"Give this to me," he demanded, his lips brushing the words against her skin. His hand slipped farther, edging between her coat and shirt, cupping her breast. "Everything . . ." he breathed, his exhalation filling her, making her whole.

In a breathless wave, instinct rose, crushing her will. No! she panicked even as her body writhed for it. It would turn her into a whore, break her will and crack the lie that kept her sane. But with a frightened jolt, Ivy realized her lips had parted to say yes.

Reality flashed through her, and with a surge of fear, she kneed him in the crotch.

Art let go, falling to kneel before her, his hands covering himself. Not waiting, she fell back a step and snapped a front kick to his jaw. His head rocked back and he hit the floor beside the bed. "You stupid bitch," he gasped.

"Ass," she panted, trembling as her body rebelled at the sudden shift of passions. She stood above him, fighting the desire to fall on him, sink her teeth into him while he knelt helpless before her. Damn it, she had to get out of this room. Two unrequited plays for her blood in one night was pushing it.

Slowly Art lost his hunched position and started to chuckle. Ivy felt her face flame. "Get off the floor," she snapped, backing up. "They haven't vacuumed yet."

Still laughing, Art rolled onto his side. "This is going to be one hell of a week," he said, then hesitated, eyes on the carpet just beyond the bedspread knocked askew. "Give me a collection bag," he said, reaching into his back pocket.

Bloodlust still ringing in her, Ivy came forward, pulled by his intent tone. "What is it?"

"Give me a bag," he repeated, his expensive suit clashing with the ugly carpet.

She hesitated, then scooped up the bags from where they had fallen. Checking the time, Ivy jotted down the date and location before handing it to Art. Still on the floor, Art reached under the bed and rolled something shiny into the light with a pen from his pocket. With an eerie quickness, he flicked it into the bag and stood. The growing brown rim about his pupils said he was in control, and smiling to show his teeth, he lifted the bag to the light.

Seeing his confidence, Ivy felt a flash of despair. It had been a game to him. He had never been in danger of losing his restraint. Shit, she thought, the first fingers of doubt she could do this slithering about her heart.

But then she saw what he held, and her worry turned to understanding-and then true concern. "A banshee tear?" she asked, recognizing the tear-shaped black crystal.

Suddenly the words of the distraught man in the car had a new meaning. I didn't mean to hurt her. It wasn't me. Pity came from nowhere, making the slice of low-income misery surrounding her all the more distasteful. He probably had loved her. It had been a banshee, feeding him rage until he killed his wife, whereupon the banshee wallowed in her death energy.

It was still murder, but the man had been a tool, not the perpetrator. The murderer was at large somewhere in Cincinnati, with the alibi of time and distance making it hard to link her to the crime. That's why the tear had been left as a conduit. The banshee had targeted the couple, followed them home, left a tear when they were out, and when sparks flew, added to the man's rage until he truly wasn't capable of resisting. It wasn't an excuse; it was murder by magic-a magic older than vampires. Perhaps older than witches or demons.

Art shook the bag to make the black jewel glitter before letting his arm drop. "We have every banshee on record. We'll run the tear through the computer and get the bitch."

Ivy nodded, feeling her pupils contract. The I.S. kept close tabs on the small population of banshees, and if one was feeding indiscriminately in Cincinnati, they could expect more deaths before they caught her.

"Now, where were we," Art said, slipping an arm about her waist.

"Bastard," Ivy said, elbowing him in the gut and stepping away. But the strike never landed, and she schooled her face to no emotion when he chuckled at her a good eight feet back. God, he made her feel like a child. "Why don't you go home after the sun comes up," she snarled.

"You offering to tuck me in?"

"Go to hell."

From the hallway came the sounds of soft conversation. The collection van was here. Art breathed deep, bringing the scents of the room into him. His eyes closed and his thin lips curled upward as he exhaled, apparently happy with what he sensed. Ivy didn't need to breathe to know that the room stank of her fear now, mixing with the dead woman's until it was impossible to tell them apart.

