I thought perhaps he was. Amisi was watching him closely, and he knew it. Even if Gregor Morel was a vampire who would survive at all costs, I thought perhaps he’d extended that saying to make sure his Nosferatin survived at all costs, too.

  Amisi was precious to Gregor. It made it easier to trust the tricky vampire a little. At least, in this.

  “I have control,” I said without inflection. Mimicking Gregor was probably childish, but I had to get my kicks where I could.

  “I needed to be sure,” Gregor said, a low growl working its way into his voice then.

  “Now you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Oh, please,” Amisi said dramatically. “Is it to be pistols at dawn between the two of you?”

  “She started it,” Gregor said, his lips twitching.

  “Douche,” I whispered, and he laughed.

  Then abruptly stopped when he realised what he was doing.

  He looked across the bar to Samson.

  “Really?” he said dryly. “Your vampire chooses this one?”

  “Yes,” Samson said simply. “And so do I.”

  Gregor looked at me again and shook his head. And then he said, “She is powerful.”

  “She is right here,” I snapped.

  “He does that all the time,” Amisi pointed out. “It’s very frustrating.”

  “Do I frustrate you, ma ange?”

  “You know damn well you do, Morel.”

  He sidled closer to her. “I could frustrate you some more tonight,” he purred.

  She slapped him on the chest and looked at me.

  “To love them is to be frustrated by them,” she quipped.

  “Amen, sister,” I said, and she grinned.

  I’d never had many girlfriends. Kara was my BFF and had been since kindergarten. I think she was landed with me by default. But I thought, then, that if I could choose a second BFF, it would have been Amisi.

  I looked back at the Enforcer.

  “We have an accord,” I said.

  “And I will stand by it,” he replied.

  “No more tests.”

  “The test was not a breach of the accord.”

  “And if your vampires had attacked me once they realised what I was?” That definitely would have been a breach of the accord.

  “I have control.”

  “So do I.” Thanks to Samson.

  “Then it’s settled,” he said. “You will hunt the fairy who is involved in this mess and find my MPs.”

  “You want me to work for you?”

  “Yes. You do a similar thing with Jett, I believe.”

  “And get paid for it.” My salary for bartending at Sensations had not been stopped, despite the fact that I hadn’t tended bar there in weeks.

  “I shall pay you also, then.”

  Great. I was a bona fide, pension earning hound dog. Mark paid me. The vampires paid me. Now I just had to get Aliath to pay me, and I’d be set.

  “Where were they taken from?” I asked.

  “Their homes,” Gregor said. “I can arrange invitations for you.”

  I shouldn’t have, but I wanted to see his reaction.

  “I don’t need them.”

  He blinked. Amisi smirked into her glass. Samson shifted beside me.

  “But Samson does,” I said.

  “Then I shall arrange them for him,” Gregor ground out.

  It was fun to mess with the master vampire.

  “What else do you need?” he asked.

  “Just the addresses.”

  He pulled a piece of paper out of his suit jacket and pushed it across the bar top to me. He’d had it prepared, ready to go. He’d expected this outcome despite all the “testing”.

  Tricky vampire.

  “OK, well, we should get started,” I said, pushing up off the stool. Samson stood as well, saying nothing.

  I could still sense his Dark. I could still tell he wasn’t himself yet. His Black Dog paced within him, occasionally the grey eyes peeked out from behind the cinnamon and taupe.

  Amisi noticed it too. Her eyes swept from observing Samson to looking at me. The kindness and compassion in them almost made me cringe. I wasn’t used to seeing that look in people’s eyes. Certainly not people who didn’t already mean the world to me.

  I cleared my throat. “Are we done here, Master of the City?” I asked.

  “So formal,” he muttered. “Why do I not believe it?’

  I grinned at him, putting as much sweetie-pie into it as I could manage.

  He grimaced.

  “Get going. Report back to me by morning. A chamber will be waiting here at Desire for you once you are done.”

  “Your hospitality is without equal,” I said and turned on my heel.

  “I still don’t like you,” he shouted after me.

  “Ditto,” I shouted back and stepped out of the building, Samson on my tail.

  We stood under the stars and inhaled the night. I saw Samson’s Black Dog settle behind his eyes. He looked down at me.

  “You didn’t tell him,” he said. About my Sire.

  “Not the right time,” I muttered and started to walk.

  “There will never be a right time, Georgia.”

  “I know,” I said and checked the first address. “Maybe I won’t have to,” I added.

  Samson arched a brow at me.

  I held up the piece of paper. “He might be waiting,” I offered.

  Samson didn’t look happy about that.

  “Shall we hunt?” I said, instead of getting into an argument about it.

  “I have always wanted to hunt with you, mate,” the Black Dog said.

  “As have I with you,” the Dark Shadow answered.

  “Down boy,” I muttered.

  Samson laughed.

  It filled my soul with Light. It lit up the night sky and surrounding environment. It heated any lingering chill I had felt and melted it into nothing.

  I glanced over at him. It was still there; the Darkness. But it was coated again in Light.

