Ooh. Burn.

  Was it wrong that I kind of wanted to do her right there?

  Okay, Kate. Be professional about this. Also you have a girlfriend. A girlfriend who can juggle cars.

  “A man is missing, Ms. Conway. One of your wards is locked down. Mr. Shawcross was admitted with a broken leg, contracted an unknown respiratory infection, and then simply disappeared. This isn’t looking good for you.”

  “I’m under no legal obligation to talk to you. In fact, I’m fully entitled to have you ejected from the building.”

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t care how you run your hospital. I don’t care what’s going on in Nightingale ward. All I want to do is find Mr. Shawcross. I don’t want to make your job difficult, but I can.”

  Rhona’s eyebrow went up again. Ngh. “Can you?”

  “Mr. Shawcross’s sister is very upset and very photogenic. And the only thing the newspapers love more than a kidnapping is a health scare.”

  “He wasn’t kidnapped,” she snapped.

  “You seem pretty certain of that.”

  She sighed. “Fine, you can see the tapes if it’ll get you out my hair. But there’s no mystery here. He just got up and walked out.”

  “With a broken leg?”

  “People leave hospitals with injuries and illnesses all the time.”

  “Why was he transferred to Nightingale?”

  “That is none of your business.”

  “His health will affect his behaviour. Is he dying? Is he delirious? It makes a difference.”

  “I absolutely can’t discuss a patient’s confidential medical records with you.”

  Well, it had been worth a try. “Can you at least tell me who was on duty the night he disappeared?”

  “Give me a moment.” She keyed a few commands into her computer. “All right. It was Tony Suen. He’s on days from Thursday, but if I find you harassing my staff, I won’t hesitate to press charges.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t harass people. I just annoy them.”

  Ten minutes later, I was sitting in a back office, going through security footage with a bloke called Reg. This basically came down to watching empty corridors in real time for about six hours. And it’s not like you could kick back with a beer and a bucket of popcorn, although Reg did have a packet of dry-roasted peanuts, which he was happy to share. You can speed the process up very slightly by spinning through the bits where there’s blatantly nothing happening, although that can be counterproductive if you’re looking for supernatural creatures. Vampires move so quickly they’re hard to see even at regular speed, never mind on fast-forward. Sometimes I’d see a flicker and I’d have to go back and watch ten seconds frame by frame. By the end, Reg probably thought I was nuts.

  A little bit after midnight on the third of December, the doors to Nightingale ward opened and Hugh Shawcross strolled out. Well, no wonder the police ruled out abduction. He was wearing jeans and a shirt and a knitted tank top, no coat and no cast. For a man with a broken leg and an unknown respiratory ailment, he seemed remarkably healthy. It took a moment to synch up the camera feeds but I managed to track his progress through the hospital. He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, and nobody stopped him, but why would they? The last shot was him walking across reception before he disappeared into the night.

  I get quite a few missing persons cases that go this way. I’d been trying not to jump to any conclusions, but from where I was sitting now, it seemed fairly clear-cut. Sudden disappearance. Short respiratory illness. Immediately healed of minor physical injuries.

  Sorry, Tash, your brother’s a vampire.

  I rang Elise from the front entrance of the hospital.

  “Good evening, Miss Kane.”

  “Hugh’s a vampire.”

  “Are you attempting to convey information, or are you trying to recreate a popular Abbott and Costello routine?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I am sorry. I thought you may have wanted me to reply ‘I don’t know’ so that you could respond with ‘No, I don’t know’s a werewolf.’”

  “Elise, you can rest easy in the knowledge that I would never, ever want you to do that.”

  “That, Miss Kane, is because you have no soul.”

  I started walking down the hill back towards Archway. “Okay, let me start again. Elise, Miss Shawcross’s brother is a vampire.”

  “Does this mean the case is closed?”

  “Well, I still haven’t found him. But at least now I know what I’m looking for.”

  “Do you wish me to continue my current tasks?”

  “There’s no point shutting anything down at the moment. I don’t know why he was turned, or who did it, but it’s even more important we find him quickly. He could freak out and nom a bunch of people.” I paused. “Actually, prioritise finding the girlfriend because she could be in danger. New vampires tend to go back to what they know, and they can have real self-control problems.”

  I arrived at the Tube station and started pushing my way through commuters. I’d really timed this badly.

  “Very well, Miss Kane,” said Elise. “Shall I meet you at home, or does this merit an all-nighter?”

  “It’s okay for you. Some of us actually sleep. But you’re right, this is important. I’ll come back to the office.”

  “Would you like me to compile the takeaway menus?”

  “Can we just get pizza this time?”

  I looked up and saw Sir Caradoc, the eldest vampire kid of the last Prince of Swords, coming towards me. People were getting out of his way quickly. I’d only met him once before, and I’d been unfortunately naked at the time.

  “Give me a minute, Elise.” I slipped the phone in my pocket but didn’t hang up. You never know when you’ll be glad someone was listening.

  I glanced over my shoulder. There was another vampire behind me and two more coming in on either side. They wore sharp black suits and crisp white shirts, which made them look like the undead FBI. But, for some reason, they seemed to have the St John Ambulance cross embroidered in red on their ties.

