He nodded, glancing at me. "You sound relieved."
"I am. I mean, vampires can be nasty, but I wouldn’t put them in the same league as something that’s crawled from the gates of hell."
"Oh, I don’t know," an-all-too-familiar voice said from the hallway. "I could name quite a few people who would consider me far worse than any nightmare hell has ever produced."
I closed my eyes and swore softly. This day was definitely going from bad to worse. Because the vampire out in the hall was the one and only Madeline Hunter, queen bee of the Directorate, major vampire supremo, and a woman deadlier than almost anything on the planet.
She sauntered through the doorway, her light steps leaving little trace in the thick carpet. She was a small, slender woman with longish dark hair and startling green eyes, but those eyes were as icy and as remote as her near perfect features.
"I never knew you and Mom were friends." I crossed my arms and watched her warily. I might have agreed to work with this woman—or at least the council she represented—but that didn’t mean I had to trust her.
And Valdis’s reaction emphasized just how accurate my gut reaction was.
"We weren’t. But she, at least, had some manners."
Which was a not-too-subtle dig at the fact that I’d refused her entry into my apartment a couple of months ago. "Mom gave up teaching me manners when I was a teenager. And I can tell you right now, they’re not about to improve anytime soon."
Not where she was concerned, anyway. I had a bad feeling I was going to need my bolt-hole, and Hollywood had at least gotten the whole threshold-and-vampires thing right.
Amusement touched the corners of her lips but never cracked the ice in her eyes. Her gaze flicked to the warm presence beside me. "I gather this is your reaper?"
"This is Azriel, yes." I didn’t bother pointing out that he wasn’t actually mine, simply because no one seemed to listen. "Azriel, this is—"
"Madeline Hunter," he finished, and bowed slightly. "You walk a dark path, vampire. Beware of overstepping your own boundaries."
She raised a dark eyebrow. "And would that be advice or warning, reaper?"
"Both." He sheathed a still-glowing Valdis and glanced at me. "I shall leave."