Clive said, “Darling, please don’t be cross with me, but I rather hope they don’t believe you. I, for one, love the results of such behavior.”

  She snorted a laugh. “Fair warning, Scion Stewart. We both know this Vampire is playing games. I’m going to fetch him.”

  “As you say, sometimes, they must touch the hot stove to learn. Go on, then, burn things to the ground.” He stood, waving an arm to indicate she go ahead.

  Her heartbeat kicked up and she shot him a—very brief—look that promised they’d both be very sore after they next were able to fuck.

  * * *

  Out in the foyer, Rowan noted the human who’d opened the door. “What’s your name?” she demanded.

  He looked around the room, but she waited until the inevitable when he had to answer. “George.”

  Rowan said to him in a quiet voice, “Here’s what’s going to happen, George. I know you don’t have a damned bit of say in whatever Elmer Marsc gets up to. Like you have no say in what I get up to. But you do know what a household is supposed to act like when a Scion comes to visit. And this isn’t it.”

  “Go to Die Mitte and ask the front desk for Alice,” Clive said. “There are other households who always need more daytime staff. We can help you with that if you separate yourself from him now.”

  Clive essentially told George to choose the Nation or Marsc. One had a future. A new job. The Nation not angry with him. The other? That way lay uncertainty. Most likely death. Surely pain. Human servants could, and did, defend their Vampire masters all the time. Out of loyalty. Some fear, definitely. But in this case, as George clearly understood, Clive was the far scarier threat of the two.

  “Do you wish to sever your bond with him?” Clive asked.

  George’s eyes widened and he said quietly, “He said that wasn’t possible.”

  “He lied to you.”

  Clive hadn’t gotten truly angry. Yet. He was getting annoyed though.

  “Get my back, David. Which way?” she called out. He had the architectural plans on his screen and consulted.

  “Down that hallway to your right,” David said as they headed in that direction.

  Clive could deal with George, and she’d shut down surveillance so wherever Elmer was, he couldn’t access the feed.

  Of course Elmer would assume she had no way of getting into his basement lair, much less this control room. Rowan smiled to herself as she punched in the code Vanessa had just texted, and the three red lights above the door went green.

  She pushed the door open, sweeping down and to the left while David went right. In the center of the space was a large oak desk surrounded by screens.

  That was a lot of screens, even for a seven-thousand-square-foot house.

  The Vampire behind the desk stood and showed his hands, palms out. “I do apologize for the delay in attending you,” he said.

  Most definitely not Elmer, but a scumbag just the same.

  “Stephen Baker,” Rowan said as she took in the Vampire in front of her. One she’d had a run-in with the first year she’d been in Las Vegas. He’d been one of Jacques’s hangers-on. A human at a nightclub in one of the casinos had been harassed by Baker and another Vampire as gross as he was, and Rowan had to educate him—and Jacques—about what one did and didn’t do under the Treaty.

  “Hunter. What an unexpected surprise.”

  “Where is he?” Rowan asked flatly.

  Her surveillance team would let Rowan know if Elmer moved.

  “Shut it down,” David said to Vanessa, who’d been connected via phone.

  With a few audible keystrokes, her tech queen made David’s command a reality.

  At her back, Clive entered the room. He took a look, first at all the screens, and then over to Stephen, with a perfectly raised eyebrow. The British arch. And then he poured his Scion magic through the area. It was like he’d sucked away all the air as a hot wave of energy rolled past them and toward the other Vamp.

  Rowan was intimately familiar with his power, so she wasn’t startled. But she did like the way Stephen jumped back, dropped his gaze, his head to one side, exposing his neck.

  “David, do grab all the data cards from these cameras. I want to see everything,” Rowan said.

  Stephen sputtered, holding his hands out. “You will do no such thing. You are in a private residence.”

  Rowan strode up to him, right into his personal space, only giving him a breath. “I will do what I want to do. Who’s going to stop me, even if I didn’t have the right? You? Golly, I fucking hope you try. I haven’t made a Vampire bleed in...hours.”

