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  The glass pot fell to the floor, shattering on the ground. “No.” Merick looked at me with wide eyes. “That means that you’re the princess by default.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I learned in Romania. Ira forced Levi’s hand in telling me. He was just going to keep hiding it.” I locked my jaw. “A bit shocked are you?”

  He looked down and then back to me. “This changes everything.”

  “How so? Are your higher-ups going to pull you out now?”

  He shook his head. “No, it means that you need more protection than we thought.”

  “I don’t need protection, okay? I’ve gotten out of every situation that has been thrown at me.”

  “Like the one with Ira? Where I had to save you?”

  He’d blown his cover as my cat when Ira had bitten me. “Don’t worry, Levi is sending Mario to watch after me. After he gets out of that circle.”

  Merick went to get the broom to clean up the glass. “I’m more worried about Levi being the king than I am about him sending someone to protect you. That puts me in a very interesting position.”

  “Are you going to let me into your little secret now?” I asked. “About why you’re assigned to me?”

  He shook his head. “You know I can’t tell you that right now. When the time is right, I’ll let you know.”

  I came around the counter to help him clean up. “I still need you hidden while Mario is here. I’m not ready to tell Levi you’re here yet.”

  “Nor should he know. I will remain hidden. I suggest you’re very careful with Mario about what you expose him to. Might I suggest figuring out how to hide your investigation downstairs?”

  I nodded. “I should probably figure that out.” My phone rang, and I sighed. “I’ll work on pulling it down until I convince Levi that Mario doesn’t have to be here every night.” I looked at my phone. “Oh, it’s Clarissa.” I chuckled and I swiped the phone to answer. “What’s up?”

  “You trapped Mario in a circle.” The sound of disbelief was clear. “Levi came to get me so that I could let him out.”

  Interesting that she was the one he turned to. Not Oliver who seemed to be the on-call warlock for the vampire king. “I didn’t want to deal with his shit.”

  “Well, I suggest you get used to it because they are on their way there.”

  I growled. “How soon?” I turned to Merick, and he was already back to cat form, sitting on the countertop. He chose the form of a Sphynx cat, all wrinkly skin with very fine fur over the pink and black skin.

  Mario and Levi appeared in the kitchen, and I let out a sigh. “Never mind, they’re here. Thanks for the heads up.”

  “I’ll see you for dinner tomorrow night.” She hung up, and I put my phone in my pocket. “Must be nice, to just be able to transport where ever and whatever around. Clarissa have any problems with my circle?”

  Levi glared at me. “No, she was surprised that it wasn’t purple. Abigail, I need you to stop acting like a child.”

  “I’m done with my childish fit,” I promised. “I’ll work on finding this vampire alongside my PIB case, but Mario has to promise to stay out of the way. He can’t enter the crime scenes; PIB frowns on that.”

  Mario started toward the door that led to the basement.

  “That’s off limits,” I snapped, and Levi gave me a look of warning. “I don’t want anyone down there.”

  Levi seemed to debate for a moment. “Mario, you need to respect her wishes on that, please.”

  “Of course, a sacred place, I assume.” He stepped away. “I will need a space to stay during the day.”

  I took a deep breath. “The mansion.”

  “I’d rather—“

  “The mansion will do just fine,” Levi cut him off. “Abby has other means of protection during the day, and Ira is still confined inside when the sun is out.”

  He made it sound like he wouldn’t be at some point. “Is there a chance that he’ll figure out how to walk in the sun?”

  Neither one of them answered me. I crossed my arms. “If I’m going to work on these missions or whatever for you, then I need you to answer my questions.”

  “Your mission doesn’t include Ira. It includes Keira, and that is it.” Levi shook his head. The room turned cold around me, and I swore something brushed up against my body, leaving a trail of goosebumps on my skin. It touched my magic, and my instincts told me to put up a circle.

  Power. Levi’s power. It was very rare that he reminded me that he had some.

  “Take your power display somewhere else.” I turned away from him. “Mario can stay during the night; I appreciate that you agree with me about him not staying here during the day. The case I’m currently on is dealing with shifters, so most of my running will be daylight so I can work on your child vampire stuff at night.”

  The power slipped away, leaving me feeling like a sludge was left over my aura. I rubbed my arms trying to get the muddy feeling off of me. “Thank you, Abigail. I will check in when I can.”

  I knew he disappeared because the room felt different. Even when he wasn’t displaying his powers, he always commanded attention, and it was a physical feeling. Mario, on the other hand, just seemed to make the air in the room feel heavier, but I was sure that was my imagination.

  “So what do we do tonight?”

  “Tonight, I go buy a new coffee pot, because mine broke. Then we sit down, and you give me any and all details on this child vampire.”

  “I will tell you what I think is important.”

  I spun around and shook my head. “No, you don’t get to deem what is important and what isn’t important. I need all the details because the smallest thing could throw off the investigation.”

  “Is that how you work within PIB?” He sounded genuinely curious.

  I nodded. “I try, sometimes all the information isn’t available, the system may not have something, it may be classified, or a witness or someone involved may lie or withhold information. But every little piece of information helps build a picture of the criminal.”