"See you back at the tower, Ivy."

Not if I stake you first, she thought, wondering if calling in sick tomorrow was worth the harassment she'd get the next day. She could say she'd been to the doctor about her case of STD-tell everyone she got it from Art.

Art sauntered out of the room, one hand in his pocket, the other dropping the banshee tear onto the entering officer's clipboard. The werewolf's eyes widened, but then he looked up, eyes watering. "Whoa!" he said, nose wrinkling. "What have you two been doing in here?"

"Nothing." Ivy felt cold and small in her leather pants and short coat as she stood in the center of the room and listened to Art say good-bye to Rat and Tia. She forced her hands from her neck to prove it was unmarked.

"Doesn't smell like nothing," the man scoffed. "Smells like someone-"

Ivy glared at him as his words cut off. Adrenaline pulsed, this time from worry. She had contaminated a crime scene with her fear, but the man's eyes held pity, not disgust.

"Are you okay?" he asked softly, his clipboard held to himself as he obviously guessed what had happened. There was too much fear in here for just one person, even a murdered one.

"Fine," she said shortly. Psychic fear levels weren't recorded unless a banshee was involved. That she hadn't known one was, wasn't an excuse. She'd get reprimanded at the least, worse if Art wanted to blackmail her. And he would. Damn it, could she make this any easier for him? Flushed, she scooped up the rest of the collection bags and gave them to the Were.

"I don't know how you can work with the dead ones," the man said, trying to catch her eyes, but Ivy wouldn't let him. "Hell, they scare my tail over my balls just looking at me."

"I said, I'm fine," she muttered. "I want it vacuumed, dusted, and photographed. Don't bother with a fear level profile. I contaminated it." She could keep quiet about it, but she'd rather suffer an earned reprimand than Art's blackmail. "Keep the tear from the press," she added, glancing at it, small and innocuous on his clipboard. "The last thing we need is the city in a panic, calling us every time a high schooler cries over her boyfriend."

The man nodded. His stubble was thick, and stifling the thought of how it would feel to rake her fingers and then her teeth over it, Ivy strode from the room, fleeing the stink of the dead woman's fear. She didn't like how it smelled exactly like her own.

Ivy passed quickly through the living room and into the hallway, trying not to breathe. She should have planned this, not made a fool of herself by acting on impulse. Because of her assumptions, Art had her by the short hairs. Avoiding him the rest of her day was going to be impossible. Maybe she could spend it researching banshees. The files were stored in the upper levels. Art might follow her, but the Inderlander ratio would be slanted to witch and Were, not only reducing the pheromone levels, but also making it easier to pull out early since the entire tower above ground emptied at midnight with their three to twelve shift. Only the belowground offices maintained the variable sunset to sunrise schedule.

Wine, she thought, forcing herself to look confident and casual when she emerged on the stoop and found the lights of a news crew already illuminating the parking lot. She'd pick up two bottles on the way home so Kisten would be drunk enough not to care if she hurt him.

THREE.

Even with her intentions to leave at midnight, the sun was up by the time Ivy was idling her bike through the Hollows's rush-hour traffic, winding her way to the waterfront and the spacious apartment she and Kisten shared above Piscary's restaurant. That she worked for the force that policed the underground he controlled wasn't surprising or unintentional, but prudent planning. Though not on the payroll, Piscary ran the I.S. through a complicated system of favors. He still had to obey the laws-or at least not get caught breaking them lest he get hauled in like anyone else. It reminded Ivy of what Camelot had probably really been like.

Her mother had worked in the top of the I.S. hierarchy until she died, and Ivy knew that was where she and Piscary wanted Ivy to be. Piscary dealt in gambling and protection-on paper, both legal ways to make his money-and the master vampire had more finesse than to put her where she'd have to choose between doing what he wanted and what her job required. The corruption was that bad.

