Now that I knew the vamp's scent, I could differentiate it from Vayl's much better than I had at first. It stayed in one place for another thirty minutes. Then it moved. We'd already paid the check, so we moved too. Still we almost blew it. Like most vamps, this one came with an entourage, and the last of the group was stepping into a glistening black limo when we reached the parking lot.

  One of the first lessons I learned at the absence of my father's knee was that life isn't fair. Sometimes innocent little kids get stuck with dads who keep leaving and moms who hand out far too many whippings. And sometimes those are the very kids who grow up to learn that everybody leaves sooner or later, by chance or by death, and it's never fair. So, though it wasn't fair at all, it was still true that the one guy still standing outside the limo possessed the ability to spot federal agents at a distance of 50 yards. Apparently he also possessed the ability to deal with them, because he motioned for his three buddies to leave their seats and join him. They headed our way, the four of them stopping with about 15 paces left between us—what I like to refer to as dueling distance.

  It felt like the O.K. Corral on steroids. There they stood, making a formidable first impression even without the Tech-9s they held casually at their sides. I felt my skin tighten in alarm at the ease with which they carried those deadly weapons. These were guys who would shoot first and ask questions never. Why was I ever scared of the monsters I thought were under my bed? I wondered. These are the real bogeymen.

  Despite the crisp January breeze, the goon who'd spotted us wore a sleeveless gray T-shirt, exposing massive tattooed biceps. Beside him stood a tall, red-headed man whose mustache grew down either side of his lips to his neck and further south until it disappeared into his chest hair. He had that look in his eye that said, I've hilled things with shovels and enjoyed it.

  A bright red scar split the third man's right cheek into halves, the knife that had caused it also leaving behind one milky white eye to remind its owner to dodge a little sooner next time. The fourth man had Chinese eyes, a Russian weightlifter's physique and an American biker's goatee. He grinned, revealing a couple of gold teeth, and pointed a long, sheath-covered fingernail at my chest.

  "You got a problem?" he drawled, obviously expecting me to pee my pants before falling to the ground and groveling like an unworthy subject of the Emperor. And that was all it took. A new, screw-you attitude took precedence, trampling my fear under its boots. A highly dangerous approach, I still found it much easier to bear.

  "Well it all goes back to my childhood…" I began, but the emergence from the limo of a black, high-heeled pump attached to a shapely, stockinged leg interrupted me.

  "I don't like the looks of this," I murmured to Vayl.

  He just grunted. He centered on the show now as a second leg joined the first. Silver sequins glittered as moonlight hit the hem of her knee-length dress. One elegant hand came out to grasp tattooed dude's paw and the rest of her finally appeared.

  "Hey, look Vayl," I murmured, "it's vampire Barbie."

  From her waist-length platinum hair to her surgically enhanced boobs, she looked like she'd been plucked from some Hollywood director's fantasy. The neckline of her dress plunged so deeply I hoped she'd used the extra-strength lingerie tape. Her huge violet eyes slanted just slightly, enough to give her the exotic look of some Sheik's plaything.

  "Get a load of this," I said, "perfect makeup, perfect nails, perfect figure—it makes me want to shove her head-first into a steaming pile of horse crap. Why is it you can never find a mounted policeman when you need one?"

  Vayl had no answers for me. At all. He'd gone still as a billboard photo.

  "Do you know this woman?" I asked him. When he didn't answer, I shook him. He looked at me, his eyes blank. Dead.

  "Who is she?"

  "Liliana. My late wife."

  Chapter Ten

  Not a day goes by that I don't miss my Granny May. Mom, well to be honest, I'm kind of relieved she's gone. But her mother's passing still gets to me, even after three years. Sometimes I want to see her so badly it's a physical pain. Now I just wished she was here to prop me up, because damned if I didn't feel dizzy.

  I watched Vayl watch Liliana approach us and totally failed to figure out how he felt about it. I, on the other hand, felt very clearly that the world had just begun to spin in the opposite direction. "Your… late… wife?" I whispered.

  Vayl nodded, just a slight jerk of his head. "She died. Then she killed me. Ergo… late wife."

