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  Yeah, and if we believed that, he probably had a bridge we could buy, somewhere in Brooklyn …

  “What am I supposed to be doing while Gina baits me on a hook and dangles me in front of the vamps?” Bobby asked. “Why can’t we both go to them?”

  “If you both go, they’ve got you. No reason to trust when they can lock you away as prisoners. But if Gina convinces them that you and she are on their side by bringing you in, you’ll have the freedom you need to get to the truth. In the meantime, you’re with us. We’ll keep you close so that the vamps can’t get to you directly. You’ll help us with background checks, looking into Nelson Ricci’s known associates. Both his parents are dead. He lives with an eccentric uncle, who the police so far have been unable to contact. We need to track him down, along with the missing Swinter girl—there’s a chance she’s involved. We’ve arranged things with local law enforcement. Our official story is that we’re part of a task force to identify and stop burgeoning serial killers.”

  Marcy raised her hand like we were back in school.

  “Yes, Marcy?” Maya said with a half-roll of her eyes.

  “One question. How’s Mr. Military here going to fit into the vampire scene?” Marcy tipped her head toward Brent. “He totally screams government.”

  Maya gave a grin worthy of a shark, an animal with hundreds, maybe thousands, more pointy teeth than a vamp. “Oh, you won’t even recognize him when we’re through. The next vampire ball is two nights away. You’ve got that long to learn all you can about the vampire subculture.”

  Which sounded so weird, because, of course, we were the vampire subculture, such as it was.

  2

  Marcy and Brent (now going by their vampire names of Raven and Mal) were already inside the club. The Feds had faked a message from a human vamp—which Bobby said was an oxymoron, but I never knew there were different types—from a New York clan to a lifestyler on the Tampa scene. The message vouched for Raven and Mal, gaining them a native guide and instant entrée. And Maya had been right. If Brent hadn’t been standing next to Marcy, who looked like a goth French maid—in a white off-the-shoulder blouse, shiny black waist-cincher, and a crinolined skirt that belled out like a tutu—I’d never have recognized him. The Feds’ twisted stylists had shaved Brent’s head and tattooed it with a web design over his entire cranium, bringing it to a point like a widow’s peak on his forehead. A spider hung from an inked thread down the back of his neck. It freaked me out, but I couldn’t imagine the tat was permanent.

  Me? I’d sink or swim on my own. If—when—I was discovered, no one was going down with me. Marcy and Brent were supposed to focus more on the breathers than the biters, me included. So, for one of the first times in my life, I actually had to wait in line behind the velvet ropes, hoping for the nod that would get me into the club. On the upside, I was smokin’ hot … and I say that in all honesty. A vivid purple corset pushed and smooshed my cleavage into a shelf just below my shoulders with a tiny lavender rosebud tucked in the center, maybe for modesty. My skirt hit the top of my spiked heels, but when I walked, the side slits exposed me all the way to the hip, which, given the contrast between the dark skirt and my lily-white skin, was pretty obvious. And—brace yourselves—I’d made sure there were no VPL (visible panty lines, for those playing at home). My hair was crimped and teased to epic proportions, with two kicky pigtails on either side draped in black tulle and violet ribbons. To fit in and give myself a little anonymity, I had pale pancake makeup on my face, dark smoky eyes, blood-red lips, and a fake nose ring.

  Turns out I was overdressed. A police cruiser was parked on the street, watching for trouble, maybe because of Dion the Destroyer. I was surprised the policemen weren’t arresting people for indecent exposure. There were a few outfits that looked like they were held together by nothing more than duct tape and dental floss. Whoever’d said that “less is more” had no idea how sexy it is to leave something up to the imagination. At least any butt cracks were obscured by faux raccoon tails, and the lack of clothing generally made it easier to detect pulse points.

  Maybe I could find my “in” as a stylist for the damned. Or the darned, anyway, ’cause these kids were definitely still alive and kicking.

  The club itself was pretty industrial looking from the outside, like it had once been a warehouse. The only indications that it was now a goth club, besides the loitering, were the blacked-out windows and the blood-red awning with square cut-outs at the bottom, like castle ramparts. There was a black silhouette of a tower painted dead center, with a raven circling its heights.