Or that good, Ivy thought, checking to see that the guy behind her was watching before she slowed and turned left into the restaurant's parking lot. If it hadn't been for the threat of Piscary coming down on aggressive vampires in backstreet justice, the I.S. wouldn't be able to cope. She was sure that was why most people, including the FIB, looked the other way. The I.S. was corrupt, but the people actually in charge of the city did a good job keeping it civilized.

Ivy slowed her bike by the door to the kitchen and cut the engine, scanning the empty lot. It was Wednesday, and whereas any other day of the week the restaurant would be emptying out of the last stragglers, today it was deserted. Piscary liked a day of rest. At least she wouldn't have to dodge the waitstaff and their questions as to why her eyes were half dilated. She needed either a long bubble bath before bed, or Kisten, or both.

The breeze off the nearby river was cool and carried the scent of oil and gas. Taking a breath to clear her mind, she pushed the service door open with the wheel of her bike. It didn't even have a lock to let the produce trucks make their deliveries at all hours. No one would steal from Piscary. For all appearances he obeyed the law, but somehow, you'd find yourself dead anyway.

Purse and twin wine bottles in hand, she left her bike beside the crates of tomatoes and mushrooms and took the cement steps to the kitchen two at a time. She passed the dark counters and cold ovens without seeing them. The faint odor of rising yeast mixed with the lingering odors of the vampires who worked here, and she felt herself relax, her boots making a soft cadence on the tiled floor. The scent brought to memory thoughts of her summers working in the kitchen and, when old enough, on the floor as a waitress. She hadn't been innocent, but then the ugliness had been lost in the glare of the thrill. Now it just made her tired.

Her pulse quickened when she passed the thick door that led to the elevator and Piscary's underground apartments. The thought that he would meet her with soothing hands and calculated sympathy was enough to bring her blood to the surface, but her irritation that he was manipulating her kept her moving into the bar. He wouldn't call her to him, knowing it would cause her more mental anguish to come begging to him when she could take no more, desperate for the reassurance that he still loved her.

It was comfortingly silent in the restaurant proper, and the low ceilings and dim atmosphere seemed to follow her into the closed-party rooms in the back. A wide stairway behind a door led to the private second floor. Her hand traced the wall for balance as she rose up the wide, black-wood stairs, eager to find Kisten and an understanding ear that wasn't attached to a manipulating mind.

She and Kisten lived in the converted apartment that took up the entire top floor of the old shipping warehouse. Ivy liked the openness, arbitrarily dividing it into spaces with folding screens and strategically placed furniture. The windows were spacious and smeared on the outside with the dirt and grime of forty years. Piscary didn't like being that exposed, and this granted the two of them a measure of security.

Wine bottles clinking, Ivy set them on the table at the top of the stairs, thinking she and Kisten were like two abused children, craving the attention of the very person who had warped them, loving him out of desperation. It was an old thought, one that had lost its sting long ago.

Shuffling off her coat, she set it and her purse by the wine. "Kist?" she called, her voice filling the silence. "I'm home." She picked the bottles back up and frowned. Maybe she should have gotten three.

There was no answer, and as she headed back toward the kitchen to chill the wine, the scent of blood shivered through her like an electrical current. It wasn't Kisten's.

Her feet stopped, and she breathed deeply. Her head swiveled to the corner where the deliverymen had put her baby grand last week. It had dented her finances more than the bike, but the sound of it in this emptiness made her forget everything until the echoes faded.

"Kist?"

She heard him take a breath, but didn't see him. Her face blanked and every muscle tightened as she paced to the couches arranged about her piano. The dirty sunshine pooling in glinted on the black sheen of the wood, and she found him there, kneeling on the white Persian rug between the couch and the piano, a girl in tight jeans, a black lacy shirt, and a worn leather coat sprawled before him.

Kisten lifted his head, an unusual panic in his blue eyes. "I didn't do it," he said, his bloodied hands hovering over the corpse.

