “I have,” Ante replied gravely. “A long time ago, when my appetite was greater and my self-control was poor. Now I try not to harm people. I take a pint at most.”

  “So it’s like donating blood, only without the cookies and orange juice.”

  “It is—”

  “Come snack on me.”

  Ante knew he should refuse. The situation with Peter was already more complicated than he wanted, even without the added intimacy of feeding from him. It was dangerous too—Peter was delicious and Ante was famished. What if he forgot himself and took too much? But with Peter standing so close and smelling so wonderful, Ante could not resist. He gave a quick nod. “Do you have a room?”

  “Not here. I’ve been staying downtown the past few days.”

  Instead of asking why Peter had returned to the Lucky Chalet, Ante adjusted his grip on Peter’s arm and led him to the elevators. Peter came willingly enough, although he remained silent as they rode to Ante’s floor and walked the long hall to his room.

  When the door closed, Peter gazed at him. “What part of me do you eat from?” He tilted his head slightly. “Neck?”