  Tired of waiting, I was about to skirt the line and offer the bouncer at the door a sniff of my rosebud when there came a stir from the street. The others in line with me turned, craning their necks for a view.

  I gasped and fell back a step before shaking it off and regaining my rightful place against the velvet rope, cleavage up front and center.

  There they were. The beautiful people. I didn’t care if they were biters or bleeders. At that moment, I wanted to be them.

  Leading the way was a man in a top hat, tails, and cravat, the chain of a pocket watch stretched from one side of his jacket to the other. And the buttons on the jacket … clockwork-looking gears. In one gloved hand he carried a cane, the bulb of which glinted gold in the outside lighting. He should have looked silly, affected, out of place, but something about the way he carried it off almost seemed to transform the world around him to mesh with his reality. He’d make a helluva vampire if he wasn’t one already. Given his layers of clothing, I couldn’t tell if he still breathed, and, contrary to so much fiction, we didn’t get any kind of mystical zing at the sight of each other.

  A step behind him walked a woman in a clockwork bustier. There was no other way to describe it. A clock face covered her chest, moving gears exposed to sight with nary a connecting cloth to be seen. It couldn’t have been comfortable. Her skirt, to make up for it, had enough flounces and fabric for three, including a bustle, kind of like a Bump-it for the butt. There were others behind her: a woman in an iridescent dress adorned with peacock plumes, who was wearing a veiled hat and carrying a lacy parasol over her shoulder, was followed by another woman dressed something like a tarted-up Amelia Earhart, a man who looked like an old-time explorer, and another man dressed as a maharajah.

  “The Burgess Brigade,” a voice said from behind me, far too close to my ear. “Steampunk vampires.”

  Darn vamp senses didn’t do me a bit of good if I was totally distracted. I turned and almost bumped noses with a startlingly attractive guy. He hadn’t been there moments before; I’d swear it. Even with my enhanced vision, I could just barely tell that his eyes weren’t completely black, but the glowering gray of storm clouds. His hair was long, wavy, and free-flowing, blacker even than his eyes. His chin was pointed, his face was narrow, almost foxlike, and he had the kind of cheekbones models starved for. In fact, he looked more the tortured poet than the guys I usually went for—guys more focused on me than melancholy. But he did have the older-guy caché going for him. I figured him for twenty-one—twenty-two at the outside.

  “Yeah?” I asked, refusing to give ground. It might have been a mistake. I’d fed before coming, but my new friend’s open-necked shirt, which tucked down into lace-up leather pants, left no doubt that he was a breather. I could see the pulse point on his neck, and it called to me like the window display at Macy’s.

  “Yeah. One of our premier clans. You want an introduction?”

  I didn’t want to seem too anxious for the help. “Are you one of them?”

  “I, my lady,” he said, taking my hand and bringing it to his lips, “am Ballard.” He breathed across my knuckles, but aside from where his hand held mine, he didn’t so much as touch me. I tried to keep a straight face at the old-fashionedness of it. If Ballard held doors, paid for dates, and bought extravagant gifts, Bobby might have a run for his money.

  “And I’m what’s known in Greek parlance as a GDI,”
r />   he added.

  “GDI?”

  “God-damned independent. In vampire terms, a knighted ronan.”

  “Oh, right,” I answered, thinking quickly back to my vampire vocab. “Knighted ronan” equaled free agent. No clan connection. “And Ballard?”

  “As in J. G. Ballard. The writer.”

  “Oh,” I said again, hoping he wasn’t after me for my mind, because it didn’t seem like it planned to make a showing tonight. I had totally no idea who this J. G. guy was—or even if it was a guy. You never could tell with initials.

  “Shall we?” he asked, tucking my hand through his arm without waiting for my response. Shades of Ulric, the goth guy from my last mission, rose up, and my lips twitched. I still thought about him every once in a while, wondering what he was up to. No good was almost a certainty.

  “I’ve done something right?” Ballard asked, at the sight of my smile.