Shit. Dropping the bottles on the couch, Ivy swung into motion, moving to kneel before them. Habit made her check for a pulse, but it was obvious by her pallor and the gentle mauling on her neck that the petite blonde was dead despite her warmth.

"I didn't do it," Kisten said again, shifting his trim, pretty-boy body back a few inches. His hands, strong and muscular, were shaking, the tops of his fingernails red with a light sheen. Ivy looked from them to his face, seeing the fear in his almost delicate features that he hid behind a reddish blond beard. A smear of blood was on his forehead behind his brown bangs, and she stifled an urge to kiss it away that both disgusted and intrigued her. This is not who I wanted to be.

"I didn't do it, Ivy!" he exclaimed at her continued silence, and she reached over the girl and brushed his too-long bangs back. The gentle swelling of black in his gaze made her breath catch. God, he was beautiful when he was agitated.

"I know you didn't," she said, and Kisten's wide shoulders relaxed, making her wonder if that was why he was upset. It wasn't that he had to take care of Piscary's mistake, but that Ivy might think he had killed her. And somewhere in there, she found that he loved her.

The pretty woman was Piscary's favorite body type with long fair hair and an angular face. She probably had blue eyes. Shit, shit, and more shit. Mind calculating how to minimize the damage, she asked, "How long has she been dead?"

"Minutes. No more than that." Kisten's resonant voice dropped to a more familiar pitch. "I was trying to find out where she was staying and get her cleaned up, but she died right here on the couch. Piscary . . ." He met her eyes, reaching up to tug on a twin pair of diamond-stud earrings. "Piscary told me to take care of it."

Ivy shifted her weight to her feet, easing back to sit on the edge of the nearby couch. It wasn't like Kisten to panic like this. He was Piscary's scion, the person the undead vampire had tapped to manage the bar, do his daylight work, and clean up his mistakes. Mistakes that were usually four foot eleven, blond, and a hundred pounds. Damn it all to hell. Piscary hadn't slipped like this since she had left to finish high school on the West Coast.

"Did she sign the release papers?" she asked.

"Do you think I'd be this upset if she had?" Kisten arranged the small woman's hair as if it would help. God, she looked fourteen, though Ivy knew she'd be closer to twenty.

Ivy's lips pressed together and she sighed. So much for getting any sleep this morning. "Get the plastic wrap from the piano out of the recycling bin," she said in decision, and Kisten rose, tugging the tails of his silk shirt down over the tops of his jeans. "We open in eight hours for the early Inderland crowd, and I don't want the place smelling like dead girl."

Kisten rocked into motion, headed for the stairs. "Move faster, unless you want to have the carpet steam cleaned!" Ivy called, and she heard him jump to the floor from midway down.

Tired, Ivy looked at the woman's abandoned purse on the couch, too emotionally exhausted to figure out how she should feel. Kisten was Piscary's scion, but it was Ivy who did most of the thinking in a pinch. It wasn't that Kisten was stupid-far from it-but he was used to having her take over. Expected it. Liked it.

Wondering if Piscary had killed the girl on purpose to force Kisten to take responsibility, Ivy stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes going to the filthy windows and the river hazy in the morning sun. It sounded just like the manipulative bastard. If Ivy had succumbed to Art, she would have spent the morning at his place-not only obediently taking the next step to the management position Piscary wanted for her, but forcing Kisten to handle this alone. That things hadn't gone the way he planned probably delighted Piscary; he took pride in her defiance, anticipating a more delicious fall when she could fight no longer.

Warped, ruined, ugly, she thought, watching the tourist paddleboats steam as they stoked their boilers. Was there any time she hadn't been?

The sliding sound of plastic brought her around, and with no wasted motion or eye contact, she and Kisten rolled the woman onto it before her bowels released. Crossing her arms over her like an Egyptian mummy, they wrapped her tightly. Ivy watched her hands, not the plastic-blurred face of the woman, trying to divorce herself from what they were doing as they passed the duct tape Kisten had brought around her like lights on a Christmas tree.

