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  “Estelle.” A tall, elegant vampire popped out from behind a shelf and gave Estelle a stiff nod before looking at Stephan. “Who do we have here?”

  “Stephan, this is Dr. Raoul Montega, head librarian. Raoul, meet Stephan Daker, official masquerada liaison to Wavena, deputy to the North American Hierarch and a personal friend.”

  Best to make the relationships clear from the beginning. Raoul could be sniffy to those he considered not of his social or professional calibre. She almost wished Stephan hadn’t changed from shorts, out of a petty desire to see Raoul’s reaction.

  Raoul stared at Stephan. “A masquerada. I see. A word, Estelle?”

  Estelle put on a smile. She would try to keep it friendly but it looked as if Raoul was going to be difficult. “I don’t think that’s necessary. Stephan will have the same library access as I do.”

  Raoul went still. “This is very unusual for visitors. Especially this kind of visitor.”

  She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “He will also be given every assistance you and your team can offer. In fact, assign him someone to help.”

  “This is an outrage,” Raoul sputtered. “Only Wavena and the seneschal get that kind of service.”

  There it was. “Have you forgotten who I am?” she asked sweetly.

  “You’re acting seneschal.”

  Enough. Estelle let her fangs show, an unmistakable act of aggression. “Tell you what, Raoul. I’m taking our honored guest to a study room. Get back to me with who’s going to be giving us a hand.”

  “This is my library,” he said, leaning forward. “You don’t give me orders in my library.”

  “Keep this up and it won’t be yours for long.” She had a job to do.

  “Is that a threat?” He sounded disbelieving. “You are threatening me?”

  “If asking you to extend a valued visitor the appropriate courtesy is a threat, then I suppose I am.” She bared her fangs again and Raoul’s fists clenched.

  Before she could take it further, Stephan’s hand landed on her arm. “Let’s go in,” he said calmly. “Estelle, where do you want to sit?”

  The best room was in the north corner and this was where she went, fighting the urge to put that idiot Raoul in his place before they left. The head librarian was an unabashed snob, but she’d never had a problem with him like this before.

  Once the glass door closed behind them, she checked to see what Raoul was doing. He was already on the phone, no doubt calling Wavena for confirmation. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Of course you’re welcome here. Raoul is a bit old-fashioned. He’s also a friend of Felix’s, so who knows what he’s been hearing from my brother.”

  “Old-fashioned. You mean a bigot?”

  She shook her head. “I knew he was proud of his lineage, but I’d never experienced that before. He’s always been nice to me.”

  He laughed. “Well, yeah.”

  “What do you mean?” She frowned, confused. He’d said it like he’d met Raoul before.

  Stephan groaned. “Estelle, he is a vampire. You are a vampire and second only to Wavena. Of course he’s nice to you.”

  Estelle opened her mouth to argue but then shut it immediately. How blind was she? Stephan was right.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Not your fault he’s like that.” Stephan opened his laptop and his typing indicated a clear end to the conversation. Estelle bit back another apology. Raoul’s nasty small-mindedness had become more prevalent and accepted among vampires over the last two years. The masquerada Franz Iverson, who as well as being a total dick who had tried to kill both Eric and Caro, had built a base united by a sense of shifter dominance. After his death, the surviving members banded into the Dawning with other like-minded arcana to forward his goal of enslaving humanity. The ancient masquerada Yangzei had taken the movement over, sparking fears of a masquerada ascendancy.

  Vampires, almost equaling the masquerada in political power and numbers, were not pleased at this prospect and unfortunately, some loudmouth fools were taking advantage of this.

  “Mai says Jimmy is still gone,” Stephan reported, scanning his screen. “She spoke with his parents and friends. No Dawning leanings.”

  “If he was on that team, he would have been vetted heavily,” she said. “Could someone from the Dawning have turned him traitor?”

  Stephan shook his head. “Jimmy was with me when we found one of Iverson’s cells. There were five dead from failed masquerada transformations. He took it hard.”

  Estelle mulled this over. She needed data. “We need numbers. Get Mai to run down every missing masquerada she can and divide them into who had Dawning leanings and who didn’t. We’ll do the same here.”

  “What about the lithu?” Stephan asked as he typed.

  “They’ve never been involved in arcane affairs,” she said. “Ignore them for now.”

  “How many are there?” he asked curiously.

  She sighed. The relationship between lithu and vampires was fraught and she didn’t want to get sidetracked. “We don’t know, but there are far fewer than there are vampires. They keep to themselves.”

  “Surely you must have some idea,” he pressed.

  “Because all blood-eaters should be buddies?”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “Sure sounded like it. We have no more to do with the lithu than you do.” They stayed out of the lithu’s very scary way. Vampires learned stories about the terrible lithu from an early age: They could ingest only blood and could even become invisible. They were the equivalent of boogeymen for human children.

  Stephan bent back to his laptop and she sighed. Their conversations kept devolving into this stupid bickering. It wasn’t even fun, sexy bickering, but draining and inefficient. She thought about it. It was her turf. She was one of the highest-ranked vampires in the realm. It was her responsibility to be the bigger person and make sure the two of them could work together.