  This was also probably not a social visit.

  And they also probably weren’t going to teach me how to put people in the recovery position.

  Sir Caradoc came steadily through the crowd and got right up in my grill. He was a chiselled, blond Hasselhoff-alike. If we hadn’t been in a crowded place, and he hadn’t been an eight-hundred-year-old vampire who could have ripped my head off without thinking about it, I’d have lamped him one.

  “Katharine Kane,” he actually fucking intoned, “by the authority of the Council, I arrest you for the murder of Aeglica Thrice-Risen, Prince of Swords.”

  Well, fuck.

  I was dead.

  I didn’t even bother to think about running. He’d have caught me before I could turn round. And trying to resist arrest would look really bad. Not that I was expecting a fair trial. People who get taken away by vampires don’t come back. When all else fails, try bravado.

  “I don’t think so. First off, I didn’t do it. Secondly, if I go with you I’m fucked. If I don’t go with you, I’m fucked. If I try and run, I’m fucked. If I try and fight, I’m fucked. I’d rather you just killed me now and got it over with.”

  “You have no choice. You will come with me, and you will stand trial for your crimes.”

  He stared at me coldly, and fear came crashing over me. Vampires are creatures of passion, and the half of their power that doesn’t come from blood comes from overwhelming the emotions of others. Julian feeds on desire, pleasure, and surrender. My dickhead ex-boyfriend fed on the twisted needy obsession he called love. And Caradoc, like all his bloodline, feeds on fear. Things were way more fun with Julian.

  I braced myself and tried to meet his gaze.

  It was the primal irrational terror of childhood and phobias. The kind that freezes you and breaks you, even though you know it comes from nowhere.

  I was shaking, but I tried not to show it. I dragged my head up and looked him in the eye. “Enough of that. Let’s get this over with.”

  He blinked and it stopped.

  His three minions swept in and deprived me of my knives and my phone. I didn’t know how much of the conversation Elise had heard or how much use it would be anyway. I wanted to tell her not to worry, but I didn’t want to let Caradoc know she might have been listening.

  They marched me out of the station and into a black sedan with honest-to-God tinted windows.

  I was so dead.

  After a miserable stop-and-start drive through rush hour traffic, I was unloaded in front of Aeglica’s rundown mansion near Holland Park. They bundled me inside and dragged me downstairs where they locked me in the cellar.

  Well, fuck.

  It was one of those proper dungeony cellars that TV serial killers always seem to have. Stone walls, stone floor, reinforced doors with little bars on them. I briefly wondered how you got one of these things fitted. Is there some kind of bespoke dungeon outfitter you can call in?

  I checked the obvious things. Sadly, none of the flagstones were loose, the door did not conveniently lift off its hinges, and if there were any secret passages, they were too secret for me to find.

  I’d been expecting this to come back and bite me in the arse. The only question had been when. Three months ago, Julian had been abducted by a crazy faery lord and I’d formed a rescue posse, which had included Aeglica Thrice-Risen, the Prince of Swords and all-round vampire badass. Things had gone, as we say in the business, tits up, and we’d only got out because Aeglica had held the faery lord down while I ran them both through with a magic sword. I still felt pretty shitty about it. Although I was going to feel a lot worse if I got executed. I had no idea how vampire courts worked, but somehow I didn’t think they were big on mitigating circumstances.

  There was a slightly grimy mattress in one corner of the room, which put it easily in the top ten nicest places I’ve ever been locked up. I went and lay down because what else can you do? I get captured a fair bit. It’s kind of an occupational hazard. I should probably take up tai chi or something to pass the time while I’m waiting for the villain to come in and explain their master plan to me.

  After a while, I heard raised voices outside, and then a stream of smoke and shadows poured through the grill in the door before coalescing into Julian.

  She was dressed in the closest thing she ever got to formal wear—knee boots, leather trousers, outrageous cravat, military greatcoat with gold frogging and epaulettes. She looked like the bastard lovechild of Audrey Hepburn and Captain Hook, and for a moment, despite being in prison, all I wanted to do was feed her chocolate and fuck her senseless. Unfortunately it looked like that was the last thing on her mind. She had that pale, cold look that vampires get when they’re seriously ticked off.

  “Next time you murder one of the four most powerful vampires in England,” she snarled, “I suggest you tell me. Otherwise, sweeting, we all end up looking very silly.”

  “I didn’t murder anyone.” I rolled off the mattress and got to my feet. “There was a fight. He got killed.”

  “On the point of your sword. On the point of the sword you were given by the Witch Queen of London.”

  “He told me to.” It sounded pathetic even to me.

  “I’m sure he did, sweeting, but you have no way to prove it.” Julian paced the length of my cell. “Mercy and Caradoc are out for your blood, and there’s nothing I can do about it because you didn’t bother to mention this three months ago.” She whirled to a halt and glared at me.

  It wasn’t so much that I hadn’t bothered. It’s just that it’s hard to find a good time to tell your girlfriend that you’ve stabbed one of her oldest mates. I hadn’t exactly been hiding it, just hoping it would never come up. “I didn’t expect you to do anything about it. It’s not your job to protect me.”

