Actually this attempt was an utter disaster.

Sebastian twisted the doorknob and stepped aside to allow her in. The door opened into an entryway with dark hardwood floors and burgundy walls. She paused again, her senses telling her this was dangerous. She shouldn't be alone with this vampire. He was untrustworthy and potentially very dangerous.

Then she recalled that Sebastian lived with his brother, Rhys. She knew of him from Dr. Fowler, the scientist whose foundation had proved the truth about preternatural beings. Rhys had become a believer in Fowler's teachings. She knew he could be trusted. In fact, maybe getting to know him and his mate would be a way to put a stop to his brother's biting ways. They must disapprove of his behavior, too.

Sebastian led her through a small kitchen to a spacious living room. This room also had dark hardwood floors and was decorated in a deep plum color with oversized gray furniture and heavy wooden end tables. The walls were lined with shelves full of books, and a gray marble fireplace created the focal point of the room.

Wilhelmina was surprised. It was hardly the place where she would have expected the infamous Sebastian Young to spend his time. She pictured a place of seduction. Not coziness and warmth.

This had to be his brother's influence. She concentrated, trying to sense other presences in the apartment. She couldn't detect any.

"Doesn't your brother live with you?" she asked.

"Rhys lives in the apartment above this. I used to live up there too, but once he married his wife, Jane, I thought I should give them their space. I had this place built about six months ago."

He'd had the apartment built like this for himself? She gaped around. Where were the mirrored ceilings? Not that a vampire would likely have mirrors. But where was the shag carpeting? The low, colored, recessed lighting? The piped-in porn music?

Then the realization that she was alone with him hit her. A shiver ran down her spine. Cozy or not, what if he did bring her up here to do something nefarious? Surely, he was furious about the flooded backroom. Surely, he was going to chastise her in some way.

She stepped back from him, her eyes on the door. If she remained calm, she could likely make it back to the hallway and the elevator before he caught her. She glanced at him, noting his long legs and lean muscles. Maybe she could. Maybe.

But rather than approach her with a villainous glint in his intense golden eyes, he strode away from her and opened another heavy wooden door on the other side of the room.

"Here's the bathroom, if you'd like to dry off."

Although there didn't seem to be anything menacing about his offer, she still regarded him uneasily.

He flipped on the light and pushed the door wide. "See, it's a bathroom. Really."

She nodded, feeling a little foolish, then slowly crossed the room. The bathroom was also large with a separate shower and whirlpool bathtub. But that was the only decadent luxury in the room. The decor was gray marble, both functional and stylish.

He crossed to a closet near the shower. She stood near the bathroom door, watching him. He pulled out a towel, then he strolled toward her.

Ha! Here we go. Now he was going to suggest she undress or something equally rude and offensive. She shivered, another tingle shimmying over her flesh.

He simply held the plain white towel out to her.

"Here you go. And help yourself to anything you want."

He grabbed a towel for himself and headed toward the door.

"Wait," she said more sharply than she intended, her voice echoing off the tile. He paused and turned back to her, arching an eyebrow.

"Aren't-aren't you going to fire me?" she asked, her voice now much softer, and irritatingly to herself, a little shaky.

Sebastian shook his head. "No. Accidents happen." He offered her another smile and left the room.

Wilhelmina remained motionless, the towel held loosely in her hand. She couldn't believe it. He wasn't going to fire her. Her plans for him and Carfax Abbey weren't thwarted.

She wondered why she didn't feel more pleased.

Chapter 3.

"Oh my God! What happened?"

Wilhelmina stepped into her apartment and dropped her purse on the floor. She brushed her still damp hair from her face, and toed off her wet shoes before answering her roommate, Lizzie.

Lizzie sat on the sofa, a huge platter of nachos balanced on her lap. Her long legs curled under her, her glossy amber hair loose around her shoulders. As usual, she looked lovely, making Wilhelmina all the more aware of her drowned-rat impersonation.

"Well," she stated, "I set off a sprinkler."

Lizzie set the nachos on the coffee table and leaned forward, excitement lighting her pale blue eyes.

"You did?" Then she paused. "Wait,a sprinkler?"

Wilhelmina nodded and held up a single finger.

"Why? What happened?"

Wilhelmina flopped into a chair that took up a majority of one corner of the small room. She ignored the fact that her dress was dampening the chenille cushions.

"Apparently when you light a fire under a sprinkler only that sprinkler goes off, not all of them."

"Well, they all go off in the movies."

"I know," Wilhelmina agreed, still disgruntled about the whole fiasco and her trust in cinematic truth.

"And, unfortunately, it gets worse."

Lizzie paused, a nacho dripping with cheese and meat halfway to her mouth.

"Not only did I set off only the one sprinkler, but I slipped and fell into the water. In front of him."

"Oh no." But Wilhelmina couldn't help noticing that Lizzie didn't seem surprised.

Then Lizzie's pale eyes lit up. "Super-Fang's back?"

Wilhelmina frowned at the nickname Lizzie had given Sebastian. Granted she didn't know his real name or the name of the club. Only registered members knew that information. Which, given how dangerous Sebastian was, seemed a little self-defeating. Not to mention Lizzie could probably hold her own with the vampire. Still, she had the feeling her roommate wasn't taking Wilhelmina's mission seriously.

"Yes, he returned to deal with the police investigation on the accusation that Carfax Abbey was serving minors."

"That was a good one," Lizzie said. "I thought that one would work."

Wilhelmina nodded. So had she. She sighed. "So all my sabotage attempts have managed to do so far is lure the nefarious vampire back to his club to witness me falling in the small flood I created." She sighed. "That ought to stop his evil ways."