  “You’ve rescued me from this line, haven’t you?”

  He smiled back at me, and I caught a glimpse of his fake fangs. I wondered how cool I’d be if I showed off the real thing.

  I’m in, I sent mentally to Bobby. The whole telepathy thing was his mojo, not mine, so he had to be tuned in to my wavelength to hear me. Apparently he had more important things to focus on, because I didn’t get an answer.

  Together with a few “excuse me’s,” some more pointed than others, we made our way to the front of the line. Some people gave us dirty looks, but others didn’t dare, waiting to see if we were members of the in-crowd before alienating us. When we got to the bleached-blond vampiress checking IDs and taking cover charges at the front, she took one look at Ballard through her cat’s-eye contact lenses and launched into a full body hug, all of her parts completely flush with his. If he and I were an actual item, I’d have had to take her down.

  “She with you?” cat-woman asked, belatedly giving me a once-over.

  “She is.”

  She sighed. “ID?”

  I slid it out of my cleavage, which widened Ballard’s smile to wolfish. Catwoman didn’t react as she slid the ID beneath a reader and passed it back to me. She stamped our hands with a bat symbol. Very vamp. Ballard hustled me off before I could pay my cover charge. Apparently, he had privileges.

  “I never got your name,” he said, steering me away from the front door and up a spiral staircase directly before us. There were rooms off to the left and right that I’d have to explore later, but for now …

  Well, the name on my ID would be Gail Kuttner, but in the vampire culture I’d go as—“Cosette.”

  “Ah, from Les Misérables.”

  I nodded. I’d been prepped about the origin of my name, but all I really remembered was that she was tragic and French. I hoped that would be enough.

  “Well, Cosette, for the privilege of escaping the queue and the cover charge and for my aid in your introductions, you get to buy our first round,” Ballard said, eyes sparkling as he guided me toward the second floor bar. I just knew there’d be a catch. Clearly, it wasn’t my mind but my money that appealed to him. Although, given the glances he snuck at my cleavage, maybe that wasn’t it entirely.

  To his credit, at least he didn’t order a really expensive drink, just an amber ale. Amateur.

  “Nothing for you?” Ballard asked as I paid the bartender and handed him his beer.

  “I prefer live donors,” I said in complete seriousness.

  “Whoa, slow down. We’ve only just met.”

  “I never said I’d chosen you,” I answered, showing a smile with just a hint of true fang to make it seem like a challenge rather than a diss.

  He bowed to me, careful to keep his beer upright, and straightened with a smile. “Well then, m’lady, I suppose I must prove my worth.”

  I so wanted to launch right into asking him about the killer kids or the club’s illuminati, but it would seem too abrupt and I wasn’t ready to draw suspicion just yet. There was still a lot of recon to consider. The sheer size of the Tower was daunting. I’d seen another staircase leading up, so there were at least three floors of nearly wall-to-wall people. The floor we were now on had mock stone walls and heavy wooden beams, giving the place a dungeonlike look. Here and there were red pennants or banners for a splash of color, which was good, because the predominant palette for the clientele was black—leather, pleather, vinyl, latex, silk, lace … Occasionally, there was midnight blue, maybe even red or hot pink.

  I pointed to a group dancing in bulk out on the dance floor. They wore club clothes, more or less (but mostly less), and sparkled under the sparse lights like fictional vamps

  in sunshine.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Glitter goths,” he answered with a smirk.

  “And them?” I nodded toward a threesome that went by, headed toward the bar. The girls were in spiky boots, black bikini tops, and short skirts, the boy bare-chested in jeans with a silver-studded belt and matching studs on his biker boots.

  “Tourists.”

  “Ah.” I wished I did have a drink to sip. People-watching was thirsty work, especially with so many veins exposed.

  I was just about to ask another question when a girl slunk up to us in what looked like an emerald negligee and glass slippers. She slid a hand over Ballard’s chest and circled around behind him, the hand sliding from his chest down to his stomach as she rested her chin on his shoulder to stare at me.

  “Another newbie?” she asked.

