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picked up her skirts and ran. They let her run, and I knew Padma would make them pay for it later. She said, “Save yourself if you can, Jean-Claude. Contact the Traveller if you can find him. Maybe he can help you. Run if you can. Hide if you can. We are not descended from the Darkness, remember that.” Then it was as if someone had turned off the picture. We were all suddenly lying on the bed with just ourselves and no sense of Belle, or Padma, or Mommie Dearest. The world didn’t smell like flowers anymore.

We all just lay there in a silence so thick I could hear the blood in my own head. Into the silence, I heard myself say, “Motherfucker.”

“Exactement, ma petite, exactement,” Jean-Claude said.

13

IF I HAD ever wanted to give in to hysterics, it was then. How do you fight something with no body to kill? How do you fight something that can possess the most powerful vampires in the world and use them like puppets? How the fuck does anyone fight something like that?

I think we were all lying there thinking about the same thing when someone’s cell phone rang. It was playing the theme to the old Mike Hammer show. Nathaniel spilled off the bed and started rummaging in the clothes on the floor. “It’s the ring tone for Max, the Master of Las Vegas,” he said.

“On your phone?” I asked.

“On yours,” he said, and raised my phone from the mess of clothes. He opened it and said, “This is Anita’s phone, Max, just hang a minute.” He handed it toward me. I mouthed, “The theme to Mike Hammer?” He wiggled the phone at me and frowned. I took the phone, but we were so going to have to talk about what new ring tones he’d put on my phone. I’d just gotten “Wild Boys” off it as my main ring tone and put it to a default peal of church bells.

“Max?” I said, and made it more question than statement. Nicky was still mostly on top of me, not recovered from my forcing his beast. Violent change hurt. I took the phone as I lay wedged between Jean-Claude and Asher.

“Anita, what the fuck are you guys doing tonight?” His voice was an unhappy bass growl. He was a big man to go with the voice, almost totally bald in that I’ve-lost-my-hair kind of way, not a fashion-statement way. He was built big and solid like an old-time linebacker. If you didn’t know what you were looking at you might say fat, but it wasn’t; the muscle just hid itself, but it was there.

“Well, hello to you, too, Max,” I said, and my voice was unhappy, ready to be grumpy right back to him. It made me feel a little better that I could be grumpy about a rude tone of voice. If I could still be pissy about small things, then maybe the world hadn’t ended because the Mother of All Darkness was still “alive.”

“Bibi woke up screaming about the dark trying to eat her. She made me call you, Anita, said you and Jean-Claude would know what was happening to her. Do you—know, I mean?” His voice was uncertain now. He’d started life as a mob boss and never lost the job even after death; in fact, he was one of the reasons that Vegas was still an old-fashioned mob town in spite of new blood from Ukraine and other places east. But he loved his wife and he was worried about his little tiger queen.

“Yeah, I know what’s happened, though when Bibiana calms down I’d love to hear exactly what the dark did to try to eat her.”

“The dark can’t be who it used to be, Anita. You told me the Mother of All Darkness was dead. You told me you felt her die when they blew up her body.” He was angry now; better angry at me than worried about his wife. Better to blame me than admit he might be scared.

“I told you what I believed at the time, Max. We got our first visit from Mommie Dearest since the bombing tonight, too. Trust me, it wasn’t just Bibiana who had a rough night.”

“It’s been almost a year, Anita. Why now? How?” He cursed under his breath and then said, “What happened to you tonight, Anita?”

I looked the few inches that brought me to Jean-Claude’s face. We were all still piled on the bed with the thick goop