Page 79 of Bought for Blood

Then she goes, and I hear her on the west stairs, while I sit in a sealed room, surrounded by her sun scent and wishing I could give her answers.

Yves brings Crowe up at dusk.

He comes in and stops two steps inside the door. He looks at the fire. He looks at the papers. Then he starts toward the chair across from mine, and stops.

The cat is on it. Black, sleek, and unbothered by the other predators in the room.

“I’ve told you before, Crowe. That’s Maximilian’s seat.”

“Since when do you have a cat?”

“Always. Are you going to sit, or just stand around ruining the decor?”

Crowe takes the other chair and perches on the edge of the seat.

“Brandy?” I nod at the decanter on the sideboard.

He waves it off. “Your gate’s covered,” he says. “The wall’s covered. But we can’t do anything if she’s roving around at night.”

“I know.”

“Then she isn’t safe.” He puts both hands on his knees. “I’m saying it again because maybe you didn’t hear it the first time. Every hour she’s outside is an hour I can’t do anything about.”

“Noted.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” I stand. “Tell me about the inquiry.”

“People are asking about Sangrey blood,” he says. “More than they were. A lot more, and it started the week she went off the market.”

“Because she’s gone.”

“Because she’s gone. You don’t want something a hundred people can buy. You want something twelve people know exists, and only one of them has access to.” He doesn’t move while he says it. “That’s how scarcity works, and it’s working on your compound right now. There’s a hunt on for where she is.”

I’ve been waiting for that sentence since the night I bought her, and hearing it out loud doesn’t make it easier to hear.

“Do they know it’s me?”

“Not yet. But you’re the client who kept coming back after he’d bought exclusive rights, and that’s the kind of thing that doesn’t make sense unless somebody works out why. People notice what doesn’t make sense. It’s a matter of time, not a matter of if.”

“Then we end it. Now.”

“End what?”

“All of it. The compound, the people running it, and every creature who’s ever bought from it.” I come round the desk. “If the trade’s gone and the Court’s come down hard on anyone caught with that blood in their mouth, there’s no reason to hunt her. She stops being worth finding.”

“Faine won’t go for it. Not yet.”

“Why not? I thought she wanted those people out of there.”

“What she wants is for drained bodies to stop turning up. Twice this year already, somebody’s turned up dead in a way thatgot a human investigation started before anyone could stop it. She doesn’t care what happens to the people in that ward. She cares what happens to our kind if this keeps surfacing where humans can find it.”

“What I’m proposing will resolve that.”

“What you’re proposing could jeopardize the whole thing.”

“Then we want the same ending. We disagree about how fast.”