hadn’t even seen the blurry figure negligently leaning his elbow on her car roof.
She halted, her broken heart lurching back together, reminding her it was her own survival that counted now. She shoved her hand in her pocket, clutching the stake, and blinked hard in an attempt to clear the tears from her vision. It didn’t help.
“Miss you?” she retorted. “I can’t turn round without bumping into you. What do you want now?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said fiercely. She still couldn’t see him properly, though he’d closed the distance between them. Another rising sob was closing up her throat, aching. A tear trickled down her chin and splashed onto her shoe. “Parental grief. Someone else’s. Why don’t you fuck off?”
He touched her face, brushing moisture with his thumb. She gasped, closing her eyes tight. Even then she knew it was hardly the best way to fight off a vampire, but it seemed infinitely more necessary to hide the shame of her tears.
Something—his lips, incredibly, irrefutably his lips—pressed briefly to her mouth. Her eyes flew open in astonishment, but he’d already released her and was climbing into her car.
“Take me to meet the banking vampires.”
Sera closed her mouth, which seemed to have fallen open. It didn’t even seem worth asking him how he’d got into her locked vehicle. He had an affinity with doors. Or to inquire if they were now working together again. Surreptitiously, she wiped her face with a tissue and climbed into the driver’s seat. Blair seemed huge, folded into the passenger seat beside her.
“Where is sir’s appointment?” she asked.
“Roseburn. Nicholas Smith’s house.”
She fastened her belt and started the car. “And why am I in attendance?”
“It struck me that you have another valuable asset. You know when people are lying.”
“True, but I generally have to touch them, and I might blow your cover if I roam among them doing the touchy-feely thing.” She pulled onto the road and glanced at him. “This is a cover, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Blair said. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Sera smiled at the windscreen. Sometimes touch wasn’t necessary. Not with the dead or, it seemed, the undead. Stupidly, her heart felt warm and fuzzy. She didn’t even mind that she could be repeating the same mistakes as yesterday. Surely the important thing was that he hadn’t killed her yesterday and he showed no signs of killing her today.
“What about the dead?” Blair asked.
“What?”
“The dead. Spirits. How do you know when they’re lying?”
She frowned. “Generally, spirits don’t bother lying, though I suppose I’ve encountered the odd mischievous one who wasn’t above porky pies.” She glanced at him. “Lies,” she translated.
“I got that.”
“I just know when they’re doing it. Why? Do you think it would work that way with vampires?”
“You tell me.”
She thought it through, felt the fuzziness drop away to ice. “You did want to drink my blood. Last night. You’ve never lied to me, have you?”
Although she couldn’t look at him, she felt his gaze on her face. “No.” There was a pause, then, “I still want to drink your blood. I want it very badly. But I don’t want to kill you.”
“So what was last night? A temper tantrum?”
She knew he was smiling. “Perhaps. And I suppose I was giving you the chance to get out while you could. Phil persuaded me that we needed you.”
“For what? Lie detecting and tracking?”
“And sex.”
She swerved, and an oncoming car hooted in outrage. “I will not,” she said breathlessly, “have sex with Phil.”
“Thanks.”
“For what?” she demanded, risking a glance at him.
He winked. “Not ruling me out.”
****
PC Alex McGowan saw the MacBride woman emerge from the building and walk rather erratically toward her car, where the man waited for her. Tall and fit and unnaturally still, he moved like McGowan’s idea of a secret, well-paid assassin. He might have been a bodyguard. Well, it was a rough neighborhood, and a rip-off artist like Serafina MacBride would probably need one around here.
McGowan hesitated. He’d been working overtime—trawling the Hard Knox and the other pubs where people had died recently in bizarre circumstances that weren’t being made generally known to the public—and he was on his way home when he’d spotted Sera MacBride’s distinctive car on Ferry Road. On impulse, he’d followed her, growing increasingly angry as he realized she was heading to the Gordons’ house for the second time in as many days.
How much was she robbing from these people who’d already suffered so much? McGowan had been first on the scene when the Gordons had first