  David, ignoring anything but what she’d said, moved and began to collect the data cards. “I’ll leave a receipt for everything I remove,” he murmured offhandedly.

  “You will meet with me now. Not in this room,” Clive said.

  Stephen was clearly torn as he looked back and forth between the screens and Clive.

  Rowan was fairly certain Clive would escalate this little power display to a painful degree if this meathead didn’t obey.

  He and George left to have this meeting, so she just shrugged her shoulders and got to looking.

  Then. Stephen reached out, grabbed her upper arm, and yanked her back. “I said no.”

  Rowan let him carry her as she began to turn, using the energy he’d already expended as she cocked her fist back and let fly, punching him square in the temple with about half her strength because she used her non-dominant hand.

  He folded, crumpling to the ground and at her back, Clive flowed in, hot and full of outrage.

  “That’s yours.” She pointed.

  “Who is this Vampire to Elmer, George?” Clive asked and Rowan wanted to kiss him for not asking if she was okay. He knew she was, even if he worried, and he wouldn’t weaken her in front of anyone else.

  Whatever he’d said to George had turned Elmer’s former employee into the president of Clive’s fan club. He answered immediately. “Mr. Marsc’s head of security. Stephen Baker.”

  “Is he in contact with Elmer? Right now? Does Elmer know we’re here?” Rowan asked quickly.

  “No. Mr. Baker does not bother Mr. Marsc outside an emergency when he’s...relaxing before he goes out for the evening. There’s another control room downstairs, but Mr. Marsc only uses this one to watch. And he doesn’t watch before he goes out.”

  Aside from the ick crawling through her at what that meant, that a Hunter and a Scion in the front parlor didn’t constitute an emergency was further evidence these Vampires were up to something dodgy as fuck.

  “Watch?”

  “All the rooms, bathrooms, common areas, the yards, pool, pool house, garage, all of it is covered by cameras. He’ll watch people he brings back. People who visit. Replays of his own activities. You have fifteen minutes until he’ll ring for the car to be brought around so he and his boyfriend can go. There’s only one exit and it’s through that door there.” He pointed. George sounded miserable and there was a pang of pity at the thought of what his day-to-day life must have been like.

  “Okay, what’s with the italics when you said Stephen’s job title?” she asked.

  “Baker doesn’t act like an employee. They have their own schedule and do...things. But Baker acted like a partner or an equal to Mr. Marsc.”

  Interesting.

  Chapter Seven

  A thorough search had begun upstairs. Some of Clive’s team had shown up to take Baker into custody and the others had joined Rowan’s people systematically going through each room.

  “Elmer is on his way up,” Vanessa murmured through the earpiece.

  Rowan and David moved out of the line of sight, waiting for Elmer to walk out, letting the door close at his back.

  The surveillance room was empty but for the three of them. Clive had gone off to handle Nation business and a lot of the equipment had already been removed. Elmer didn’t even notice until Rowan threw a pen at the back of his head.

  When she’d interviewed Aron, he’d told Rowan Elmer appeared harmless. Warned her to watch closely.

  And, as she first caught sight of him when he spun around, she agreed with that. At first glance anyway. She walked closer and that’s when she caught sight of the flat gaze of a predator. Such a big red flag that even the most deliberately clueless of humans often had a sense of something very wrong around any being with an affect like that. Blank.

  Outwardly, everything about him said he was bland. A vanilla dude who fucked with the lights off and ate a lot of beige food. Just a Vampire out for the night grabbing some potato skins and a drink after his workday doing whatever people did inside an office building.

  Those shark’s eyes met hers and then skittered off, settling at her right ear, and then he decided to get bold and try to glamor her.

  She leaned close, thumb and middle finger enough to get the force for a flick right between his eyes. “Far more powerful Vampires than you have tried—and failed—to glamor me.

