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  And…what if they knew they wouldn’t survive the Choosing?

  Dante stopped walking and stood transfixed in the hallway.

  “Dante?”

  What if the whore and the green-eyed girl had known they wouldn’t survive being Chosen? What if that was why the second girl had fought so hard? What if that was why the whore had been immune to a vampire’s bite?

  “Dante?”

  He shook himself and looked at his father. The familiar sneer of contempt was teetering on return.

  Dante thought quickly. “Sorry, Father. It just occurred to me that it was very strange for Madam Venus to assume that Sandy would not want to be Chosen. After all, Sandy made a living off working with vampires. Isn’t that why humans work with us? In the hope they’ll be Chosen? Do you think that reflects on something about the establishment Madam Venus runs? After all, she provides entertainment for vampires—does she have something against us? A hidden agenda?”

  The flicker of scorn had vanished from his father’s face. He looked thoughtful. “I hadn’t considered that. Interesting.”

  Normally Viktor would have dismissed Dante’s concerns out of hand, so it was strange that his father had latched onto Dante’s thrown-together theory. Stranger still that a look of something almost like pride had crossed Viktor’s features.

  “Come,” his father said. They resumed walking toward Viktor’s study, the cold of the hallway unnoticeable, except for the puffs of air that grew misty in front of the slaves’ faces as they passed.

  Dante waited while his father pushed open the study door, and followed him in. He couldn’t stop his eyes flicking to the three skulls on their wooden shelf, but at least he was able to walk by them without wishing to stop and handle them.

  “Misty said you showed her the differences in those skulls,” Viktor said, almost conversationally.

  Dante froze for a split second then walked over to one of the chairs positioned on the door-side of the large, hulking desk. “Yes.”

  So now the stake will fall, Dante thought.

  “Why were you in my study without me?” His father sat in the huge, dark leather chair behind his desk. He clasped his hands together over his flat stomach and leaned back, apparently waiting, as if he was just having a normal conversation with his son.

  “Misty didn’t tell you?” Dante thought nonchalance might work.

  “Tell me what?”

  “I thought I heard someone in your study, so I went to check.”

  “You heard someone in my study?” His father’s forehead crinkled.

  “Yes.”

  “Through a shut door?” Viktor’s eyebrows almost reached his hairline.

  “Yes.” Although Dante hadn’t said the door was closed.

  “The door is soundproof.” His father folded his arms, eyebrows returning to their normal level, which was still raised.

  Dante shrugged and studied his nails.

  “Your hearing is that acute?” Rather than annoyed, Dante thought his father looked pleased, but then, Dante didn’t understand facial expressions all that well.

  “Sometimes.” Dante didn’t want his father to think that he was some super-hearing freak and put him to use accordingly. Whatever that would be. Spying, probably. He gave an inward shudder—having to be nice to people. Having to socialize. Ugh.

  “And what did you find? Was anyone in my study?” Viktor leaned forward on his elbows, across the desk.

  Diplomacy or hard truth? Misty could do no wrong as far as their father was concerned, and she’d already gone babbling to Viktor with half-truths… “Misty was having sex with one of the slaves on your desk.” Dante took some enjoyment from seeing his father start, briefly look at where his elbows were resting and then look back at his son.

  “The little bitch.” But there was admiration in Viktor’s voice. Misty, it appeared, could still do no wrong.

  “She didn’t tell you?” Dante leaned back in his seat, enjoying the way the red leather cushioned his back. It was a novelty.

  “No, she said she’d found a slave in here. That you stumbled across them as she was punishing him for trespassing.”

  “‘Punishing’ may have been a rather accurate term to use.” Dante forced a smile.

  “I thought she hadn’t punished him enough.” Viktor shrugged.

  “Oh?” He didn’t know why he bothered to ask, because he knew what the answer would be. There was only ever one answer when his father thought his privacy had been invaded.

  “I put it down,” Viktor said then frowned. “It may have been a waste. And Misty seemed rather…irritated at me for it.”