  “Then I will tell you what I know. Levi is trusting you in this which means that the advisory council is trusting you as well. We need her taken down and out of the public.”

  I grabbed my car keys. “We travel my way unless we absolutely have to.”

  “Understood, for now.”

  He seemed to be playing nice, which was really odd. Maybe me putting him in a circle a few times made him realize that I wasn’t going to deal with his shit. “As for the child vampire, her victims haven’t hit any of the media.”

  “Not the mainstream ones, no, we’ve managed to keep them clear.” There was something in his voice that made me pause at the alarm keypad, waiting for him to continue his thoughts.

  When he didn’t say anything, I motioned for him to continue. “If not the mainstream ones, which ones have gotten ahold of the information?”

  “Tabloids.”

  I disarmed my alarm and motioned for him to leave the house. I followed him and pressed the button to lock the door and set the alarm. “Which tabloids?” I had a feeling I knew.

  “A woman named Stephanie —”

  “Thomas.” I cut him off. “I’m very familiar with her. She’s a leach, but she’s good at her job, luckily no one believes most of her stories. She’s great at taking a single fact and twisting it into a crazy story for that paper.” I shook my head. “We’ve got time before it hits mainstream media.”

  I unlocked the car with the key fob, and the lights flashed. I had a spell on the car to tell me if someone had tampered with it. I’d lost two cars to explosions and another one to poltergeists. I wasn’t taking any chances with this one.

  “Get in, let’s go. If we’re going to talk all night about this, I need coffee and the nearest store is thirty minutes away.”

  He got in the passenger side. I got into and started the car, giving it a moment to warm up. “How many victims?”

  “Recently? Five.” He buckled himself
in, and I found myself wondering if it was just a habit or did he really think it would keep him safe

  I pulled out of my driveway and headed toward the highway leading into the city. “And all together?”

  “Since she started going insane? Probably close to three hundred. We didn’t keep records as well back then.” He shrugged. “We should have put her in quarantine or something when she started having problems controlling her blood-lust.”

  I watched the road as the rain started. “And why didn’t you?”

  “Levi was hoping that she could get it under control and left her in the hands of her maker.”

  Interesting. I wouldn’t think that Levi would want something like that running around. “Good to know. Is her maker going to be a problem?”

  “I don’t know. She might.”

  Lovely. “That would have been nice to know while we were at the meeting.”

  “The advisory council doesn’t have all the details on her. Levi and I do.” He shook his head. “It’s a delicate situation.”

  “Which means that I can’t trust you to not withhold information from me,” I muttered.

  He didn’t respond, and I wasn’t going to force conversation. He was going to have to prove I could trust him, and withholding information wasn’t going to help his case.

  Chapter Four

  I set up the new coffee pot and smiled. I wouldn’t be coffee-less tonight. Mario simply sat at the breakfast counter and watched me. I didn’t know if he was studying me or if he was waiting for me to trap him in a circle.

  “Now, where can we find this vampire?” I gathered the stuff to make the coffee and found my mug still sitting on the counter from when Merick was making coffee.

  Mario didn’t take his eyes off me, and I was finding it kind of creepy at this point. “She’s been on the outskirts of the state. I figured we’d go north and you could do your witchy stuff and figure out where she is.”

  “Okay, a tracking spell or two will work for that.” I watched the coffee brew so I wouldn’t have to look at Mario. “Shouldn’t be too hard to bring her in. Unless there’s something that’s going to complicate the situation.”

  Mario tapped the counter. “Keira alone is a force to be reckoned with, but yes, with magic finding her should be easy.”

  “How come you guys haven’t been able to hunt her down?”

  “Because she is a master at hiding amongst the humans. We don’t have a magical ability to find each other unless we’ve taken a blood oath to serve another vampire. But we are connected by being a maker or to our sire.” He shook his head.

  “Ah, so no internal homing beacon for her then. And why am I handling this instead of Agent Yorkingson? No one covered that.”

  “Because Keira likes women better than she does men.”

  The coffee finished, and I filled my mug. Mario remained silent as I put plenty of sugar and creamer in the black liquid turning it a tan color.

  “You’re using me as bait.” I raised a brow. “Levi agreed to this?”

  “We’re not using you as bait; we’re using your gender to our advantage,” he corrected. “No one would ever mistake you as a victim Abigail, you’ve taken on creatures that would scare the piss out of most agents.”

  “Thanks. I think.” I sipped my coffee and looked over the mug at him. “Do you have a case file on Keira?”

  He nodded. “I’ll make sure you have it by tomorrow, that will be easier than me telling you what I remember off the top of my head.”

  “Thank you.” I took my mug into the living room, and Mario followed me. I sat down on the end of the couch and pulled my feet up. Osiris came bounding in and hissed at Mario before jumping up to lay by my feet. It was Merick’s nice way of letting me know he wasn’t really happy with the situation either, and I didn’t doubt he was unhappy about being in the cat form.

  Mario sat down on the other end of the couch where he wasn’t close enough to touch me, and that was good. We weren’t in public; we didn’t have to create a facade at home.