  That song started going through my head, the only words I remembered being the most pertinent at the moment. How bizarre, how bizarre.

  Vayl's voice sounded robotic, a programmed conversational gambit offering no meaningful detail as he said, "Whatever happens, Jasmine, do not take off Cirilai." Who? Oh, duh, the ring.

  Still basically clueless, I fell back on what Granny May used to call my 'spider sense.' (She was a big fan of Marvel Comics. Dave still has her collection.) She had meant my woman's intuition, and even without my newly honed senses to back it up, it thrummed like a newly strung web. The rate of thrum increased when Vayl added, "Under no circumstance should you draw your gun."

  Grief, a comforting lump under my jacket, contained some Bergman-engineered options that would work beautifully on Liliana. And he didn't want me to pull it? Nuts! Vayl—

  His look, foreign and glacial, silenced me. I suddenly felt outnumbered.

  "This is not something we can escape through violence," he said, thawing slightly as I searched his eyes.

  "What about through the threat of violence?"

  His lips twitched. "One cannot encounter you without sensing that threat. Tonight it should be enough simply for them to know you are dangerous."

  I disagreed. I hated to question Vayl's commitment to me or to the Agency, but he'd just dropped a big old bomb on me. What else had he been hiding? Should I, God forbid, mark his name down next to Martha's on the suspect list?

  I felt like I was looking at a portrait as I gazed into his empty eyes. I'd seen life in them plenty of times, but now I felt stupid to have assumed his life had anything in common with my own. He wasn't a monster. I'd seen enough in my time to recognize the difference. But he wasn't a man either. Could I ever really know, could I ever really trust someone so different from me and mine?

  Vayl and I stood staring at each other, teetering at either end of a finely balanced lever. Should I step off? Would he?

  "What are you thinking?" he asked.

  "That you're up to no good." I sighed. "I hope Granny May was right."

  "About what?"

  "About trusting my sp… my intuition."

  "Grannies are generally very wise in these matters."

  Yeah, but mine never met a vampire.

  Liliana strode forward, clearly put out that we hadn't unrolled the red carpet for her dramatic entrance. I gave her a look meant to be blank.

  "Your kitten is bristling," Liliana told Vayl.

  "I would not push her," Vayl replied, leaning just slightly on his cane, "many before you have found her to be more a tigress than a kitten."

  Whatever happened to 'Hey, how are you?' 'Long time, no see.' Apparently you don't have to observe the rules of etiquette when reuniting with a murderous spouse.

  "How did you find me?" Vayl asked, his voice absolutely even. I took my eyes off the Bad Boys for just a moment to confirm what I had sensed shaking underneath that silken baritone. Yeah, it was there, in small movements most wouldn't notice. A lift of the shoulder. A jerk of the head. The hollowing of a cheek that said he was biting the inside of it. Vayl was fighting enormous rage, something so big that if he released it he might never get it all back in the box.

  Oh boy. I'm in smartass mode and Vayl wants to break his ex's neck. If we don't play this right they'll be scraping parts of us off the bumpers of these cars for days.

  Liliana flipped a chunk of her long, polyester hair back over one shoulder. "These surroundings are rather… public, don't you think?" The smile she gave Vayl could've cured frostbite. "Come into my car." It wasn't a request.

  Vayl's gaze cut her like an arctic wind. "No."

  "You owe—"

  "I owe you nothing."

  She moved so fast her arm was a blur. Vayl caught it just before her hand connected with his jaw.

  "Back off, bitch," I snarled. With no time to draw Grief, I'd resorted to my primary backup, a wrist sheath loaded with a syringe.

  The needle was halfway into her hip before she could look down to see what was pinching.

  A series of mechanical clacks drew my attention to Liliana's goons.

  Chinese dude had added a sawed-off shotgun to his arsenal, pulling it out from behind his long, black coat like a Matrix groupie. The tattooed wonder and his buds had their guns locked and loaded and trained on us as well.

  "What is in that syringe?" Liliana demanded.

  "Slow, painful death by way of holy water," Vayl told her.

  "My men can kill her before she depresses it."

  "Then I will finish what she has begun. But perhaps you would prefer to talk?"

