"Thanks." I hung up, then slipped the phone into my jeans pocket. Uncle Quinn might be one step down the ladder from this woman in the vampire hierarchy, but he was something the older ones weren't. He was part Aedh, and he'd once been an assassin for the vampire council. And they feared him. I knew that tidbit from Riley herself.
I looked Madeline Hunter square in the eyes. "What do you want?"
With a long, slender hand, she motioned past me to the apartment's interior. "A bit of common courtesy would be a nice start."
"If you want to talk to me, we can go elsewhere. McDonald's is around the corner and open twenty-four hours." I smiled tightly. "I'm sorry, but you're not getting permission to waltz into my house."
Her lip curled ever so slightly. Obviously, Director Hunter and McDonald's were not compatible. Or maybe it was my attitude she wasn't compatible with. After all, she'd been running the Directorate since its inception, and I doubted she'd heard the word no very often.
"If you insist," she said flatly. "Let us go there now."
"Just let me grab my coat." I didn't wait for her answer, just jogged to my bedroom to fetch my leather coat and shove on some shoes. "Azriel," I said softly, "You might want to listen in on this conversation."
There was no answer, but then I didn't really expect any.
"Are you sure this is safe?" Ilianna whispered as she and Tao came into my bedroom. "I mean, why the hell would the Director be visiting you at this hour?"
I snorted softly. "Who's betting it has something to do with my father?"
After all, almost everything else that had gone wrong so far did.
"You want me to come along?" Tao asked, flexing fingers that danced with little jets of flames.
"No." I squeezed his arm in appreciation of the offer, then added, "But it might be handy to see if Stane can get us the latest in nanowires. If the Directorate is getting involved, we might just need them."
He frowned. "Will they stop someone as powerful as Hunter?"
"Probably not—but they sure as hell will make reading or controlling our minds a bit more difficult."