  “Weird you aren’t asking who I am or what I want as I’m standing in your little pervert hole.” She examined him closely. Elmer had managed average leaning into attractive. But not too far. He had yellowy-gold hair that he’d artfully let curl just a bit. Green eyes. He was sitting, but she was sure he couldn’t have been taller than five ten or so. He appeared soft. Khaki trousers and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Well made though. Vampires liked a well-made garment. Nice watch, but not a Rolex like she’d found back at his house. Didn’t wear them when he went out to find himself snacks, she figured. Good shoes.

  Though he’d been Made a Vampire in a time when men wore wigs and breeches, he’d embraced modernity well enough that he wouldn’t stand out. Witnesses would forget about him five minutes after they left his company.

  But Rowan had been able to spot a monster from before she could speak. Elmer Marsc, through Brigid’s eyes, had a dark and cluttered energy. Dirty. This being was a taker. She underlined just how little respect she had for him as She stood back and let Rowan resume control once more.

  From the start, when it came to this Vampire, there’d been a knowing in her gut. It had led her to this very place. To this very person. At the very least, Elmer was a predator who sought out underaged humans to Make. In violation of Vampiric law as well as the Treaty.

  There was more. She knew it. The Goddess knew it and now Rowan had to prove it.

  “I know who you are and what you do. I’ve done nothing to merit this sort of attention,” Elmer said, and that flare in her belly happened again.

  Rowan sent him a censuring glance and cocked her head. “I’m sure that’s not true at all or I wouldn’t be here.”

  The harmless act faded, though the flatness of his demeanor remained. Creepy.

  “What do you want, Hunter?” he said at last.

  Rowan would start out slow and see just what direction Elmer rabbited off to. Vamps like him weren’t that hard to goad into saying too much. Their belief in their supremacy was their weak spot. It made them incautious. It meant they underestimated everyone else.

  Originally she’d planned to take him through the house, show him his perfect, ordered world was crumbling all around him, but as his first glimpse of real emotion was when he caught sight of the missing equipment, Rowan settled her feet a little wider. Let him stay right there wondering just what else was going on. Confronted with her power over him.

  “Let’s talk about Aron.” It was his interview material that had first sent up a knowing within Rowan’s belly. Then he’d told her about Elmer’s gross little hobby. The more she found out, the stronger that feeling had become.

  Elmer’s expression shuttered immediately and the laugh that burst from her lips was all Brigid. The goddess was delighted by that reaction because deep in the pit of her belly, distrust and anger banked, heating up.

  Rowan did like the way his smug was wiped away by that laugh though she hoped she’d get to use the cane too.

  “What about him?” Elmer said, trying to sound tough, but the thread of panic in his words was delicious and she wanted to lean in and take a deep breath. “He left my line seventy-five years ago.”

  “After you Made him illegally and abused him for several decades.”

  “It wasn’t illegal back then. Anyway, one man’s abuse is another man’s pleasure. Don’t let him convince you he was a victim. He said he wanted to leave. I told him to get on getting the fuck out. There’s a hundred more where he came from. He file a complaint?” Elmer’s sneer told Rowan what he thought of that. “You going to turn me over to the Nation?”

  Rowan made a face, admittedly surprised he seemed to have no idea the Scion was in his fucking mansion with his fingers all over Elmer’s illegal bullshit. Rowan could feel his power and she wasn’t even a Vampire. “That’s between you and the Nation.”

  He’d simply assume she had and that her answer was what he wanted to hear because otherwise meant a confrontation and he wasn’t up to it.

  He was more vicious than smart or cunning. That much was clear to her. Viciousness had its uses in the Vampire world. Many of them made their living from it in one way or another. But viciousness without intelligence was a problem. Especially without someone holding the leash.

  “What do you want, then?” he asked at last.

  “Aron works for Hunter Corp. That makes him one of mine.” Let him think all she knew about was Aron. Right at that very moment, the data cards from the house were being examined. She’d done a quick search through the entire house before Elmer had come upstairs, and had located a number of caches. Some appeared to be spell trapped, so Genevieve showed up with Darius and they were now part of the search.