  Liliana responded with a pretty little pout I was sure she'd practiced in a mirror before she'd gone out for the evening. "All right, then," she said. "You always did like to have things your way." By mutual, unspoken agreement I withdrew the needle and Vayl pushed her away. The goons let their barrels drop.

  "Is that really how you remember our lives together?" Vayl asked grimly. "Because I have the scars to prove otherwise." Good God, had Liliana inflicted those marks on Vayl's back?

  "You earned every one of them," she said viciously, looking as if she'd like to hit him again.

  "Maybe." For a fleeting moment Vayl's guard fell. His expression became bleak as a dying man's. Then it was gone, replaced by cold, hard hate. "Who told you I was here?"

  "Why Vayl, it's not like I've been looking for you for the last 200 years. I could have found you any time I wanted."

  He shook his head, his eyes so dark you could imagine walking right through them and emerging in a whole different universe. "Not true. Someone tipped you off to my whereabouts."

  She tilted her head, her hair forming a little river of silver behind her. "What makes you so sure I was looking for you? But I did get your attention, yes? You did enjoy my show?" She inclined her head towards the restaurant. "I thought you would appreciate the irony of two sons losing their father."

  Vayl's power spiked and the temperature in the immediate area plummeted. But he didn't reply. If he'd tried, he probably would've spit sleet in her face.

  "You must admit I have improved over the centuries," Liliana went on. "Once I would have had to sink my fangs into him to kill him. Now it only takes a scratch." She slid her fingernail against her creamy white forearm to demonstrate and a thin line of blood rose from the wound she'd opened. Vayl stared at it, his hand convulsing on the head of his cane. She stepped closer.

  "Do not let her touch you, Jasmine," Vayl commanded. "Just a drop of her blood mixed with yours will kill you."

  Liliana recycled the pout. "Only if I want it to." She gave me a look I recognized right away. It was Tammy Shobeson, the sequel. I half expected her to kick me in the shin and call me a sissy pants crybaby. Her psychic scent hit me again, and the stench of death and decay backed me up a step. "My dear, there is no need to be afraid. I won't hurt you… too much." She darted a flirty little smile at Vayl, but he'd lost his appreciation for cruel humor. And apparently she blamed me for that. When she met my eyes again I felt like that poor goat they'd set out to bait the Tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park. And that's when I knew she really had come for me. That's also when she saw my bandage. Her eyes narrowed instantly. My hand flew upward, a protective gesture I couldn't seem to shake. Her gaze moved to Cirilai.

  "Vayl," she said, her voice sort of hollow-sounding, as if she was speaking from the bottom of a well, "why is this—" she made an I've-just-seen-a-cockroach face, "eichfin—wearing your ring? And her neck—have you marked her as well?"

  I didn't like that word, "marked." It sounded too much like a dog raising his leg on its favorite hydrant.

  "She is my avhar" said Vayl.

  That hit her like a wrecking ball. I had a juvenile desire to get right in her face, put my thumbs in my ears, wiggle my fingers at her and sing, "Nah, nah, nah-nah, nah." She lapsed into steaming silence, made a dismissing motion with her hand, and the four stooges backed off. Though I was relieved Liliana had elected to delay the war, I suspected she still meant to wound us. And, like most homicidal maniacs, she followed the profile to the letter.

  "Has Vayl fulfilled his end of the bargain?" Liliana asked me, her voice as sweet as powdered sugar. She took my silence for the answer she wanted and went on, "An avhar carries a great burden and responsibility," she told me. "Therefore she also receives certain privileges, one of those being the right to know every detail of her Sverhamin's past."

  "Liliana," Vayl growled. The panther prepared to pounce.

  "So I just wondered if Vayl has told you about his sons—our sons—and how he killed them—"

  "Enough!" Vayl's voice rang with power. Somewhere nearby a meteorologist had flipped out because the temperature had just plunged from 59 to oh-crap-cover-the-oranges. I shivered as frost coated my eyelashes and my lungs filled with winter. Liliana's gunmen, not being Sensitives, weren't fairing nearly as well. They blew into their hands and stomped their feet, and I heard the Tattooed Wonder say, "I can't feel my nose."

