“Yes. Too few beds, too many warm bodies.”

“That sounds . . . like a good idea. And fun,” I said. Bruiser’s breath hitched. “Tell Del we might be roomies. We can have a slumber party, make s’mores, do each other’s nails.” Yeah. That was better.

“You wound me.” But I could hear the laughter in his voice, and thanked all that was holy that Eli had spent so much time teaching me to flirt when we first met. It was coming in handy.

“Later.” Smiling what I knew was a silly smile, and keeping my back to the room, I disconnected and pulled Rick’s number up on my cell. I had to warn him that someone was gunning for everyone who’d ever meant something to me. My smile died. Rick, who was no longer on speed dial. My onetime boyfriend.

I dialed the number. When he answered, it was with a simple, “Jane.” Not Jane, darlin’. Not babe. Just Jane. Paka was standing right next to him. Or lying next to him. I knew it. I recited the problem, talking steadily, not fast enough that would suggest I was hurting, not slow enough for him to be able to interrupt.

When I was finished, he said, “Thank you. I’ll be heading in-country. You won’t be able to contact me. I’ll check back with you in a few days for updates.”

I said, “Good,” and ended the call. And stared at the blue screen. “Really good.” It was totally inadequate. And it was all I’d ever get. And I was fine. A slow smile softened my face. I really was okay.

“We got action,” Eli said.

I tucked the oversized cell into a pocket and moved back to the sushi and the horrible tequila tea and the tablets. I tossed back two nigiri pieces and watched as a new robot, this one matte black, short, stubby, and sturdy, running on tracked wheels, replaced the more linear orange robot. The black robot was carrying two tan bags, one in each heavy-duty pincer-like hand. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Sandbags,” Eli said.

“Wait. They’re gonna blow it up on my porch?”

“You want they should risk their lives carting it off to la-la land first?”

“But I just got a new front door!”

Eli laughed evilly. “Face it, babe, your insurance is going through the roof.”

“Aw, man. No!” I put my hands to the top of my head, trying to think of a way to stop this. But short of running over, grabbing the bomb, and tossing it away, risking it exploding me into a pile of meat and puddles of blood, there wasn’t anything I could do. “Nooo.”

Eli laughed again. This time the Kid and Christie joined him.

The squat robot set both bags down carefully and went back for more. The bomb box wasn’t that big, maybe a foot long, ten inches wide, and eight inches deep. Eight bags of sand and one heavy cloth blanket of some kind later, the stout little robot rolled away, leaving the bomb box covered. The street had been evacuated; this time even the experts were gone, undercover, as we watched on remote cameras.

Nothing happened as seconds turned into minutes. Then there was a poof. On the hijacked video screen, dust and sand flew. All I heard from my house was a muffled whomp. The bomb was detonated. On the screen, my front door shuddered. The glass in its window tinkled around the remains of the bomb. Broken. Again.

“Well, your door survived,” Eli observed.

“Your window didn’t,” Alex said, snarky.

I swallowed the rest of the rocket-fueled tea and left the house, jogging back home.

•   •   •

Hours later, they hadn’t let me see anything that had been left of the bomb. They hadn’t let me see anything at all except my damaged front door and busted door window. I had made a stink about it, and still they wouldn’t let me see. Dang bureaucrats. However, they hadn’t questioned me much, my position attached to the Master of the City of New Orleans and the greater Southeast having protected me from anything in the way of legal harassment.

Conversely, it didn’t protect me from media harassment. If anything, my position as Leo’s Enforcer only made that worse. According to NBC and their repeated phone call messages, I was “newsworthy,” whatever that meant. ABC made my house continuous “breaking news,” and the local cable channel had camped outside my house for all the hours of the emergency. They were all still there now.

While the legal scientific types ran tests, hauled off the debris for examination, removed their equipment, and had a press conference in front of my broken door, I made calls and Eli took care of the house. He ordered a replacement door and window from the big-box-home-repair store, asking for the model number from memory, which was an indication of the level of violence in my life. He hammered a piece of plywood over the window opening and hammered the damaged door shut, which made the evening news.

Ten minutes after his toned body and stern face appeared on camera, a locally famous anchorwoman called him personally for an interview. He turned her down, but it was clear that she had called because she found him interesting, because she flirted with him the whole phone call. Not that Eli flirted back. He was madly in love with the sheriff of Natchez, Syl.

My time was much less profitable. No one I wanted to talk to called me back.

By the time most of the cops were gone and the news agencies had packed up their equipment, it was way after midnight. Alex hadn’t located Reach. Bruiser hadn’t called. Rick was gone. I had spent the evening at a whorehouse. The only good thing was that I had pigged out on sushi. Now I was expected to show up at vamp HQ and get cut up with a sword. My life was not normal.

CHAPTER 11

Testicle Stretchers

I had tried calling Leo about Reach and the three who had tortured the research specialist, but the MOC wasn’t taking calls—or it might be more likely to say that he wasn’t taking calls from me. He had surely been notified about Protocol Aardvark, and had his freedom restricted by its stringent demands, but the chief fanghead had signed off on the policy himself, so he had no one to blame but himself and me.

On the way in to HQ, where we had to list our weapons and go through a thorough pat-down, I remembered the “small gala” Leo had planned, the one about which he’d thrown a wine tantrum. I hoped he’d had to send out a couple dozen “change of plans” letters. It would serve the spoiled-brat-of-a-vamp right.

We took the fire stairs down to the gym, as the elevator had been turned off by the Otis people. I wondered how vamps liked taking the stairs—a plebeian occupation so far beneath them, or a delightful romp into the past? I made a note of the darkened stairs that wended on down, into levels I hadn’t visited yet, at least not on purpose. One level below the gym, I saw a dynamic camera, the make and model I had installed in the council house, but I hadn’t installed this one; nor was it part of the upgraded security system that Eli, Alex, and I had designed. Which meant that there was a second monitoring system somewhere based on my work too. This wasn’t the first time Leo had gone around me on security. I made a mental note to ask when I was getting paid for my design. I also made a mental note that if I went skulking below stairs, I’d surely be caught on tape somewhere.