I dressed quickly in the jeans, a leather belt, and the red, thin knit, cowl sweater. I liked the big loopy collars. They were great for sliding silver stakes through and making them look like jewelry. They were also loose enough that the odd pain remaining near my belly button didn’t receive any unexpected pressure. I slid on the comfy slippers that were always in the locker. There must be a storeroom or closet somewhere that contained a stash, because I had taken several pairs home and there were always more here.

My fighting leathers and combat boots were on the long bench that divided the locker room, stuffed in a satchel that Eli had found somewhere, as if he’d known I wouldn’t want to wear them. My weapons were in a neat row on the bench. Eli had cleaned the blades. “I’m decent,” I said softly, knowing Eli would hear me.

Still geared up, he walked back into the main room and nodded to the weapons. It was Eli-speak for, What weapons do you want? How do you want to weapon up? All of it? Or just some? All that in a nod. We had learned to read each other’s cues so quickly that it was sorta disturbing. And maybe awesome.

I held up the thigh holster and said, “Looky what Bruiser got me!”

Eli spread out the custom-made thigh holster on the bench, studying it with approval. “The man’s got taste. And he seriously wants in your pants, babe.”

A flash of warmth brightened my face and heated its way down my chest, so I thumped his arm with my fist. Hard. And took back the holster while he laughed and rubbed his biceps. I strapped the rig to my right thigh. A standard thigh holster was constructed with three straps, two around the thigh, one that went up and looped onto a belt. TV cops wore the rigs low on the thigh, which looked cool, but for close quarters fighting I liked my weapons a bit higher than the specs suggested. The upper thigh strap to my new rig went near my groin, the lower around the largest part of my thigh. The custom unit had a vertical strap that went to my belt, directly above the holster, and a longer, distinctive strap that went around my waist and back to the unit for stability. The holster was more complicated than a regular thigh rig, but because I was so slender the extra strap gave me more control and also allowed me to fasten on a holster for a backup weapon when I was wearing long coats or sweaters, like now. There was even a loop to secure my M4 harness. The shotgun hadn’t gotten a lot of use lately, but it was my go-to weapon when facing large numbers of big-bad-uglies. It cleared a wide swath, when needed.

I holstered one of my matched Walther PK380s at my right thigh, and the other one at the small of my back for a left-hand draw. The semiautomatic handguns were lightweight and ambidextrous, with bloodred polymer grips that perfectly matched the red of the T-shirt. Which was a girly thought and one I didn’t share with Eli, though I could imagine his expression if I did. The .380s offered less stopping power than nine-mils, but vamp central meant the possibility of collateral damage, and killing anyone or anything by accident was not on my schedule, now or ever. The .380 on my thigh, I pulled and holstered several times, testing the friction of the holster fabric, before I loaded it with standard rounds. The one at my spine was loaded with silver, just in case of vamp or were-animal attack. I liked to be prepared for both kinds of bad guys—human and supernatural big-bad-uglies.

There was a special sheath in the thigh rig for a fourteen-inch vamp-killer—steel with silver plating along the flat of the blade. Steel to cut flesh, silver to poison vamps or weres. The thigh holster had deep pockets for stakes, and I inserted silver-tipped ash stakes with little wooden buttons on the ends so I could shove them into a vamp without hurting the palm of my hand if needed, and also so that I could get a good grip if I ever wanted to pull one out. It had happened. The stakes were a new design and though they resembled knitting needles, they were easier to use than my old model. Into my calf holster went a six-round Kahr P380, a small semiautomatic with a matte black finish, loaded with standard ammo.

I stood and looked myself over in the long mirror and frowned. I looked long and lean and feminine, and even the gun strapped to my hip and thigh didn’t fix that. “It’s the cowl-neck,” Eli said, reading my mind again. “Makes you look soft and sweet.” He did that little lip-twitch thing he called a smile. “Good disguise, except for the gun. Which makes you look hot, in a deadly sort of way.”

I shook my head at the left-handed insult and passed him the clear, rounded thing I’d found under me after the battle with the lillilend. Not wanting to steer him to my own result, I asked simply, “What do you think?”

“This that thing you tucked into your boobs after the fight?”

“Yeah. Who else saw?”

Eli shrugged. “Bruiser. No one else, I think.” He ran his fingers over the curved side, which was blunt and smooth, and then over the opposite side, which was irregular, ripped-looking in spots, with longer fiber-like things hanging off. “Thin, clear, luminous, flexible, and slightly iridescent,” he said, bending it to test its plasticity. It sprang back into shape. “What I could make out of the thing in the gym, it was vaguely snakelike. Scale? Like from a snake? Ripped out of the skin underneath?” He mimed pulling one off.

“I think so,” I said. Weirdly, the spot on my chest where it had touched my skin continued to tingle. I rubbed my sternum, trying to stop the reaction. “I should send it to Leo’s lab, in Texas, for DNA testing, but they already have the gunk off the floor.” I bent it and held it to the light, where the surface swam with color like the surface of a pearl. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll keep it.” I tucked it into a slit in the thigh holster that buttoned shut, discovering as I did that there was even a small pocket in the rig, holding a tourniquet and sterile bandages. Bruiser had thought of everything. I liked that in a man. “Let’s get this debrief on the road.”

We were walking into the security/conference room when Eli’s cell did that little jangle-buzz that let him know he had a text. “Alex has everything secure,” he said, “and all non-Jane footage ready for viewing.”

•   •   •

The air of the conference room was redolent of scorched coffee, fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts, the heated scent of Onorio, to tell me that Bruiser was present, Grégoire’s intense personal vamp scent, gun oil, the reek of fired weapons, and testosterone. In other words, it smelled wonderful. The underground room had a security console, a huge monitor/TV screen, a massive table, and comfortable rolling desk chairs.