“What do we tell Xcor?” Tohr said. “My brother is going to want to know about this. I mean Throe was his second in command for a century.”

“Xcor can be there tomorrow if he wants.” Wrath cursed. “But the rest of the Band of Bastards needs to be downtown. We can’t let off the Lessening Society even for a night. We’re so close to the end of this fucking war.”

“The trainees can cover territory, if they’re supervised by the Bastards,” Tohr said. “We definitely need the full Brotherhood at that house and John and Blay, too. If this is a coup, it’s going to have to be dealt with then and there.”

“You’re goddamn right about that.” Wrath looked around at the group. “If it turns out they’re plotting against me? I want them all dead. Are we clear? You kill them where they stand. I’m done with this glymera shit.”

John whistled so that everyone looked at him. How about Murhder? He could help if we need more fighters.

There was an awkward silence. And then Tohr said, “I appreciate your loyalty to the guy. But—”

I’ve seen him fight. He’s a total badass.

“What’s John saying,” Wrath snapped. “Will someone please fucking translate.”

Standing off to the side of shAdoWs’s dance area, Xhex was smiling. Even though the purple lasers pierced her eyeballs, and the music made her eardrums pound, and the humans who were drunk, high, and hyper-sexed required constant oversight, she was GloLite happy. Positively radiant on the inside. Downright fucking cheerful.

Like, greeting card cheerful.

She might as well have a pink bow in her hair and be wearing fuzzy slippers—

As a fight broke out between two men, one of them got shoved in her direction, his arms pinwheeling, his balance going off-kilter, his sloppy feet tap dancing to the tune of “Too Much Coke, and That Wasn’t My Girlfriend I Just Grinded On.”

Xhex caught him with both hands and stood him back up. “You want to stop or go back in?”

The guy looked across at the steaming hot pile of I’ma-fuck-you-up who was waiting for round two. “I want to fight him! I can do what I want! She weren’t nothing—”

“Roger that. Have at it.”

Xhex obligingly shoved him back at the guy who was probably going to use his face as a punching bag—oh, yup. Here we go, melee time.

“I thought you were supposed to stop things like this?”

She turned and looked up at Tohr. “Hey! How are you?”

“Aren’t you security?” They clapped hands. “I mean, not that I’m complaining. I love watching amateurs—oh, ground time.”

The two combatants hit the floor, all sloppy, flappy hands, and bronco bucking butts.

“I’ll give you five bucks on the one with the yellow shirt,” Xhex said.

Tohr took out his wallet. Checked his money. “You got it, but you’re going to have to break a hundy. It’s all I got.”

“No worries.”

They hung back and waited for the outcome to arrive. Which it artificially did when one of her bouncers stepped in and pulled apart the two snarling tomcats.

“Damn it,” she muttered as she pulled her fold of bills out of her ass pocket. “Why do I only hire people who insist on doing their job.”

As a second bouncer came over and the two combatants were ushered out to the Buck Stops Here room in the back, Tohr put her fiver into his wallet.

“So you wanted to see me?” he said.

“Yeah.” Fun time was now over. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“Trez around?” the Brother asked as they headed over to the staircase to the office. “I haven’t seen him for a while.”

“He’s here and there.”

“That Selena thing …”

“Horrible. Just awful. If there actually is someone running this show from up above, they need to make that right.” She stopped halfway up the steps. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to suggest that Wellsie’s death isn’t … shit. Fuck.”

Tohr took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “It’s okay. I know what you mean. And everything is the way it’s supposed to be.”

She squeezed back and then kept on going, opening the door to Trez’s office. When she shut herself and the Brother in together, the music was buffered to a dull thud.

Tohr wandered over to the bank of glass and stared down at the humans. His reflection was one of sadness, and she gave him a moment to come back from the past and his unfathomable loss.

Hell, after getting as close as she had to losing John Matthew, she couldn’t imagine how Tohr handled the death of his shellan. But the Brother had somehow continued on in his life, meeting and falling in love with Xhex’s mahmen, Autumn.

It was possible to go on.

The Brother turned around and tucked his muscle shirt into his leathers, even though it wasn’t loose. Then he straightened his leather jacket.

“Okay,” he said in a normal voice. “So what’s up?”