  I hadn’t shared mine with him. He’d found his own. Or, by making him laugh, I’d helped him find it.

  I’d do anything, anything at all, to help Samson find his Light.

  “Mate,” I said, testing the word on my tongue.

  “Georgia,” he purred in reply.

  And then I flashed away, and a split second later he followed.

  Maybe when we returned to Desire de Sang by morning, I would be ready.

  It was easy to think like that when I knew the chance of outwitting my Sire was slim to none.

  He was waiting for me. Somewhere in Wellington. Maybe with a dozen or so Taniwha at his back.

  But something told me this time our meeting would hurt. Not just physically. But personally. Emotionally. He was up to something, and it was more than just calling me to him so he could rip off my head and be done with his wayward child.

  Those MPs meant something. They had to. Because otherwise none of this made a lick of sense.

  My Dark Shadow growled low and long.

  The Black Dog joined her.

  It was brighter with two pairs of eyes.

  I just hoped it was bright enough.

  20

  Dazed

  A fairy had been here. I stared at the glass doors the first Wellington MP had been abducted through and catalogued the various scents at the scene.

  Bitter-sweet dark chocolate. Pungent and spicy pepper. Bruised rose petals and overripe summer fruit. And peaches and ozone. The peaches didn’t belong to my Sire. They belonged to the fairy. As did the pepper. The fairy felt contempt. The MP felt fear and pain.

  Not a good combination.

  “Anything?” Samson asked from the shadows.

  We’d been to two of the locations already and scented much the same there, but as soon as we’d arrived here, I’d known entering the abode was unnecessary. The scents outside told the same story.

  “No wet dog,” I said.

  “Fey,” he spat.

  I nodded my head. “Where have the Taniwha gone?”

  Samson shrugged and looked out across the dark street. A lone police car sat opposite the driveway of the MPs house, a cop reading a magazine inside it. Stakeout. Protection for the family who awaited news of their lost father.

  “Maybe they got the message when Gregor turned up in their camp?” Samson suggested.

  “I didn’t take them as the acquiescing type.”

  “No, nor did I,” he mused.

  “Then their absence means something.”

  “And the fairy’s presence adds to the meaning.”

  I agreed. I drew the shadows around us, hiding myself and Samson from prying eyes. I was surprised it had worked the first time I did it, but none of the cops at any of the scenes had blinked an eye. I started following the scent, out onto the street and then down a few hundred metres. Samson followed behind faithfully.

  How the hell had they dragged the MP so far?

  “They must have been masked somehow,” I said.

  “Undoubtedly. He was taken at sunset. The sun still lightened the sky. There would have been witnesses.”

  We all knew what happened to witnesses, though.

  But the other MPs hadn’t been taken at sunset. This had been a one-night-takes-all kind of endeavour. They started early, in order to make the rounds. Which would explain why my Sire wasn’t here, but he hadn’t been at the other scenes either.

  This was all the fairy.

  “I don’t recognise the fairy’s scent,” I said as we kept following the trail he or she had left me. “I can’t even tell if they’re Light or Dark Fey.”

  “Not Aliath, then.”

  I glanced sharply at Samson.

  “Aliath wouldn’t do this,” I said, unsure if that statement was true or not.

  “I’m not so trusting,” Samson murmured. “If his Queen demanded it of him, then yes, he would do exactly as she wished.”

  Like using me to hunt Isoleth’s spies.

  “Well,” I said, feeling uncomfortable talking about Aliath, “his scent isn’t here in any case.”

  Although I could do with some insight from the Dökkálfa Prince. He might have been able to shed some light on things.

  I paused at where the scent dissipated. The smell of a diesel engine replaced the overlapping signature scents I’d identified. Entwined with the diesel was a faint hint of wet dog. Not enough to make me believe they drove the vehicle that picked up the Fey and the MP, but enough to know they had been in the vehicle at one time.

  “The Taniwha are still connected,” I said, standing up from my crouch at the side of the road. “But they might have been replaced by the fairy.”

  “You scent them?”

  “One of them used the car that was here at one time.”

  Samson stared at me with a strange look on his face.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “You are quite remarkable.”

  I shook my head and looked off into the distance in the direction the vehicle had gone.

  “I could try to follow the diesel,” I said, ignoring how Samson’s compliment made me feel. “But the streets are starting to get busy again. Dawn is coming.”

  “Dawn is coming,” Samson repeated as if it were a pronouncement vampires made.

  I turned to look at him. He was wearing dark jeans and a dark, skin-tight, long-sleeved t-shirt. The leather jacket he wore over the top did nothing to hide the breadth of his chest or the ripple of his muscles. I wanted desperately to be ensconced in a room at Desire de Sang and to peel him out of his clothing.

  But I also wanted to stay as far away from that place as I could get and it wasn’t just because Gregor scared me.

  Mating did too.

  “So,” I said. “That about covers it for what I can…”

  Something shimmered in the air down towards the house we’d just been investigating. I checked the police car and the officer inside; he seemed to have fallen asleep. I didn’t think that really happened in real life; only in the movies.

