I couldn’t stand it. I had to say something. “Even if I had seen that document, it isn’t realistic to think this place could have been ready for paying guests in that amount of time. Not with all the work that had to be done.”

“Vicki, Vicki.” Yorick shook his head and tried to look sad. “You can see your signature right there. You knew the timetable, and you didn’t meet it.”

“I had people working on the main house and the first three cabins all winter, but some things couldn’t be done until the spring! I wasn’t ready for paying guests until mid-Maius.”

“Conveniently two weeks past the deadline,” Ilya murmured.

Just two weeks? I hadn’t worked out the dates in my head. And something about being off by so little time struck me as odd.

“Two weeks, two days, two months, it doesn’t matter,” Yorick snapped at Ilya. “She didn’t meet the terms of the agreement.” He turned to me. “You’re evicted, effective immediately. Hand over the keys and get out.”

“No,” Ilya said mildly. “That’s not how this is going to work. Ms. DeVine will leave immediately. I’ll arrange to have all her personal possessions packed and out of here by the end of the day. You, however, cannot take possession of the property until the utilities are informed that as of 12:01 a.m. tomorrow, you will be the responsible party for payment. Also, before you take possession of the property, I need to know how you are going to reimburse Ms. DeVine for the capital improvements she made on the property.”

“Those are part of the property now,” Vaughn said, narrowing his eyes.

“Not quite.” Ilya smiled, showing a hint of fang. “The document says that if Ms. DeVine fails to develop the property in the agreed-upon amount of time, she will quit the property, leaving it in the same, or better, condition. My client chooses to return the property to Mr. Dane in the condition she found it after his family’s decades of neglect.” He opened his briefcase and pulled out a single sheet of paper, which he handed to Yorick. “Those are the capital improvements that were made to the main house and cabins. The total cost is listed at the end. You will agree to reimburse Ms. DeVine for all the money she put into this property to make it habitable again, or I can have crews here within the hour to remove the new septic system; dig up the new water pipes and remove all the new pipes that were put into the house and the lakeside cabins; and remove the new circuit breaker box and any other electric work that was done here.”

“You can’t do that.” A vein in Yorick’s temple began to throb as he turned to Grimshaw. “He can’t do that.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Grimshaw replied.

“Fine,” Vaughn said, looking like he would explode any second. “Yorick will reimburse Vicki for the capital improvements. You’ll have a cashier’s check first thing tomorrow morning. Now I want her out of here.”

“The check will be drawn from a bank in the Northeast that is still viable,” Ilya said. “And, yes, Ms. DeVine will leave now. So will all of you. Until the check is deposited—and the bank it was drawn on is verified—Mr. Dane is within his rights to evict Ms. DeVine, but he has no legal rights to the buildings. We’ll meet at the bank in Sproing at nine a.m. tomorrow. I’ll hand over the keys at that time.”

Ilya turned to me. “Please fetch your purse and all of your keys.”

I thought he was helping me. Now I wasn’t sure. When I looked at Grimshaw, he dipped his head in the tiniest nod, and I wondered if he knew something I didn’t. Maybe Julian had said something?

As I walked across the hall, I dug the office key out of my pocket. I had gotten into the habit of bringing my purse downstairs and leaving it in the big bottom drawer in the desk, so at least I would have that much. But what about my clothes, my bits of jewelry? They didn’t cost much, but I felt like I was being stripped of everything for the second time, even if Ilya had said I would retain my personal possessions.

I walked into the office and spotted Natasha Sanguinati, who raised a finger to her lips before I could say anything and alert everyone else to her presence.

She approached the desk, making sure she was still out of sight. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “We’ll take care of this.”

I felt sick, and my hands shook as I took the purse out of the desk drawer.

Natasha held out her hand. “Ilya is giving you a ride. Give me your car keys. I’ll make sure the vehicle gets to you.”

The car keys were on their own ring, so I gave them to her and made sure I had my keys to the main house as well as the set of master keys for all the cabins. I left the office, closing but not locking the door. I gave Ilya all the keys, including the loose office key. He put the master set in his briefcase, along with the loose office key.

“It’s time to go,” Ilya said, staring at Vaughn.

“We’ll stay a bit longer to look around,” Vaughn said.

“You’ve already looked around while you posed as guests.”

“You need help with the vermin?” Conan asked as he and Cougar came into the hall from the direction of the kitchen.

Cougar’s lips peeled back in that disturbing smile. “Heh-heh-heh-heh.”

I was pretty sure the boys weren’t going to be invited to the main house to watch cop and crime night on TV.

“Let’s go,” Grimshaw said.

“Don’t get comfortable with your promotion, Chief,” Vaughn said as he walked out the front door.

Everyone who could be seen walked out of the house and watched Ilya lock the front door. Yorick took a step toward me, but Ilya got between us and hustled me to the black luxury sedan. We were the first to leave, but when I looked back, I saw Conan and Cougar standing guard at the front door and Grimshaw having words with Yorick and Darren. I also noticed an unfamiliar car parked next to the UV that belonged to Hershel and Heidi. Made sense. Eight people couldn’t have come in one vehicle, but I wondered where they had rented a car.

“Could you drop me off at Ineke’s?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I would make it that far before I needed to throw up, but I really wanted to talk to a friend, and I wasn’t sure Ilya qualified right now.

“They still have rooms there until checkout time,” he replied, “and all of Ineke’s rooms are booked for the week. More important, you would be more vulnerable to attack if you stayed at the boardinghouse.”

“Yorick got what he wanted. There’s no reason to attack me.”

Ilya sighed. “You have so little faith in my skills as your attorney.”

I guess Mount Victoria still had a little lava left. “Your skills? I didn’t have a chance to see The Jumble before I had to accept the settlement or lose out on getting anything, but six months to clean up a place that hadn’t been used for decades and bring in paying guests is ridiculous! I never signed that document. My signature was forged!”

“I know.”

The calm acknowledgment stunned me. “You know?”

“Of course.” He turned toward me. “Do you know how to kill a human, Victoria? Could you kill a human?”

Anybody could kill another person. You could throw a rock in anger and have the bad luck of hitting just the right place to kill someone. You could push someone and have that person fall and break his neck. But that wasn’t what Ilya meant.

I shook my head. “No. I couldn’t kill a human.”

“I can,” he said quietly. “I have.”

Suddenly I was very aware that I was in a car with two Sanguinati who might have missed breakfast.

“Those men are predators,” Ilya continued quietly, looking away as he opened his briefcase. “You are prey.”

Like I needed the reminder. Yorick and his pals certainly saw me that way. But Ilya, who nature shows would call an apex predator, saw me as prey too. The difference was my attorney seemed to be struggling to look past that sharp reality and help me.

He removed a couple of sheets of paper from his briefcase. “When we get to the Mill Creek Cabins, which is where you’ll be staying for the time being, I need you to sign these revised rental agreements that indicate you rented one of the lakeside cabins to Aggie, Eddie, and Jozi Crowe.”