“I need to make something right.” She planted her boots and braced herself, even though there was nothing coming at her. “It’s been long overdue and … it’s time.”

Murhder left the attic out of the window, dematerializing onto the snow dusted lawn. Huddling against the chill, he walked off down the allée of live oaks, imagining the fruit trees in the side garden blooming, the grass green, the sky twinkling with stars and a fat summer moon.

He wondered if Sarah would have liked the house. The bustle of humans. The people who worked on the estate. Maybe she could have found work at a university close by. There were some good ones in the state that had all kinds of …

The thought drifted and disintegrated, like his breath over his shoulder.

Paring off from the two rows of ancient trees, he crossed the thin layer of snow, heading for the thicket of trees that grew next to the rushing stream. As he closed in on the little river, the burble of the water was soft, barely audible. Off to the left, two deer were startled by his presence, kicking up their white tails and loping away through the brush.

Murhder stopped on the shores and stood over the water.

After a period of time—it could have been a minute or an hour—he unsheathed the black dagger from where he’d tucked it into his belt at the small of his back. Putting it in his dominant hand, he regarded the weapon, tracing the blade with his eyes, remembering how many times he’d used it. Vishous had made the dagger just for Murhder, its hilt custom-fit to his palm, the weight just as he preferred, the razor-sharp cutting edge maintained by the other Brother.

Previously maintained, that was.

He thought about what Kraiten had done to himself, courtesy of Xhex’s very wise suggestions. And he had to wonder if losing Sarah had been some kind of existential punishment for that human’s death. But that didn’t make sense. The Scribe Virgin had been all about balance when she had watched over the race. Good with the evil. Price and payment. Alpha and Omega.

Just like her and her brother in the world, the pair of them established by the Creator to keep things level.

Kraiten had been pure evil. He had gotten what he deserved.

Glancing over his shoulder, Murhder could see the lights of the main house in the distance. It was too cold for anyone to be out tonight. And tomorrow? He’d checked the forecast. Cold and clear.

Even though winter sunlight was not as strong as the rays in summer, it had enough firepower to disappear his body.

No one would be any the wiser. And he’d left a directive on that trestle table as to what to do with his money and the B&B.

All was in order.

He put the blade to his throat. One advantage to being a vampire was that he knew neck anatomy like the back of his hand.

It was helpful when you were looking for the big fat vein that fed your brain.

One streak was all it was going to take. A pull of his arm. A left-to-right with that viciously sharp, Vishous-ly honed blade. And then his blood would empty sure as water from a tub.

Just a quick move with his dagger hand.

Something he’d done countless times as a fighter to lessers.

Gritting his teeth, closing his eyes, he tilted his head back. “Do it … just do it …”

His whole body started to shake and sweat bloomed over his brow in spite of the cold breeze. A hoarse moan rose up and breached his lips.

“Fuck!” he yelled into the woods. “Fuck …!”

Dropping his arm, he breathed hard and cursed some more. It was so goddamn simple. All he had to do was kill himself right here, in this hidden glen. Sun comes out in the morning. His body is gone.

Suffering done.

He put the blade back where it had been.

This time, he was going to fucking do it.

Throe walked around the dining room table, putting the place cards down in their proper arrangement. Twenty-four place settings of the very best: Royal Crown Derby’s Old Imari plates, Tiffany’s Chrysanthemum sterling flatware, Baccarat wine and water glasses. And down the center of the table, sterling candelabra were set every four feet with spaces left for the flowers. There were also plenty of blue glass salt holders sitting next to sterling pepper shakers.

When he was done assigning seats, he stepped back and regarded the entire room with a jaundiced eye, searching for faults and imperfections. The oil paintings in gilt frames depicted aristocrats who were not part of his immediate bloodline, but they looked like him—because all of the glymera were distantly related anyway. The hearth was dark at the moment, but it would be crackling with dried hardwood on the morrow. The sideboards were prepared to receive vases of flowers and bottles of wine.

The latter never to be served.

In fact, none of the seats would be sat upon and none of the plates would be filled with the food that would be cooked starting at nightfall. But everything needed to look the part and the house had to smell right. And besides, vis-à-vis the meal, he himself would need to eat after everything was done.

Satisfied, he left the stage set and went across to the parlor.