Only when she had been transformed from a person to an object did Kisten exhale, slow and long. Ivy would cry for her later. Then cry for herself. But only when no one could hear.

"Refrigerator," Ivy said, and Kisten balked. Ivy looked at him as she stood bent over the corpse with her hands already under the woman's shoulders. "Just until we decide what to do. Danny will be here in four hours to start the dough and press the pasta. We don't have time to ditch the body and clean up."

Kisten's eyes went to the blood-smeared rug. He lifted a foot and winced at the tacky brown smear on it, tracked downstairs and back again. "Yeah," he said, his fake British accent gone, then took the long bundle entirely from Ivy and hoisted it over his shoulder.

Ivy couldn't help but feel proud of him for catching his breath so quickly. He was only twenty-three, having taken on Piscary's scion position at the age of seventeen when Ivy's mother had accidentally died five years ago and abdicated the position. Piscary was active in his control of Cincinnati, and Kisten had little more to do than tidy up after the master vamp and keep him happy. Stifling her tinge of jealousy that Kisten had the coveted position was easy.

Piscary's savage tutorial had made her old before she had begun to live. She wouldn't think about what she was doing until it was over. Kisten hadn't yet learned the trick and lived every moment as it happened, instead of over and over in his mind as she did. It made him slower to react, more . . . human. And she loved him for it.

"Is there a car to get rid of?" she asked, already on damage control. She hadn't noticed one in the parking lot, but she hadn't been looking.

"No." Kisten headed downstairs with her following, his vampire strength handling the weight without stress. "She came in with Piscary right around midnight."

"Off the street?" she asked in disbelief, glad the restaurant had been closed.

"No. The bus station. Apparently she's an old friend."

Ivy glanced at the woman over his shoulder. She was only twenty at the most. How old a friend could she be? Piscary didn't like children, despite her size. It was looking more and more likely Piscary had orchestrated this to help Kisten stand on his own. Not only planned it, but built in the net of the woman's cryptic origins in case Kisten should fall. The master vamp hadn't counted on Ivy catching him first, and she felt a pang of what she would call love for Kisten-if she knew she could feel the emotion without tainting it with the desire for blood.

Ivy caught sight of Kisten's grimace when she moved to open the door to the kitchen. "Piscary killed her on purpose," he said, adjusting the woman's weight on his shoulder, and Ivy nodded, not wanting to tell him about her own part in the lesson.

Tucking a fabric napkin from the waiting stack into her waistband, she yanked up the handle of the walk-in refrigerator and slid a box with her foot to prop it open. Kisten was right behind her, and in the odd combination of moist coldness Piscary insisted his cheese be kept at, she moved a side of lamb thawing out for Friday's buffet, insulating her hands with the napkin to prevent heat marks from making it obvious someone had moved it.

Behind the hanging slab was a long low bed of boxes, and Kisten laid the woman there, covering the blur of human features with a tablecloth. Ivy had the fleeting memory of seeing a similar bundle there once before. She and Kisten had been ten and playing hide-and-seek while their parents finished their wine and conversation. Piscary had told them she was someone from a fairy tale and to play in the abandoned upstairs. Seemed like they were still playing upstairs, but now the games were more convoluted and less under their control.

Kisten met her eyes, their deep blue full of recollection. "Sleeping Beauty," he said, and Ivy nodded. That was what they had called the corpse. Feeling like a little girl hiding a broken dish, she moved the slab of lamb back to partially hide the body.

Cold from more than the temperature, she followed him out, kicking the box out of the way and leaning against the door when it shut. Her eyes went to the time clock by the door. "I'll get the living room and stairs if you take the elevator," she said, not wanting to chance running into Piscary. He wouldn't be angry with her for helping Kisten. No, he'd be so amused she had put off Art again that he would invite her into his bed, and she would quiver inside and go to him, forgetting all about Kisten and what she had been doing. God, she hated herself.