  Thanks to my vamp-o-vision, I could see even in the club’s low lighting that her eyes were the same shade as her gown … nearly the same color as my own, although my eyes were a touch brighter. Hers were the deep green of, yes, emeralds, or shiny new leaves. Mine were the paler, totally more luminescent green of jade or aventurine. She blinked at me—surprised, I thought. Truly green eyes were rare.

  “As you were once,” Ballard answered her. He sighed when she didn’t move along. “Mina, meet Cosette. Cosette, Mina.”

  She held out the hand that had been stroking Ballard’s stomach for me to shake.

  I accepted it, appreciating how well the green polish with black accents matched her dress, much like my ultraviolet went with my corset. A girl after my own unbeating heart. Mina shook, but when I tried to pull back, she refused to let me go. Instead, she slid out from behind Ballard to tuck my hand through her arm, as he himself had done earlier.

  “What are your plans with this one?” she asked.

  “She wants an introduction to the Burgess Brigade.”

  “Ah.” Mina looked me over, disconcertingly close. “Are you an aviatrix? An inventor? A doxy?”

  My mouth might have fallen open. “Uh, I don’t think so.”

  “Then they won’t have you. Come, I know who will. He’s a collector, of sorts, and you are just his type.”

  “Mina,” Ballard growled, like a warning. “Back off.”

  “But darling, surely you meant to present her to the Regent.” There was a warning to her voice as well. If I hadn’t been used to dealing with actual vamps, who could put some mesmeric mojo behind their words, the whole thing might have seemed a lot more ominous.

  Ballard didn’t look too happy about it, but he followed along beside Mina as she dragged me off through the throngs of people.

  The hard-hitting beat of the music seemed to die down as we ascended the staircase to the third floor. We could almost talk without shouting or getting up-close-and-personal with each other’s earwax.

  “What’s upstairs?” I asked.

  Mina swiveled her head to share an amused look with Ballard. “She really is a newbie, isn’t she?”

  “Asked and answered,” he said, more like a lawyer than the writer he was named for.

  “The court, darling,” she answered then, stroking my arm so lingeringly that I wondered if she was entirely straight. “I want you to meet Vlad … or, more specifically, I want him to meet you.”

  I looked back at Ballard as if he were my touchstone, since I’d
known him a whole quarter-hour longer. I knew about the human vampire court, of course. It had been part of the Feds’ crash course in Vamp Culture 101, but Vlad ? As in Vlad Drakul? Since the clubbers weren’t supposed to know about the true vamps, surely not. Vlad had to be just another pseudonym, like Mina, Ballard, or Cosette, and not the real thing … although that would be wicked cool.

  “So, the court—that’s where you bring up issues, settle disputes and all that, right?” I asked. “Figure out how to deal with public relations disasters?”

  Mina’s steps slowed and stopped, to the frustration of the people behind us on the staircase, who clucked disapprovingly and went around, shooting us meaningful glares.

  “Public relations disasters?” she said through clenched teeth. “Like—”

  I pulled my hand from her arm, not about to play this all meek and backpedaly. “Oh, come on, the story’s been all over the news. The cult, or whatever, of kids that killed that family. Witnesses are saying they’re vampires.”

  Ballard snorted. Mina’s eyes narrowed as she watched me like a hawk who’d spotted movement and hadn’t yet decided if it was worth the effort to swoop in. “You’re not press, are you?”

  I looked down at myself—cleavage, rosebud, skirt slit to my nonexistent skivvies. “Do I look like a reporter?”

  “She’s got you there,” Ballard said with a laugh.

  Mina’s face relaxed. “PR nightmare, yes, but those kids aren’t with us. In fact, the one whose face is all over the news—Dion—he was banished. Definitely not one of us.”

  “Okay,” I answered. “Sorry if I offended. I just figured that’s why the cops were parked out front and all, because of some connection. I didn’t know the topic was taboo.”

  “More like closed,” Ballard said, stepping up between Mina and me and offering his arm to get us on the move again. “We’ve told the police everything we know.”

  “So why are they staking the place out?” I asked, pushing it, but, you know—no guts, no glory.