  “From what I could see,” Dante said, “she seemed pretty pleased with the slave’s, ah, attention to detail.”

  But the dead slave explained why his father was in such a good mood. Being able to suck a human dry always seemed to cheer up his relatives, and they had to be careful about doing it, because slaves were a somewhat limited stock. Only debts or illegal activities could turn a freeman into a slave. That, or being kidnapped from another country. It was quite an industry. Lots of death, though.

  “Well, that should teach Misty a lesson for lying to me,” Viktor said.

  Dante didn’t want to know how euthanizing a temporarily favored pet would do anything to teach her a lesson, but he wasn’t about to criticize his father’s disciplinary skills.

  “For the next week or so,” Dante said, deciding that brotherly spite was called for.

  Viktor chuckled. He chuckled. What was going on here?

  “Misty is never one to dwell on things.” There was pride there, and amusement.

  Dwell? It was lucky if she could focus enough to remember the days of the week sometimes. “No.”

  Footsteps, four sets, came up the hallway. Dante frowned in concentration. Two were slaves, he’d bet, one was a servant and the other, well, those heavy steps suggested a limp and high-quality boots. Flicking a glance down at his fob watch, he read the time: 4.18 p.m. Very early—or very late—in the vampire day for such domesticity.

  “Dante?”

  Glancing up at his father, he gathered that was probably the third or fourth time his parent had called his name.

  “Sorry, Father. Someone is about to knock.”

  Viktor glared, but he wasn’t staring at Dante anymore, it was at the door. Was he trying to hear the commotion himself?

  A few seconds later, the door was pushed open ever so slightly and Jenkins, the butler, appeared in the small space. “Sorry to interrupt, my lord, but there is a gentleman here to see you. He is most insistent.”

  Viktor was still frowning, and Dante decided that he was glad to not be the idiot on the other side of the door.

  “Who is this insistent gentleman?” Viktor’s voice was smooth, calm, but Dante had a feeling his parent was not happy about the intrusion.

  “Baron Greystoke,” a new voice announced.

  Dante twisted in his chair and felt his eyes widen in shock at the appearance of the speaker. A human aristo?

  Here?

  Most of them kept away from the city, rather than spend time with the vampires who had begun the class system. It worked well for both races; humans got to be part of the upper classes and vampires could say they didn’t dominate the system, and best of all, they never really mingled. Apart from in the Counsel of Lords.

  “Welcome,” Viktor said. “Have a seat.” His father moved a hand, indicating the empty chair next to Dante.

  Greystoke began the walk toward the desk, leaning on a cane as he did so. The man was uncommonly attractive for a human, Dante realized, which surprised him. He didn’t normally notice whether or not humans—or vampires, for that matter—were pleasing to look at. He was tall, although not as tall as Dante, with brown-black hair and dark olive skin. Most importantly, or least importantly, he had brown eyes. But they weren’t the typical muddy color of most humans; they were almost a brandy hue, with warm highlights. You couldn’t call them golden or anything like t
hat, but they weren’t normal.

  Greystoke pulled the chair out next to Dante and sat, resting his gloved hands on the silver handle of his walking stick.

  “Lord Wintermere, thank you for agreeing to see me at such short notice.” The man’s voice was smooth, warm, like his eyes, although even Dante could sense the irony in the statement.

  “Greystoke, it is entirely my pleasure.”

  It probably would be too, if Greystoke was susceptible to mesmerization. The fact that he had made it past the butler seemed to indicate he was not.

  “Greystoke, have you met my son before? The Honorable Dante Kipling?” There was a glimmer of something in his father’s eyes, but Dante didn’t understand the emotion.

  Dante noticed that the hands on the cane tightened briefly, but Greystoke was polite in greeting him. “I have only met your daughter before, Wintermere. How is the viscountess?”

  Being the eldest, and their father’s favorite, Misty had inherited the courtesy title that went along with the earldom; an estate that none of them, bar their father, ever saw.

  “Mistique is doing wonderfully. A father’s joy.”

