My gun and the vamp-killer appeared on the desk nearest, still damp from the rain. Commander Walker’s eyes went up at the sight of the blade, but he didn’t say anything. Instead he reached out and shook my hand, then Bruiser’s, Brandon’s, and last Eli’s. To my partner, he said, “I appreciate your service, soldier, even it was with the piss-ass army and not the air force.”

“Never liked flying, sir,” Eli said, relaxing in the presence of a military man who had clearly done his research into our backgrounds. “Much prefer jumping out of planes than flying them. We’ll be back ASAP.”

And just that easily, we were outside in a limo, where Bruiser offered us towels, unopened packages of men’s T-shirts, and anything we wanted from the limo’s liquor cabinet. I took the first two and pulled the tee over my wet shirt. Eli accepted all three, the last being a glass of single-malt scotch, forty-year-old Laphroaig, which I figured was expensive, both by the delight with which Eli sipped it and the amusement with which Bruiser watched.

“Tell me what happened?” he asked, handing me a beer, a Guinness, which brought a smile to my face. Once upon a time, beer had little effect on me, but things had changed somewhat since I was hit by lightning and nearly died. Now my appreciation had increased and so had my reaction to it. A tiny buzz had begun to stalk me from time to time, mostly when I was tired or stressed, and tonight was no exception.

I sipped and explained, walking Bruiser—my . . . whatever he was to me—through the last hour. At one point he took my left hand and sniffed my palm, which I thought was odd. I sniffed it too, but with the rain and fighting, there was nothing detectable, and I have a better than human sense of smell even in human form. I wrinkled my brow when I was done, thinking. “There seems like there’s something else, but whatever I’m forgetting, I lost it waking up.”

Bruiser released my hand. “And you never saw their faces?” he asked.

“Nope. Not once.” I drained the beer and smacked my lips. “But I have a very important question. I want to know how you got the limo on such short notice.”

Bruiser smiled, his eyes on my mouth, which made my own eyes fall to his. An unsettled warmth blossomed in my middle. “I was with Leo and Del,” he said, “when the primo received a call from Alex Younger. Leo insisted I take the limo. He also insists on a report from you once things are settled with the police. In person.”

I sighed and passed him the empty, accepting another from him when the driver pulled up to the house. “You’re coming in?” I asked hopefully.

“Yes,” he said, opening the door for me. “I’ll walk the house and grounds and along where the attack took place, in case I can pick up some traces of magic. And then I’ll take you back to the Eighth.”

I slanted a look at my partner. “You going out into the rain after your weapons and your pretty flip-flops?” I tilted my gaze to Bruiser. “You should see the flops. Purple with pink flowers and bling. Eli looked so pretty in them.”

Eli gave me a long-suffering sigh and stepped out, disappearing into the rain.

“Thongs?” Bruiser asked me.

“Yep. Deon made them for me. Eli was wearing them when the cops came up.”

“Oh. Dear God.”

* * *

Bruiser walked the house, starting in the living room with Alex, while I showered and dressed and put on some lipstick. Since I had looked so bedraggled before, I went for classic style and dance shoes, in all black. Black undies, black sheath on my thigh with a short-bladed vamp-killer, black shirt, black jacket, and black dress slacks with false pockets where I could get to my blades. Some of the new stakes went into my bun, the ones with the stylized feather and the initials YS burned into the handle. According to Alex, we were getting famous within a subculture of vamp fans, and owning an authentic vampire-hunting stake from us was becoming the height of fashion among them. So the Kid had designed one, had had them made, and posted them on yellowrocksecurities.com for sale. People were buying them, which was just strange.

I stuck four stakes in my hair and let them fan out like decorative hair thingies that geishas might have worn. As I dressed, I replayed the last hours in my mind, the witches, the magics, the smells, the rain . . . There was something in all the events that tied them together. Something familiar that I was missing. I needed to figure out who the witches were, what they wanted, and . . .

And I didn’t have time for all this. The Witch Conclave was this coming weekend, and as Leo’s Enforcer, I had vamp security measures to attend to. Yellowrock Securities was responsible for other security measures—the ones at the conclave site itself, the Elms Mansion and Gardens. Unless the conclave was what the attacking witches were trying to prevent or disrupt, they understood that taking me out would put a hitch in the security for the event. Or maybe they thought that the Everhart-Truebloods were at the house. My friends weren’t arriving until later, and once they got here, the house would be warded.

So maybe the witches were getting the lay of the land, so to speak, for a future attack against the Truebloods. There was a known faction of witches who wanted the Witch Conclave to go away, so maybe that was it. Though so far, the small groups of dissatisfied witches hadn’t caused any problems except heavy rhetoric in the news media and on social media—and among hate groups, of course.

I heard the shower come on upstairs, Eli’s usual minute and a half of luxury. I stepped into dancing shoes and buckled the straps, ready for the cops. Moments later, we were bundled back into the limo and comparing stories. Not that we needed to make up anything or had anything to hide, but it was wise to make sure we both had seen the same things. It kept questions and suspicion to a minimum.