  Then she looked over at his face, closed and not giving an inch, and wanted to throw every book in the place at him.

  Chapter 7

  Stephan stared at his laptop. He was the guest. Eric was depending on him to make this relationship with the vampires work. Yangzei was a masquerada and the Dawning had its genesis with the masquerada. He had way more skin in this game than Estelle did, and it was his responsibility to be the bigger person and make sure the two of them could work together.

  But fuck, man. She wasn’t telling him a thing.

  Selene had harped on the value of honesty and communication, quoting every Bible verse and proverb imaginable. An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips. She had memorized the whole thing from the daily readings the slaves had been forced to endure. Stephan had blocked it out as much as possible, but it had been impossible not to absorb some of her belief in the power of openness.

  “Look…” They both said it at the same time. Estelle nodded for him to go first.

  Damn. He hadn’t really planned anything besides the opening. “This is a great library.”

  “Right.” She tilted her head to the side, then reached behind her for a tablet that lay nestled in a nook on the wall. “This is the library catalogue. I can get one of the library pages to go through it with you.”

  “No need.” He scrolled through, grateful for the distraction so he could get his thoughts in order. “I do a lot of research. Good. You’ve got human and arcane resources.” He fired up his preferred database and began to search. Estelle came up to stand behind him.

  “You’re familiar with the system,” she said.

  “Spent a lot of time with similar ones when I was working on my PhD.” He paused at recent arcane news reports. He started scanning, looking for missing people.

  Estelle returned to the other side of the table. “You have a doctorate?”

  “In Internatio
nal Trade.” He bookmarked an article, a vampire brother and sister missing from Maine.

  “What was your focus?”

  There was another, a woman missing from Vermont. Another from Saskatchewan. “Impact of the Middle Passage, broadly.” He pointed at the screen. “We definitely have a problem.”

  Estelle came to read over his shoulder and he let himself enjoy the light smell of her perfume. The lilac was a strangely innocent, old-fashioned scent. “I’m tired of having nothing but problems,” she said thoughtfully. “Some solutions would be welcome.”

  It had taken Stephan only a few minutes to create a list of similar disappearances from across North America. “We need to look into this.”

  Estelle’s eyes were trained on the screen. “I’ll get my teams going. We can contact the families and see if there are any commonalities. It’s possible they’re legitimately attracted to the Dawning, even Jimmy.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so.” Stephan saved the list and emailed it to her. Estelle was right and logically he knew they needed to rule that out. His gut, though, said there was more. Estelle’s brow furrowed and she bit her lower lip as she stared at her phone, the tips of her retracted fangs barely visible.

  “Nor do I,” she said.

  There was a long silence. Now or never. “What I was going to say earlier—” he started.

  “I need you on my team, Stephan.” Estelle spoke in a voice so low he had to lean forward to hear her. “This—” she waved between them “—negativity, feeling I’m always walking on eggshell. It has to end for us to work together successfully, or at least usefully.”

  The sound of the multitude sang in Stephan’s ears along with Estelle’s slow breathing. She was right. It was draining to be on edge, to never be comfortable.

  She had opened her mouth to add to her point when he said what he’d been thinking for months. It was time to man up and speak some truths. “For a while, I thought there was…I thought we had the potential for something.”

  Estelle regarded him warily. “We respect each other.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean, but you don’t trust me.” She held up a hand before he could reply. “Don’t deny it because I know it’s true. You think I’m a kind of puppeteer who wants to control you, or manipulate you.”

  “I think you have the ability to do it.”

  She snorted. “Caro has the ability to turn into me and take over my life. I trust she won’t do it because we’re friends. I have faith in her. If you can’t offer the same confidence in me, if you don’t believe I can control myself, then this is not going to work. Not colleagues, not friends, and definitely not anything more. None of it.” A knock on the door interrupted them. Estelle’s body stiffened and Stephan automatically turned, ready to move in front of her before he even looked. Whatever had disturbed Estelle that much was a threat, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to threaten his woman.

  No. Not his woman, not until he thought about what she said. She was right, he knew it, but…it was hard to turn back on those old prejudices. He needed a little time.

  At the door stood a tall man with the same coloring as Estelle but an obnoxious grin that made Stephan want to feed the bastard his teeth.

  “Who’s that?” he asked.

  Estelle waved the guy in, her dark eyes dull. “Felix. My brother.”

  * * * *

  What was Felix doing here? And with such perfect timing. Estelle’s gut clenched. The last time they’d seen each other it had ended up with their mother in tears and begging them to remember they were a family—but not before blaming Estelle for not being more understanding of her brother and sensitive to his needs. That was the problem. After almost a century of sibling rivalry, Felix knew how to push all of her buttons.

  Plus, he was simply a detestable, selfish piece of work, and had been since they were young.

  The door slid open. “Sister. You didn’t tell me you were in town. Raoul called to tell me about your friend.”

  The lack of inflection in his voice was more insulting than anything verbal. Before Estelle could reply, Stephan stood up. “Stephan Daker.”