  Greystoke smiled at that, but there was something strange about the expression. Dante shrugged mentally. Humans.

  “To what do we owe the pleasure of your call?” Viktor asked.

  Greystoke’s face smoothed until it became devoid of expression. “I am here to find out information about my fiancée.”

  “Your fiancée?” Viktor was polite, but there was something in his voice that alerted Dante to his father’s rising amusement. Which was strange.

  “Yes, her name was Annabel White, but you may have known her as Sandy.”

  Dante flicked a quick glance at his father and felt a sinking feeling hit his stomach. Fiancée?

  Ah, crap.

  Chapter 12

  “How’s the shoulder?” Mikael asked.

  Elle looked up from the guard register she was annotating. “Better than yesterday.”

  No thanks to a particular werewolf. But she didn’t want to think about him. She couldn’t believe she’d let him kiss her. And that she’d been thinking about doing more with him.

  “Your family has a strange way of showing affection,” Mikael said. He was the night captain and her boss.

  “It’s my cousins,” she said. “They can’t handle losing.”

  Normally, she worked in a team of four, although they often split into pairs, and together they patrolled the streets wearing the black-brown outfits that showed they were city guards, rather than soldiers. Today, she was a desk jockey and they would be a team of three.

  “But you’re a trained guard.” Mikael looked surprised.

  “And they’re bodyguards—ex-soldiers.” Bjorn had spent a while in the army, fighting blood-knows-who over blood-knows-what. So had his brothers. They’d liked it. It was only because Elle’s gran had called them back to protect the family that they’d done so.

  You didn’t say no to Gran.

  “Tell them the next time they decide to beat on you for fun, they will answer to me.” He smiled, but his eyes were cool. “I don’t approve of my guards being put out of action so that your cousin can make himself feel like more of a man.”

  Elle nodded, cracked a close-mouthed smile in return and went back to her paperwork. But, covertly, she took a good look at Mikael. He was tall, over six feet in height and built of solid muscle. His skin was so dark he blended into the night perfectly. Only his teeth and eyes gave him away. He was easily bigger than Bjorn and spent a lot more time beating the crap out of people—it was his job, after all. And he used a steel baton rather than a wooden one like Bjorn did. But he had Brown eyes. All the muscle and dirty-fighting tricks in the world wouldn’t help you if you couldn’t actually land a finger on your opponent. Greens and Grays were formidable adversaries—one could tell what punch you were going to throw before you threw it, and the other could throw you clean across the room without lifting a finger.

  Most of the city guards were non-Graceds, or Nons, as she and Emmie called them. Which was fine by Elle. It made her feel more…normal. Although the downside was that Emmie was as fascinated by Nons as she was by vampires and weres. Maybe more so. And Elle didn’t want Emmie spending too much time with her colleagues. Kyle was not child-friendly.

  The city clock chimed three times, signaling two hours to the end of Elle’s shift. Rubbing her eyes, she leaned back in her chair and stretched her good arm. Desk work was boring; it gave her too much time to think. And it was strange working in the day, doing all the paperwork for her team from the night before. Double shifts were killers.

  It wasn’t long before a messenger came through the guard doors. Looking up, Elle took in the scrawny almost-teenager; the shifty way he looked around, the tattered clothes and the hungry air. But she decided he wasn’t too much of a threat. The kid was probably just dropping off some information for some coin.

  She met Mikael’s steady gaze with raised eyebrows. He shrugged. She turned back to the kid. “Can I help you?”

  “Dead body in the river,” he blurted out.

  Elle frowned. There were plenty of dead bodies in Pinton; barely a day went by when there wasn’t some kind of paperwork to be filled out and a death tax ordered. Although, to be honest, most of the dead were slaves. And there wasn’t a death tax for them, because legally, they weren’t people. But for someone to dump the body, that was a little unusual. Meant it might be someone important. Most killers were vampires, and they didn’t care to hide what they did, not unless they might get into trouble for it.

  “Can you go?” Mikael asked her. “I need to get some stuff sorted here.”

