Page 46 of Bought for Blood

His mouth opens and closes once. “Lord Val-Serein, you’ve already reserved her for as long as she entertains you. But what she brings us across a year, you can’t simply—”

“I know precisely what she brings you. I’m offering you a decade of it before dawn. Say yes, Vasile.”

The number I name makes his eyes go wide. I watch him work through it: a decade of the Sangrey yield, in one sum, tonight. Against that: years of draws, storage, risk, and a source that might not survive the process. His hands come together on the blotter. His heartbeat has changed rhythm, greed and terror alternating.

“The sum is—” he starts. “My lord, the sum is extraordinary, and I am not— The classification is designated. Committed. A sale of this asset isn’t mine to authorize. There are levels—” He’s babbling. Money does that.

“I don’t care about levels. Make it happen.”

He looks at the phone on his desk, in no hurry to touch it. “It’s four in the morning.”

“Then wake them.”

“My lord—”

“Your superiors keep our hours, Vasile.” I take the chair across from him at last and rest one hand on the armrest. “Dial.”

He dials from memory—no book, no card, eleven digits his fingers know in the dark. It picks up on the first ring.

“Duty desk.” A woman’s voice, level, awake.

“Vasile. Compound six. I need a designation released for sale.” His voice grows firmer as he goes; this is a channel he’s used before, just never for this. “Sangrey classification. Full transfer of title.”

Silence on the line. Not dead air; I can hear a room behind it. A pen on paper. Another conversation, too far off to resolve. Not English. Romanian. Then the voice again.

“Purchaser.”

“A private client. Standing account, exclusivity arrangement, excellent history with the house—”

“Val-Serein,” the voice says.

Vasile stops talking. He never said my name. His eyes come up to mine, and my face stays pleasant, while something sharpens in my chest. The people at the top of these stairs know their clients without being told. That’s worth reporting to Crowe before the week is out, whether or not I tell him how I learned it.

“Yes,” Vasile manages.

“The offer.”

He names my number. The pen on the other end writes something. The distant conversation stops.

“Add twelve percent,” the voice says. “Origination and release. Non-negotiable.”

Twelve percent, invented between one breath and the next. They know exactly how badly a man wants something by four in the morning, and they price it accordingly. Whoever sits at the top of this trade, I already like them better than everyone beneath them.

“Done,” I say, to the room.

A pause on the line, brief, while the voice weighs whether a client speaking directly is something to object to. At that price, it isn’t.

“Papers before noon,” it says. “Congratulations on your acquisition, Seigneur.” The line goes dead.

Vasile sets the handset down with both hands. He’s sweating freely now, and the relief is all over him; the relief of a man who has just converted his most dangerous liability into a number with a lot of zeros. And now she can’t be tortured or die of anemia or bring a vampire’s rage into his world.

We do the papers at his desk. Bill of transfer. Release of designation.

My signature has bought paintings, estates, the silence of two governments. Tonight it buys a twenty-three-year-old woman, itemized, and I sign it the way I sign everything else.

“Delivery,” I say, setting his pen down. “Tomorrow, before dusk. Daylight hours. My staff will receive her. A closed car, heated. She travels awake. No sedation, no restraints, no handlers in the passenger compartment. She’s fed before she leaves, and she’s told where she’s going.”

“Told, my lord?” His hand pauses over the schedule. “The stock isn’t generally informed of—”