  “I heard. A masquerada.” He kept his eyes on Estelle.

  “As you see,” she said, keeping her cool. “We’ll see you at dinner tonight?”

  “Bringing a guest? So will I. Keep the number balanced.” He leaned against the door.

  “Up to you. Until tonight?” She kept the dismissal polite and turned back to Stephan. “As I was saying, the library is organized first by—”

  “I hope you gave our parents advance warning of who you’re bringing? You know how they can be.”

  Felix sounded honestly concerned, as if he was worried about the risk of embarrassment to her guest. She smiled happily, thrilled to have a chance to clap him back. “Wavena gave them a call.”

  Her brother paled. “Queen Wavena called our parents? In person?”

  She made sure to look confused. “Naturally. She wanted to make sure they knew how important my guest is. I’m surprised Maman didn’t tell you, since you see her all the time. Living at home.”

  The electronic tapping of Stephan’s typing filled the room and the tablet gave a happy beep as he completed some search or another.

  “Did she ask about me?” Felix demanded.

  “If by ‘she’ you mean Queen Wavena, you should check with our parents.” She picked up a pen with barely concealed boredom. “I didn’t bother to ask.”

  He glared at her. “Any other sister with an ounce of family feeling would have found her brother a court position already.”

  That was what this about. “Yet here we are. Can I get back to work?”

  He muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath and made sure to leave the glass door open behind him so Estelle had to get up and close it herself. Stephan lifted his head from the tablet.

  “Older or younger?” he asked.

  “Felix is ten years younger and very much the entitled baby brat.” No wonder—her parents had always fussed over Felix and treated his every whim like an inarguable command.

  “He wants a place at court?”

  She sat down and leaned over to see what he’d been searching online. “Desperately.” Although he was the heir to the family business, Felix was not a member of Queen Wavena’s circle. Unknown to her family, she’d asked Wavena four times already. The last time, the queen had taken her hand.

  “Estelle, you must stop asking.” Wavena’s voice had been gentle but firm. “Felix is not you and he is not suited for work at court. You know why.”

  Estelle hadn’t answered, but she knew exactly what Wavena was telling her. The queen admired hard work and honesty and despised shallow flattery. Felix had none of the former traits and displayed the latter in abundance, thinking himself charming and handsome enough that people should be honored to help him. Oddly, there were enough who were attracted to him, and his money, that Felix was constantly surrounded by an entourage of sycophants to whom he’d spun the story that he’d refused offers to serve at court because it was too staid and stodgy.

  Still, it was a failure she didn’t like to dwell on.

  “Ah.” Stephan didn’t press her further. “I assume I am the guest to your family’s meal tonight?”

  She hadn’t even asked him. “I’m sorry. Do you mind?”

  “Depends if I’m dinner.” He said it with a total straight face that tricked her until he broke out that devastating grin. She smiled back with relief that he wasn’t brooding over their previous, unresolved discussion. Though they’d have to address it at some time, that time was not now.

  “Touché. I believe it will be my father’s famous coq au vin. His chef’s famous coq au vin, I should say.”

  “Then I can’t say no.” He stared out through the glass wall. “I believe
I also know who your brother’s guest will be.”

  She followed his gaze to find Felix in close conversation with Raoul. Excellent. She groaned. “My mother loves Raoul.”

  “Well, he’s such a charmer.”

  “You don’t have to come,” said Estelle apologetically. It would be the height of bad manners to force him into this situation.

  “I’ve dealt with worse than those two. I’ll be fine.” His phone buzzed and Stephan took a look, then slid the screen over to her. “Mai got back to us.”

  Estelle frowned as she scrolled through the numbers and notes. “She’s suspected for a while.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s kept track,” Estelle said. “She had this information ready. Also, she wrote a note at the bottom of the chart.”

  “Give me that.” Stephan grabbed his phone back and squinted at the screen. “How can you even see font that small?” he demanded. “It looks like wriggles.”

  “Vamps have good eyes. She says it’s been gradually growing and there are a significant majority who have had no prior experience with the Dawning or harbor those views.”

  “All ages and genders,” Stephan said. “Fairly broad geographic range.”

  “Something has to connect them.”

  He nodded. “I’m going to get her to give me the occupations, family connections, clubs, and close friends.”

  “I’ll do the same for vampires.”

  For a moment, there was nothing but frantic typing as they both sent out orders on their phones. When she was done, Estelle looked up to see Stephan had finished at the same time.

  “Well,” she said. “I suppose it’s time to get ready for dinner.”

  Chapter 8

  Stephan would have been lying had he said he was looking forward to this hellfire of a meal. However, he’d committed to the role of liaison, and that meant dealing with vampires from across the spectrum. He knew the LaMarches were a young branch of an older lineage and the family had moved to Florida when Estelle was identified with potential seneschal-level ability. Her parents had found a gift for hospitality, establishing what had become one of the most popular hotel chains among arcane travelers and becoming filthy rich in the process. That didn’t tell him much. Would he be walking into open arms or a lion’s den?