“They just started.”

Marissa closed her eyes. “Okay, please have them call me when they can? I’ve got a…” She turned away and dropped her voice. “I have a trauma case that’s just come in here. I don’t know if we have a lot of time.”

Ehlena cursed. “We can’t spare anyone here. Can you call Vishous? With his medical training, he may be able to stabilize things.”

Marissa tried to imagine that Brother walking through the house. Not her first choice, and not because she didn’t trust the male. Her hellren’s best friend was a stellar vampire all the way around.

His appearance was just terrifying.

Then again, if everyone was in the Wellsie Annex …

“Good idea. Thank you.”

“I’ll have them call you as soon as we’re done.”

“Please.”

Cutting the connection, she hit up V. And got goddamn, frickin’ voice mail. “Shit.”

Rhym spoke up from where she was pressing a towel to that leaking gash in the female’s shoulder. “When are they coming?”

It was getting close to the end of the night. V could just be in transit between the alleys of downtown Caldwell and the mansion. Or … he could be stuck fighting whoever had injured Tohr like that.

As the female on the sofa began to cough and sputter, the calculation was done in a split second. The last thing she wanted to do was reach out to her brother, but she couldn’t live with herself if her personal problems cost someone their life.

Marissa dialed Havers’s cell phone number by heart, and hoped he hadn’t changed it. One ring, two rings …

“Hello?” came his voice.

“It’s me.” Before there was some kind of awkward silence or hello, she said, “We have a medical emergency here at Safe Place. I need you to come right now—or send someone. The Brotherhood’s physicians are in surgery and we don’t have a lot of time.”

There was a short pause, as if the race’s primary healer were switching from a personal track to a professional one. “I shall be there in but a moment. Is it a trauma situation?”

“Yes.” Marissa lowered her voice again. “She’s been badly beaten and … brutalized. There’s a lot of blood. I don’t know…”

“I’m bringing a nurse. Are you containing the other residents?”

“Already have.”

“Unlock the front door.”

“I’ll meet you at it.”

And that was that.

Guess the universe was determined to have her brother on her radar screen this evening. First that idiot call with the socialite, now …

Marissa nodded to Rhym. “Help is on the way.”

Through the eye that was not swollen shut, the injured female seemed to try to focus.

Marissa leaned in and took a bloody hand. “My brother is going to take very good care of you.”

For a split second, she worried whether she should have kept quiet about the fact that a male was going to treat her. But the female didn’t seem to be tracking.

Dearest Virgin Scribe, what if she died before he got here?

Marissa crouched down, tucking her blond hair behind her ears. “You’re safe, it’s going to be all right.” That one eye looped over to her face. “Do you have kin we can call? Is there someone who we can get for you?”

The female’s head went back and forth.

“No? Are you sure?” The eye shut. “Can you tell me who did this to you?”

That face turned away.

Shit.

Backing off, Marissa went out to the shallow hall in the front of the house. There were long, thin windows on either side of the door, and she looked out to the lawn. The trees that had been so brilliantly colored just weeks before had molted their spectacular red and gold and yellow leaves, the spindly limbs underneath revealed like the bones of a too-thin dog.

It was impossible not to glance at the mirror next to the door and check to see that her hair was in place, and her makeup was holding up even after a ten-hour day.

Back when she had lived with her brother, she had worn silk gowns and heavy jewels, and had her hair styled up high on her head. Now? She had a pair of Ann Taylor slacks on, a blouse with a stand-up collar, and a pair of Cole Haan driving shoes on her feet because they were comfy. No jewelry other than a tiny gold cross that she wore because Butch’s God was important to him and her hellren had given her the necklace during his last Christmas season. Oh, and she had a pair of pearl studs in her ears.

In spite of Butch’s transition having been jump-started, and his status as a Brother and a relation of the King, her male remained fundamentally human, everything from his Catholic belief system to his taste in books and movies to his opinions on what he wanted in a “wife,” a product of his upbringing among Homo sapiens.

Touching the gold chain on her neck, she frowned as she had to fight the urge to take the thing off because her brother wouldn’t approve of it.

But come on, whether the symbol of her mating was on or off her throat, it wasn’t as if that changed anything. In her brother’s eyes, she had taken a rat without a tail as a hellren, and that fall from grace would never be forgiven.

A split second later, two shadows materialized out of thin air on the sidewalk: one taller and masculine, dressed in a white coat, the other smaller and feminine in a traditional nursing uniform.

As they approached and were illuminated in the security lights, Marissa rubbed her sweaty palms on the seat of her pants. Havers looked exactly the same as he always had, from the bow tie and the horn-rimmed glasses to the dark hair parted on the side and kept in Mad Men order.