  "You four," Vayl barked, "get into the car!" They snapped to attention, did a quick about-face and marched right into the limo.

  "And you," he regarded his former wife like a mongoose facing a cobra, "get out of my sight, for good this time!"

  She bared her fangs and hissed at him, a fairly hilarious reaction in any other circumstance. "Do not believe this is over," she warned, "you cannot guard her every moment. You cannot see in every direction at once. I only have to wait until you blink."

  "Harm one hair on her head and I will burn that laughable wig of yours with your head still in it."

  I felt a sudden urge to applaud as Liliana muttered an insult I couldn't quite translate, my Romanian being limited to "yes," "no," and "Where's the bathroom?" But, to my surprise, she did retreat to the limo. The door slammed shut and it pulled away.

  "So," I said, "we're just letting them leave?"

  Vayl took hold of my arm. "No, we are letting them think we let them leave. Come."

  We hurried to the Mercedes and pulled into traffic a comfortable distance behind the limo. Ordinarily this would be an easy tail considering the make of their ride. But inside our car the atmosphere was far from relaxed. Finally Vayl said, "I do owe you an explanation."

  "Just tell me what I need to know to survive this mission. You can save the rest—"

  "—for the plane ride back?" We smiled at each other. "At this rate we will have to fly to Ohio by way of Portugal." Our shared laughter eased the tension, and by the time Vayl spoke again he sounded more like himself.

  "I think, first of all, we must face the fact that you have been the target of these attacks all along."

  "I'll buy the first attempt," I said, "but why would they poison your blood? And why would they call in your ex?"

  "Think about it. They taint my blood supply, I turn on you and take yours. All of it."

  "That doesn't quite make sense to me. I mean, you didn't, and—"

  Vayl stopped me with an irritable shake of his head. "You are looking at this like a human being, Jasmine. Look at it from a vampire's perspective."

  Vayl stopped, stared hard out the window, and by the time he met my eyes again I knew we'd made the same leap. Like a couple of kids on their way to yelling, "Jinx, you owe me a coke!" we chorused, "The mastermind is a vampire!"

  Chapter Eleven

  "It makes perfect sense," Vayl rushed on as I tried to gather my scattered thoughts enough to keep us from crashing into the nearest electric pole. "A vampire would know that, when faced with a deepening hunger, I would turn to the nearest possible source of nourishment."

  "You make me sound like a granola bar."

  "Jasmine!"

  "I'm joking, I know it wasn't that way. Go on, go on."

  "Most vampires, at least the ones who scoff at the idea of assimilation, would have drained you without hesitation. This one is, I believe, no exception. That also explains much better the appearance of Liliana. Until you, only vampires knew of her connection with me."

  "How many knew?" I asked.

  His shrug and grimace told me not to get excited. "All of the Old Ones, who could have told anyone. Everyone Liliana ever consorted with. I would wager the information is shared by hundreds."

  "Including a senator. I mean, that's where we're going with this, right? I saw Martha right before we left. She was still human then."

  Vayl nodded, "And still is I will wager. But that does not clear her. It only makes her a potential partner, or patsy, of the senator."

  "A senator though? Are we sure we're sober?"

  "Remember I told you at the beginning that something seemed off about this mission?"

  "Yeah."

  "The Committee was supposed to meet with us before we left. They called it a six-month review. Despite Pete's reassurances that he and I were happy with your performance, they wanted to ask you a whole slew of questions. Something about making sure we had made the right decision."

  The specter of my past lifted its raggedy head and cackled. The thought that it might always haunt me felt wretched. I wanted to crawl into the nearest bed and burrow under the covers until I was just a lump. Nobody expects anything of lumps. It could be a peaceful existence. Unless you'd just eaten chili. And I liked chili. Never mind.

  "Then, without warning, the senators canceled their interview. They said this new mission was much too urgent to put off any longer. Although when I discussed it with Pete he made no mention of a need to rush."

  "So what are you getting at?" I asked.

  "If the interview had taken place, the undead politician would have been forced to attend. You are a Sensitive. As soon as you entered the room you would have pegged the vampire."