Kisten reached for the mop and she added, "Use a new mop head, then put the old one back on when you're done. We're going to have to burn it along with the rug."

"Right," he said, his jaw flushing as it clenched. While Kisten filled a bucket, Ivy made a fresh batch of the spray they wiped the restaurant tables down with. Diluted, it removed the residual vamp pheromones, but at full strength, it would break down the blood enzymes that most cleaning detergents left behind. Maybe it was a little overkill, but she was a careful girl.

It would be unlikely to have the woman traced here, but it wasn't so much for eliminating her presence from a snooping I.S. or FIB agent as it was avoiding having the restaurant smell like blood other than hers and Kisten's. That might lead to questions concerning whether the restaurant's mixed public license, or MPL, had been violated. Ivy didn't think her explanation that, no, no one had been bitten on the premises-Piscary had drained a woman in his private apartments-and therefore the MPL was intact, would go over well. From the amount of aggravation Piscary had endured to get his MPL reinstated the last time some fool Were high on Brimstone had drawn blood, she thought he'd prefer a trial and jail to losing his MPL again. But the real reason Ivy was being so thorough was that she didn't want her apartment smelling like anyone but her and Kisten.

Her thoughts brought her gaze back to him. He looked nice with his head bowed over the bucket, his light bangs shifting in the water droplets being flung up as it filled.

Clearly unaware of her scrutiny, he turned the water off. "I am such an ass," he said, watching the ripples settle.

"That's what I like about you," she said, worried she might have made him feel inadequate by taking over.

"I am." He didn't look at her, hands clenching the rim of the plastic bucket. "I froze. I was so damn worried about what you were going to say when you came home and found me with a dead girl, I couldn't think."

Finding a compliment in there, she smiled, digging through a drawer to get a new mop head. "I knew you didn't kill her. She had Piscary all over her."

"Damn it, Ivy!" Kisten exclaimed, lashing the flat of his hand out to hit the spigot, and there was a crack of metal. "I should be better than this! I'm his fucking scion!"

Ivy's shoulders dropped. Sliding the drawer shut, she went to him and put her hands on his shoulders. They were hard with tension, and he did nothing to acknowledge her touch. Tugging into him, she pressed her cheek against his back, smelling the lingering fear on him, and the woman's blood. Eyes closing, she felt her bloodlust assert itself. Death and blood didn't turn on a vampire. Fear and the chance to take blood did. There was a difference.

Her hands eased around his front, fingers slipping past the buttons to find his abs. Only now did Kist bow his head, softening into her touch. Her teeth were inches from an old scar she had given him. The intoxicating smell of their scents mixing hit her, and she swallowed. The headiest lure of all. Her chest pressed into him as she breathed deep, intentionally bringing his scent into her, luring fingers of sexual excitement to stir along her spine. "Don't worry about it," she said, her voice low.

"You'd be a better scion then I am," he said bitterly. "Why did he pick me?"

She didn't think this was about which one of them was his scion but his stress looking for an outlet. Giving in to her urge, she lifted onto her toes to reach his ear. "Because you like people more than I do," she said. "Because you're better at talking to them, getting them to do what you want and having them think it was their idea. I just scare people."

He turned, slowly so he would stay in her arms. "I run a bar," he said, eyes downcast. "You work for the I.S. You tell me which is more valuable."

Ivy's arms slipped to his waist, pressing him back into the edge of the sink. "I'm sorry for the pizza delivery crap," she said, meaning it. "You aren't running a bar, you're learning Cincinnati, what moves who, and who will do anything for whom. Me?" Her attention went to the wisp of hair showing at the V of his shirt. "I'm learning how to kiss ass and suck neck."

His gaze hard with self-recrimination, Kisten shook his head. "Piscary dropped a dead girl in my lap, and I sat over her and wrung my hands. You walked in and things happened. What about the next time when it's something important and I fuck it up?"