ago right here in Maplesburg. Secondly, what’s with the ‘Daddy Dearest’ merde? Finding out that there’s a possibility our father didn’t die twenty years ago when Zena targeted Angelica should have made you as happy as it did Megan and me, but ever since we read that postscript to Kane’s letter—”
“‘David Crosse lives’,” I quoted impatiently. “And it wasn’t Kane’s postscript, it was tacked onto the end of his letter by Jasmine, along with her heads-up to us about how she’s coming to Maplesburg. But she hasn’t shown up here, has she? And if her news-flash about Daddy Dearest was true, why hasn’t he contacted us in all these years?”
“That’s what Gospodin Darkheart has requested me to find out. My family’s business contacts in former Soviet Socialist Republic have spent past week questioning peasants in mountainous Carpathian region in attempt to learn what happened to David Crosse after night when Zena left him for dead. Trail is understandably cold after so long and so far is few results, but still is hope we will learn something.”
The unfamiliar voice came from behind me, and I turned in quick alarm to see a man standing in the open doorway of my apartment. Under other circumstances I might have let my gaze linger on him, but right now—well, okay, maybe I did let my gaze linger. Not for long, but enough to make a snap assessment of the man’s attributes, which included about six foot five inches of tanned, hard-muscled male dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, close-cropped hair even paler than Kat’s platinum shade and icy blue eyes that ignored everyone else in the room and remained fixed on me. He looked to be around twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and from his accent it wasn’t hard to guess he was one of the Russians living in New York that Mikhail had called on during our final battle against Cyrus Kane and his vamp army.
All of which didn’t explain what he was doing in my apartment and why he seemed to be more in the loop than I was when it came to my family’s private business.
One of Grammie’s most cherished dictums is that one should always be polite and considerate to guests. Grammie’d never had a massive blond know-it-all Russian dropped on her from out of the blue, I thought wrathfully as I turned on Megan and Kat. “Who’s he?” I demanded, jerking my thumb at the Russian. “And what does he mean, his family’s been looking into David Crosse’s whereabouts? Is Darkheart & Crosse running investigations I don’t know about now?”
“Name is Dmitri Malkovich,” the blond giant said before my sisters could answer. “Search for Gospodin Crosse is not official agency business. Is undertaken by my family in attempt to repay your grandfather for great service he has done us in old country when he saved my sister Anya from vampyr attack. Cousins in Mother Russia are mafya, have many contacts and ways to find out things.” He frowned. “How is said mafya in America?”
“Mafia,” Megan said briefly. “And it’s probably wiser to tell people they’re in waste management or something like that.” She turned her attention back to me. “You’ve got no one but yourself to blame for the fact that you’re out of touch with what’s happening at the agency, Tash. You saw what happened to us when we thought we were the ones Zena marked and isolated ourselves, so why are you making the same mistake we did?”
“Maybe because it’s no fun to be around you anymore?” I said, raising my eyebrows at the stake she was still pointing my way. “Gawd, Meg, it’s like you and Kat have forgotten how to have a good time. It’s all staking and Healing and punching the clock at Darkheart & Crosse—is it such a crime to want to party or go shopping once in a while?”
“I party every night, sweetie,” Kat drawled. “As the owner of Maplesburg’s hottest club, that’s part of my job description, no? You could have dropped by the Hot Box anytime, but maybe hanging out in an alleyway is more your idea of fun.”
“Frankly, it is,” I shot back. “You just said it yourself—when you’re at the Hot Box you’re working, not ready to chill with your sis over a couple of cocktails. Besides, I still remember it as it was when Zena owned it. You nearly died there, Kat.”
“Yes, but she didn’t,” Megan said evenly. “Zena did. So forgive me if I don’t buy your sudden sensitivity, Tashya. I think the truth is that you’re having way too much fun cutting loose for the first time in your life and you don’t care that walking away from your family is the price. I guess we should be thankful that you haven’t totally embraced your vamphood.” She paused. “So far,” she added harshly. “I never want to have to hunt you down, sis, so don’t do anything that might make that happen. Let’s leave, Kat. I told you we were wasting our time trying to talk to her.”
I stared at her as she strode to the door, feeling as though she’d just slapped me in the face. Then I looked quickly away, hoping that my blubathon at Kathy Lehman’s had depleted my tear ducts for the evening, and realizing it hadn’t when I felt a sharp prickle behind my eyelids. Strangely enough, it wasn’t Megan’s barely veiled threat of staking me that hurt most, it was her attitude. She was trying her hardest to convince Kat and Darkheart that I wasn’t worth attempting a Heal.
She was trying too hard, I realized a heartbeat later. Even as I wondered why she was in such a hurry to hustle Kat and my grandfather out before the three of them could attempt what they’d obviously come here to do, Darkheart addressed me for the first time since he’d arrived.
“Is much talk of Queen Vampyr among those you meet?” His question was abrupt and his gaze on me was sharp. “Perhaps tonight you hear rumors, da?”
“Sorry, nyet,” I informed him. “I mean, Zena was a big deal to us, sure, but after her death the ordinary Joe Vamp in Maplesburg got on with his undead life.” I remembered Trudy and Cindy. “Her style sense lives on, though. Does that count?”
“Not Zena, the new queen.” Megan turned from the apartment door, her hand slipping from the doorknob. Her voice was low, as if she was reluctant to speak at all. “Lady Jasmine.”
“The Cruel,” added Kat in the same reluctant tone.
I rolled my eyes. “What’s with these queen vamps? Zena billed herself as ‘the Horrible,’ now Jasmine’s calling herself ‘the Cruel’—I mean, talk about shameless self-promotion—”
“She does not call herself cruel,” Darkheart interrupted. “She has earned that name from others.”
“And comparing Zena to her is like comparing a housecat to a saber-toothed tiger,” Megan said bleakly. “Except for what Cyrus told us in his letter we don’t know much about her, but we know she’s one of the strongest vampyrs in existence. And from what Kat learned from a vamp she Healed two nights ago, we also suspect she’s already arrived in Maplesburg.”
“Now I get it.” I looked from one to another—Megan, grim and unsmiling, Kat, her eyes shadowed with concern, Darkheart, his expression closed. I was aware that Dmitri’s ice-blue gaze was still fixed on me but I ignored him. “That’s why you’ve decided to spring an intervention on me. You’re afraid if I run into Ms. SuperVamp I’ll go over to her side, me being so immature and self-involved and everything.” I divided my glare among the three of them. “The answer’s still no. Nyet. Non. Nada. I’m not—”
“Nada means nothing, not no,” Megan said. “And that’s not all you’ve got wrong, brat. We didn’t come here to attempt a Heal on you tonight, we—” Her gaze shifted away, but with a visible effort she forced it to meet mine again. “We came here for the opposite reason.”
“Only way to learn more about new Queen is to have spy in her camp,” Darkheart