  I glanced back at the house, but everything seemed in order. A sole light on in the front window as if a beacon for the missing.

  Something shifted near the front porch.

  “Do you see that?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Something’s there.” I started moving back towards the house, making sure to keep the shadows pulled close around us.

  It was a measure of Samson’s faith in me that he didn’t talk me out of approaching whatever supernatural occurrence this was.

  But whatever it was had a head start on us, and it was fast acting. Even flashing there meant we were seconds too late. The shimmer had disappeared by the time we both came to rest on the front path leading to the porch. The night seemed unnaturally silent. As if it too held its breath.

  A lump of dark material lay on the ground, unmoving. I approached with care, expecting it to suddenly jump out and attack me. Inhaling scents told me nothing I hadn’t already guessed. The fairy had been here.

  And then the form did shift, and on the air, I scented the MP’s signature scent.

  “It’s the minister,” I said, crouching down to pull the clothing that covered his face back.

  “The cop’s waking,” Samson advised from behind me.

  We were still bathed in shadows, but someone would notice there was too little light under the moon right here.

  The MP groaned; the sound seemed to amplify in the air. The cop’s car door squeaked open.

  “Who’s there?” he called.

  The MP groaned again. I made a quick assessment of his body; no injuries and nothing hidden in his pockets that would tell me why he’d been returned so quickly.

  The MPs in Auckland had been gone over a week. This MP had been gone less than an evening.

  I stood up and stepped back, taking Samson with me, as the cop carefully approached the moaning form on the path in front of the building.

  “Show me your hands!” he ordered.

  The MP groaned again, his fingers twitching, his hands flapping around on the ground slightly.

  I inhaled, checking the scents, noting the MP had become agitated and confused. Ozone mixed with a hint of peaches coated the air around him, licked across the path and climbed up the cop’s boots.

  The cop pulled a radio from his belt and put it to his lips.

  “WNX3-Comms,” he called.

  The dispatcher replied.

  “Assistance required at my 1220. The bird has come home to roost.”

  I snorted, the sound leaking out through my shadow cloak and ringing too loudly on the air.

  The cop shone his torch directly at me.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted. He reached for his Taser.

  Despite my shadows, that would hurt.

  Samson and I flashed away, coming to rest by unspoken agreement on the other side of the street. Close enough to see and hear, but scenting would be difficult at this distance.

  I’d smelled all I needed to smell, though.

  I pulled my cellphone from my pocket as I watched the cop check the bushes behind where we had been standing, and the MP groaned on the ground some more. The front door of the house opened, and the MP’s wife emerged and then let out a scream when she saw her husband lying there. The cop started to tell her to stay inside. The kids came streaming out around her. In seconds, lights in the neighbouring houses had started flicking on, one by one.

  The scene turned into chaos.

  “Georgia,” Gregor said when he answered his cellphone. “What have you got for me.”

  “MP number one is back,” I said succinctly.

  “Already.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer. “I’ll be right there.”

  I hung up the phone and waited in the shadows with Samson’s heat warming me.

  “No wet dog,” I said.

  “I had wondered,” Samson offered. “Just the fairy?”

  “Yes.”

  “The same one?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need to know who it is.”

  “Yes.” Aliath, I thought, if only you had a cellphone in Álfheimr.

  Gregor beat the ambulance and additional police vehicles to the address. But his presence was noted. The MP had been covered but not removed from the front path. Neighbours had spilt out and were talking to one another across white picket fences. A few cellphone cameras were clicking in the slowly brightening dawn.

  We needed to get inside, and as soon as Gregor’s limousine pulled up to the side of the road before us, we gratefully slipped into the dark interior with him. He said nothing. The car remained stationary. I watched as Gregor stared out of the window towards the MP’s house and the mess that was there.

  “My contact will be here shortly,” he said when I started to fidget. “What did you find at the scene?”

  “No Taniwha,” I offered. He spared me a glance at that. “Fairy.”

  “A new player?”

  “The same one as in Auckland,” I said.

  It had taken a second or two to confirm that. The fairy did something to his scent when he used that masking ability. Or maybe it was just when he’d used his Fey magic. Because the scent I had smelled at the scenes when the witnesses had their memories erased had been different. But not different enough for me to detect a commonality.

  Clearly, the fairy had not expected a Hundr. To a normal vampire, maybe the scents would have appeared different. But not to me.

  Gregor curled his hands into fists and stared at the MP’s front garden. The MP was sitting up now, trying to stand up, in fact. His wife was fussing, and the cop was flapping. I gathered they wanted the ambulance officers to check him out first. His butt must have been frozen sitting on the cold concrete.

  “Light Fey,” I said, managing to startle Gregor out of his simmering anger.

  Thoughts had been percolating in the background while I’d been watching the scene. I hadn’t realised I’d come to a conclusion until I’d spoken.

  “Light Fey?” Gregor enquired mildly. That ‘mildly’ was not to be taken as anything other than a threat.

  “He tried to mask his scent,” I said. “To change it at each scene. It would have been enough for a vampire to have thought each fairy was different. That there were more Fey involved than what had actually been.”