  Elmer had no fucking idea how deep his troubles went. He seemed to sense none of it.

  “I hear working for you gets a body killed,” he said, mean in his voice.

  Just when she’d begun to feel a little sorry for what a weak Vampire he was, he had to go and make a reference like that. Before Elmer was conscious of it, Rowan had shifted to his side, and had the tip of one of her blades pressing into the flesh between his ribs.

  “And what would you know of such a thing?” she asked, her lips pressed to his ear. The sticky copper of the blood she’d spilled beading down the tip of her knife was a match to the kindling of her rage. Not even two months before, several of her closest friends had been murdered by magic-wielding Vampires as a way to get to Rowan.

  It had broken her heart and she’d spent the intervening weeks hunting down and killing every being who’d been involved. The key players—that she knew of—were dead, but the problems remained. And where there were problems, there were aggrieved Vampires waiting to plot about it.

  Elmer’s intake of breath and gurgle of pain had Brigid delighted.

  He said, “I heard. It’s all over town. I didn’t have anything to do with it, I swear. I would never!”

  “You felt pretty comfortable bringing it up. Which makes me really cranky and makes you really stupid.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have joked about it,” he said in a rush.

  “Who Made you?” Rowan asked.

  “I don’t have to tell you that.”

  Well, that was an interesting response from a Vampire who was just so eager to abase himself moments before. Rowan pulled her phone out with her free hand and dialed Clive.

  Before he could purr her name and get all sexy, Rowan said, “Who is this fucko’s Maker?”

  “Give me a few minutes,” he told her and rang off.

  “Well then. While we wait, I should probably let you know just on the other side of this door there’s a search of your home being executed by Hunter Corp. Nation stuff too, but the Scion’s people can tell you about that.” She shrugged, amused by the way his mouth flattened with displeasure.

  She stepped away, her back to the door, blocking his only way out. She held her blade in between them, just so he didn’t forget it was there.

  “This is preposterous!”

  “I will give you points for vocabulary, Elmer. Otherwise, honestly, how is it you thought you could just do whatever the fuck, and the Scion would never pay any mind? This one isn’t a criminal scumbag like the last one.”

  “Jacques was the epitome of what a powerful Vampire is.”

  That made her guffaw. “Yeah? Dead and irrelevant? Is that what you mean?”

  Less than two minutes later, Rowan looked at her screen and then up to Elmer. “Well, isn’t this interesting. David, did you know Roderick Haigh was this Vampire’s Maker?” Haigh was a Vampire she’d personally executed upon finding out he’d been the source for the black-market spells Vampires and a bad-guy faerie had been using to harm innocents.

  Clive’s tersely worded text told her he was beyond pissed, which was a problem to deal with once they got out of there and Elmer into a cell.

  “We’re going to go outside and load you into a car. Then we’re going to get you somewhere secure so we can have a chat about what you’ve been up to,” she told Elmer. “I can see in your eyes you think you can run. I’ll warn you now, that would be a very bad idea. I’m already pissed off. I’ll make it hurt if you run.” Walking stick or not, she’d be on Elmer’s ass before he could gather his next breath.

  “I don’t have to go anywhere with you,” Elmer said, his gaze returning to the blade over and over. The stink of his fear made her eyes water. He was hiding something he desperately didn’t want her to know. Which piqued her interest like a motherfucker.

  “You’re two hundred and seventy-five years old and you still don’t have the power or ability to take me on. Whereas I have a goddess inside me and the power and authority the Hunter Corp. brings to bear. Your Maker is—sorry, was—a very bad Vampire who got himself executed. If you’re involved in anything he was, I could serve a warrant on you right here. You’d be nothing but dust afterward,” she told him conversationally. “But then I wouldn’t be able to have a longer chat with you and I don’t want that.”