Lizzie shook her head, giving her a sympathetic smile. She popped the nacho into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

Wilhelmina watched her, wishing she could drown her sorrows with a little binge-eating.

"Well, it sounds like you made a good attempt," Lizzie said as she munched another nacho, and then she uncurled from the sofa, her impossibly long legs elegant even in jeans. "And he didn't fire you."

She picked up the platter and headed toward the kitchen before she spun back to her. "He didn't fire you, did he?"

"No," Wilhelmina said, still unsure how she felt about that surprising fact.

"That's good, right?" Lizzie gave her an encouraging smile and disappeared into the kitchen. Wilhelmina closed her eyes and let her head fall against the back of the chair.

She appreciated Lizzie's support especially since she knew her new roommate thought that Wilhelmina's involvement with the Society was a bit out there. But her sympathetic smiles only managed to make Wilhelmina feel more like a failure.

She knew Lizzie was only being supportive because she was a friend. She never asked for many details, although she had tried to help with sabotage ideas. Lizzie seemed to like the idea of that, even though Lizzie thought most of the work the Society of Preternaturals did was silly. She wasn't for the integration of preternatural creatures. She wanted a cure for them. That was where her energy was focused. Her research.

But until, or even if, a cure was found, Wilhelmina felt that she had to help mortals any way she could. Even if it meant sabotaging one preternatural hotspot at a time.

Wilhelmina shivered, even though her bloodless skin didn't register the coldness of her damp clothing as it would have if she were human. But she'd been shivering since she'd gotten wet, since she'd...

An image of Carfax Abbey's owner appeared behind her closed lids. In some ways, he'd been exactly what she imagined, and in others... in others, he'd been very different. Like his unexpected reaction to the water damage. He'd handled the whole debacle with an easygoing amusement that she hadn't expected in an arrogant, dissolute, and wicked vampire. He'd even helped mop up the water himself. Although he had still looked every inch the decadent vampire doing it.

That was another reaction she hadn't anticipated-her fascination with his physical appearance. She'd encountered many beautiful vampires in her existence, and she'd been fully prepared for Sebastian's good looks. Or at least she'd thought so. And still she'd found herself watching him throughout the remainder of her shift, which he'd actually cut short, sending her home because she didn't have any other dry clothes to put on. She hadn't expected that from the infamous vampire either. Consideration.

She opened her eyes. She couldn't let his laid-back manner fool her. That was part of his charm, part of his lure, used to disguise the monster underneath.

"So what about the club owner?" Lizzie called from the kitchen. "Was he all that the Society had made him out to be?"

Wilhelmina frowned. Sometimes she really hated Lizzie's animalistic ability to guess her train of thought. Wilhelmina didn't want anyone picking up the feelings stirring inside her at the moment. Surprising notions about how intriguing she'd found the owner.

No, no, no! She only found him interesting because he was her opponent, her nemesis. She was wise to study him. And she was equally as wise to remember that he was beautiful and mesmerizing in just the same way a flame was to a moth.

Let's face it, the moth never made out well in that attraction. She knew that firsthand.

"Well?" Lizzie asked again as she re-entered the room, a large glass of iced tea in one hand and three packages of Twinkies in the other.

Wilhelmina shook her head. If Lizzie were human, she'd weigh three hundred pounds. But then, if she were human, she wouldn't have an enormous appetite. Lycanthropes really could pack it away.

Lizzie sank onto the sofa and arched a dark brow at Wilhelmina. "So? What was Super-Fang like?"

Wilhelmina frowned, another image of Sebastian appearing in her head. His golden eyes and lopsided smile.

"Dangerous. Very, very dangerous."

Lizzie nodded as she took a large bite of her snack cake. "So what's the next plan of attack?"

Wilhelmina sighed, and for just a moment, she considered putting an end to this crazy idea. But she

couldn't let herself do that. She believed in what she was doing. She just needed to remain determined. She would see Carfax Abbey closed down. Unfortunately, she'd used her two best plans, and they'd both failed.

"I don't know," she finally admitted.

"What about the idea to empty all the vodka and gin bottles and fill them with water?"

Wilhelmina winced. Had she actually thought that would stop the club's business?

"No. That won't work."

"You could also replace all the whiskey and bourbon with tea," Lizzie said, raising the glass of

amber-colored liquid to demonstrate before taking a sip.

"I don't think that would do much, except cost him some money."

"Probably not," Lizzie agreed, then she smiled slyly. "But it would be sort of fun."

"What if I put something in the beer that would make the human patrons sick?" Wilhelmina suggested.

Lizzie shook her head. "No. Food poisoning is a dicey proposition. Humans are fragile, and you

wouldn't want to mortally injure the ones you're trying to save."

Wilhelmina nodded. That was true.

They both fell silent as they considered other possibilities.

"You know," Lizzie finally said, "I'd just go into the club before it's opened and burn the place to the

ground. That would certainly stop him." Wilhelmina shook her head. Lizzie had been right when she'd said that Wilhelmina didn't want to hurt anyone. She didn't. She wanted to stop what happened at the club, but she didn't want to do anything that would truly hurt someone. She wasn't a radical who believed that sometimes violence was the means to an end. Although some of the members of the Society did feel that way. She just wanted mortals to be safe from sadistic, self-serving vampires. She wished there had been someone out there who'd done the same for her.

"Okay," Lizzie agreed, "no burning to the ground. Let me think." She ripped open another package of Twinkies.

Wilhelmina watched her, trying to think of something that would cause the club to be closed down for

longer than an evening. Fire was out. Water damage was out-too much fire needed. Tampering with the liquor, ineffectual. Food poisoning-too dangerous. What did that leave?

"I've got it," Wilhelmina said, suddenly. "Health inspectors."