  My phone rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket. “Agent Collins speaking.”

  “Abby,” Jason’s voice came across the receiver. “I just got the labs back on that odd substance.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “It was a liquid plaster. There was a fine layer all over her face, on top of the makeup. I also found some inside her nostrils and mouth.”

  Interesting. “Are you telling me someone plastered her face?”

  “I’m just telling you what I found.”

  I imagined that he was holding his hands up in surrender. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

  “No, we’re still waiting on the identity of the first victim. I’ll let you know as soon as I have that. I’m actually heading home for the night. I’ll be in the office bright and early. They brought in a possible vampire victim, but we were asked to hold off on it so that PIB could look at the body first.”

  That struck me as odd. “Who’s handling the case?”

  “No one in the human world, straight to PIB, an agent Yorkingson.”

  “Special Agent Yorkingson,” I corrected. “You be nice to him. He’s kind of an ass, and I don’t want him to treat you like crap.”

  Jason snorted. “Aye aye Agent A.”

  He made me smile. “Go get some rest, Jason, I have a feeling both of these cases are just heating up.” I disconnected and looked at Mario. There was a strange look on his face, a mix of disbelief and something else that I couldn’t identify. “What?”

  “They aren’t supposed to call Yorkingson. They are supposed to call you.”

  “That’s not how it works in PIB. I already have a case that’s within my ability range. Yorkingson probably matched up the criteria for that case. Looks like you’ll get a crash course in PIB procedures.” I chuckled.

  “This is not funny, Abigail.”

  “Lighten up some.” I sipped my coffee and leaned back into the couch.

  Mario didn’t say anything. I turned on the news and let the background noise sooth the awkwardness of the silence. This was something I was going to have to get used to, at least until I could change Levi’s mind about needing a guard.

  Mario was gone by the time I woke up in the morning. I rushed to my uncle’s to meet him for coffee so he could explain things to me. I was hoping he wasn’t a suspect and that he could account for his whereabouts and explain his paper trail. Technically I shouldn’t have been interviewing him; I should have passed it on to another agent. If I had still had a partner, I could have passed it to him.

  I parked the car in front of the huge house. The faux rock exterior seemed to go up for miles with a small overhang that covered the front door. I walked in without knocking. He had a fancy security system that made mine look ancient, so he knew I was there, and he’d left the door unlocked.

  “I’m in the office.” His voice came from a speaker near the door. The house was big enough that if I had yelled out Marco, he wouldn’t have been able to hear me in the office.

  I kicked my shoes off and walked over the plush carpet to the office. Oliver had his back turned to the door. His dark hair was styled in a business cut with lots of gel to keep it where it belonged. He wore a suit as he normally did, and not a cheap one.

  In front of him were multiple computer monitors, each showing something different. One of them was the camera at my house for my security system.

  “Did you hack my security system?” I growled. “Seriously, I thought you and Merick had a deal.”

  Oliver chuckled. “I didn’t hack it. I just logged into your account. I only check occasionally.” He clicked something, and it disappeared, replaced by an image of a car in a garage. “Want to fill me in on your case?”

  “You have my phone bugged; there’s nothing to fill you in on,” I shot back. “So why don’t you enlighten me. What were you looking for that made you put a restraining order on my victim?”

  He spun around in the chair and fa
ced me. “Let’s talk over coffee. I was just going over security footage from last night while the coffee brewed.”

  “You normally drink tea,” I pointed out as we walked to the kitchen together.

  “That is true, but this conversation requires something a little bit stronger.” He chuckled. “Besides that, you don’t need tea. I saw that Mario was visiting you last night, so I feel like you need coffee.”

  That was true. “Levi has him…courting me,” I muttered. Oliver wasn’t privy to the information that Mario was Levi’s guard, so it was time to put the stupid act into place. “Apparently that means night time house calls, and I made him go to the store with me to get a new coffee pot.”

  “Why did you need a new one?”

  “Merick shattered mine when he dropped it. His reaction to finding out that Levi was the vampire king.”

  Oliver stopped and put a hand on my shoulder. He pushed a little bit, forcing me to face him. “You told Merick?”

  “Yes, he was going to find out anyways, with Mario hanging around the house and Levi not knowing that Osiris is actually Merick.”

  Something crossed Oliver’s face that was akin to horror. His eyes widened a little, and his nostrils flared as he drew in a deep breath. “Oh Abigail, that’s going to complicate matters a lot more than we need them to be.”

  “That’s what he said, but no one is explaining why. Everyone is playing things close to their chest. So, why don’t you tell me what is going on?”

  Oliver thought for a moment. “Do you remember our original deal?”

  “The one where you wanted me to kill the high priest of the cult?” I nodded. “Never worked out.”

  “Because I had a different approach. But the problem is that any information Merick has on you goes to the Cult.”

  I rolled my eyes and followed him into the kitchen. “What does it matter? They already have a huge file on me.”

  “Abigail, do you know why the Cult has an interest in you?” He pulled out two mugs.

  I shook my head. “I just assumed it had to do with Levi and my parents’ death.”