  “Strange as it may seem, Katharine,” she drawled, “this is not about you. How can the Council respect me if I don’t even know what my own girlfriend is up to?”

  “What, you mean if you can’t keep your pet mortal in check?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but you meant it.”

  “I did not. But what you do reflects on me. And if you don’t trust me enough to tell me the truth about something like this, then you make a mockery of . . . of . . .” She threw her hands illustratively into the air. “Everything.”

  I scowled. “I’m sorry I reflect badly on you. What do you want me to do? Sit at home in a white dress and bake vampire cookies?”

  “Sweeting, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here.” She was pacing again. “You didn’t embarrass me at the company picnic. You murdered one of my colleagues, and now the rest of my colleagues are annoyed about it and want to kill us both.”

  There was a long silence broken only by Julian’s bootheels striking the stone floor.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m sorry, okay, but I did what I had to do to save your, y’know, life.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re my hero.” She gave a swift, sudden smile. “But where I come from, when you rescue someone, it’s bad manners to get them executed afterwards.”

  “How do they even know?”

  Julian sighed. “Kauri.”

  “He sold me out?” He hadn’t seemed the type.

  “He didn’t have a choice. He’s young, and several members of the Council can read minds.”

  I didn’t know whether that made it better or worse. He hadn’t betrayed me, but I didn’t like the idea of the vampire gestapo fucking around with his brain. “Is he okay?”

  “We’re not psychopaths.” She paused. “Well, most of us. But he probably feels bad for dropping you in it, which by the way, he wouldn’t have been in any position to do if I’d known what had happened.”

  I slumped back down onto the mattress and rested my back against the wall. “Okay, I get it, I fucked up. But what could you even have done about it?”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, sweeting, I’m a motherfucking vampire prince. There’s always something I can do.”

  “What about now?” I asked hopefully.

  “That’s the thing. It’s a little late. I could bust you out of here, and we could flee somewhere beyond the reach of the Council, and we could spend our lives dodging assassins and living in youth hostels.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I should just let them have you. I’d be very, very upset for a couple of decades, but I’d get over it. And, rationally, it’s clearly the best option for me.”

  I gave her a look. “Rationally, I should have left you chained up in a sewer.”

  Julian came over and sat next to me. She snuck a kiss onto my cheek. “Obviously, I’m not going to do that. I have, after all, never been good at being rational.”

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day. Then again, the last thing somebody said to me was ‘Get in this cellar.’” There was another silence, and Julian took my hand. “So,” I said, “what are we actually going to do?”

  “Politics.”

  That youth hostel was starting to sound really tempting. “That’s your plan? You go and cut dodgy deals with a bunch of bloodsucking power brokers.”

  “No, sweeting, you go and cut dodgy deals with a bunch of bloodsucking power brokers. The Council already thinks you’re my pocket assassin. There’s no way I can protect you and protect myself at the same time. And while I am very, very fond of you, I don’t think we’re in the lay down my life stage of the relationship.”

  “Why am I going out with you again?”

  “Because, my one, my only, I am spectacularly good in bed.”

  I laughed. “I knew there was something.”

  Julian lifted her brows. “Many, many things. Many, many times.”

  I had the feeling we were getting sidetracked. “How is this going to work? And you do remember I hate politics, right?”

  “Not nearly as much as politics hates you.”

  “No, seriously. I haven’t got a clue. In case you haven’t noticed, you guys are really fucking secretive. I know there are four princes and you do stuff. And there’s a Council which does stuff. But, beyond that, my knowledge is pretty vague.”

  Julian stood up again. “You’re worrying me now, Kate. Quick crash course: the princes are the local powers, the Council is a loose association of twenty-two vampires that monitors Europe, the Near East, and about half of America.”

  “So they’re in charge?”

  “Not really. They just stop things going too batshit insane. We worked out a long time ago that if too few people have too much power it gets really bad for everyone when they disagree. The Council resolves disputes, recognises princes, and deals with stuff like, well, this.”

  “Holy shit, are you telling me there are twenty-two super powerful vampires in town? And I have to make them all like me? I’m fucked.”

  Julian grinned down at me. “The whole Council hasn’t gathered for centuries. You only need eight for quorum, including local princes and equivalents.”

  “This sounds remarkably civilised for people who drag you off the street and throw you in cellars.”

  “We are civilised creatures, but civilisation is power and control. It does not preclude throwing people into cellars.”

  “Or—” I glared. “—looming over them, blocking what little light they get in the dungeon you’ve chucked them in.”

  She rolled her eyes and hunkered down in a creak of too-tight leather. “Better?”

  Well, no, it wasn’t really because, to be honest, the dungeon was bothering me more than the looming. But being pissy about it wasn’t going to help anyone. “So who’s in town?”

  “There’s me, sweeting, but I won’t get a vote on this one because I’m rather obviously compromised. Aeglica would have had a vote, but you sort of killed him, and we haven’t chosen his successor yet. Sebastian, the Prince of Wands, has come up from Oxford.”

  “Ooh, I’m honoured.”

  “And Thomas Pryce, the Prince of Coins, of course.”