  Elle nodded. She pulled her leather jacket on carefully over her bad shoulder, hitched her baton to her belt—although she hoped she wouldn’t need to use it—and followed the kid out the door. “Can you call the coroner?” she asked Mikael.

  “Sure, I’ll get her to meet you at the river. Where was the body found, kid?”

  “Near the White Tower Tannery.”

  On the southern side of the Thyme, Elle thought. Where it stank. Following the kid out the door, she waved down a hackney and climbed aboard, motioning for the messenger to follow her lead. The kid looked nervous, but took a seat next to her. He smoothed his dirty hand over grimy blond hair.

  As it was still daylight, it didn’t take long to reach the waterfront. The traffic congestion would hit later on, when the vampires came out to socialize. Stepping from the hackney, she told the driver to wait. He looked disgruntled, but bobbed his head in agreement anyway. She was clearly a guard, and it was a guaranteed fare.

  She looked at the kid. “Where’s the body?”

  Following him, she walked down the slick cobblestone path that ran alongside the river.

  “There!” A bony finger pointed toward a small jetty, jutting into the dirty river. People were milling about, some scratching their heads. They all wore rough-looking clothes, Elle noticed; they were probably laborers working in this area of the city. All human. As she got closer, she noticed they were all Nons.

  Elle walked out onto the jetty. One of the men spotted her and waved her over. “Over here!”

  “Can I go now, miss?” the kid asked. Nodding, Elle slipped him a coin. The boy vanished as quickly as the coin did. She headed toward the gesticulating man. The small group parted as she reached them. Behind the speaker’s feet, she saw a hand lying palm up, the skin dark against the bright, wet blue of a shirt and the damp wood of the jetty. There was a gaping slash along the wrist. The fingers were stiff, and they belonged to a woman, Elle saw. Not too long dead, she thought. Although rigor would last for up to three days.

  “We found her a little while ago,” the speaker of the group said. “Dressed too nice to be a slave. Thought we should let someone know.”

  Elle nodded a greeting and hunched down over the woman. Black hair obscured her face and she was nicely dressed, as the workman had pointed out. Although
the clothes had seen better days. Bloodstains splattered them, but that wasn’t unusual considering the cut wrist. She checked the other arm. The woman was lying on her back on the jetty, clearly dumped there after being hauled out of the murky Thyme. Flicking the hair aside, she felt her heart stutter. Almond-shaped Green eyes looked upward, vacant. Elle had seen this woman before, but she didn’t know her name. Gran would.

  A voice intruded. “What have we got?”

  Elle looked over her shoulder at the speaker. Alice Reive was the city’s coroner. She was a sawbones of sorts, but preferred patients who couldn’t talk. The woman sat her bag down next to the body and then knelt on the jetty. Alice was wearing black slacks and a red shirt that she filled out well enough to make Elle jealous. The other woman must have been working at one of the funeral homes she freelanced for. She provided death certificates to grieving families, so the death taxes could be sorted—if they were needed.

  “Dead woman; looks to be mid-twenties, two cut wrists. Plenty of blood stains, body in rigor.”

  Alice nodded at Elle, auburn curls bouncing against her forehead. “Not bad.” Then she started inspecting the corpse. When Alice got to the woman’s mouth, she started frowning. Her gloved hands froze on the dead woman’s jaw.

  “What’s wrong?” Elle asked.

  “She has small bits of dried blood around her mouth,” Alice replied.

  “That can’t be good.”

  “It never is,” Alice said. The coroner checked the slashed wrists again. She muttered something about potentially hiding bite marks. Elle figured she wasn’t meant to have caught that.

  Alice stood abruptly, grabbing her black leather bag in her right hand. “I’ll take her back with me; I need to do an autopsy. I’ll send you my report tomorrow.”

  Chapter 13

  To have said that Anton felt uncomfortable would have been a grave understatement. He felt thoroughly idiotic, but he’d had to come. He’d had to see the man that Annabel had chosen in preference to him—the life she had chosen in preference to the one she could have had with him.