Promises to Keep

was impossible. He’s prepared. Even if he were alone, it would be a long shot. Many had tried, but in Midnight’s entire history, there was no record of a hunter ever getting a knife into one of the trainers.

“Don’t go!” Brina cried like a child at a tea party, grabbing Jay’s wrist before he could take more than a step. Her sudden intensity was unsettling, and brought to mind Xeke’s warning that this was not a woman who distinguished what or whom she did or didn’t have a right to possess.

Jay gently but firmly extracted his wrist. “My apologies, Lady Brina, but I need to tear myself away from your company for a moment.”

“Jay.” Arms wrapped around him from behind as a familiar mind and body snuggled against him. “Dear Brina, you don’t mind if I steal Jay for a while, do you?” Xeke crooned. “I’m sure he’ll have time for you later, but you know how boys are.”

Brina bit her lower lip, then said, “If you insist.”

Xeke looked at the trainer and nodded a cool greeting.

Something passed between the two men, something Jay almost wanted to analyze further, before he realized that Xeke felt he was protecting Jay from a double threat.

“Jay here is one of Kendra’s guests,” he said to the new vampire. “He was invited, with the full knowledge of his pedigree, and has behaved himself perfectly well. And now we’re leaving.”

With an arm firmly around Jay’s waist, Xeke led him away, thinking furiously, What kind of idiot are you, witch? Do you want to be her lapdog?

“She can’t—”

“Witches are freeblood,” Xeke hissed, “as long as they violate none of Midnight’s rules. Hunters are an entirely different matter, especially once they put themselves in our territory. You were invited here and weren’t shy about what you were, so you’re marginally safe, but if Jaguar had decided you were a threat to Brina, he could have handed you over to her in a heartbeat, and not a person in this house would have objected.”

Why does he have so much power in Kendra’s home? Jay wondered, just before Xeke swatted him upside the head, in a semi-playful yet very serious fashion that distracted him from pursuing the thought.

“What are you doing back here?” Xeke asked.

“Why shouldn’t I be here?”

Xeke gave a long-suffering sigh before saying, “I don’t think you came back to see me, and I hope you didn’t come back to see Brina, which means you put in a great deal of effort to find a place that you’re not supposed to find.”

“Who is the woman from the woods?” Jay asked.

Xeke turned around and, in one smooth movement, slammed Jay up against the wall hard enough to knock his breath out, effectively distracting him from hearing Xeke’s first-thought response.

“I don’t know,” Xeke answered honestly while Jay’s eyes were still wide with surprise, “and I don’t want to know. And you shouldn’t want to know. If she’s unconscious, maybe she’s better off that way. If she wakes up and she wants you to know who she is, she’ll tell you. So drop it, okay?”

“And if I won’t?” Jay asked.

“Then I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Xeke said, words clear and precise, “and remind you that a hunter who trespasses on our land violates his freeblood privilege. I don’t think you’re crazy enough to risk that.”

“Xeke,” Jay said, “you have no idea how crazy I can be.”

“You like risk. That’s fine; I like to play games too,” Xeke said with a brilliant smile. “Trust me when I say you don’t want them to be real.”

“You wouldn’t keep me.” Jay knew that for certain.

Xeke’s response was chilling. “It wouldn’t be up to me—this isn’t my territory. You’d go to Kendra, or Jaguar, or probably Brina, given the sheer number of people who want to give her shiny baubles to keep her happy and placid. I don’t have the clout to claim you as my own.”

This time, Jay could find the thoughts related to Jaguar. Midnight. Slave trade. Jaguar wasn’t discussed much by hunters these days, but Xeke’s caution made it clear that the trainer had regained at least some of the power and influence he had once had. That meant Midnight itself had become stronger than the hunters had begun to imagine.

“You’re worried she belongs to someone,” Jay said as he finally picked the thought—it should have been obvious, he realized—out of Xeke’s mind. “You’re worried the shapeshifter I found belongs to someone, and if you—” He broke off, because Xeke shook his head, still pinning Jay against the wall, and thinking, He’s so determined to hang himself, he doesn’t even need rope.

If the shapeshifter was an escaped slave, then anyone harboring or helping her had violated vampiric law and forfeited any freeblood privilege. If Xeke learned who she was, he and anyone allied with him could be claimed as payment unless Xeke turned the slave in. More important—to Jay, anyway—was the fact that since Jay was the one who had found her and taken her to SingleEarth, Midnight might decide he had stolen her.

But even that wasn’t his biggest concern.

So far, Midnight was hiding, waiting in the wings … and gaining power. It hadn’t had cause to challenge SingleEarth directly. No matter how badly Jay and other hunters would love to plant a knife in any of Midnight’s trainers, no one wanted to start a fight that pitted the peaceful SingleEarth against that ancient evil.

Xeke thought at him, You need to leave. Now.

CHAPTER 10

JAY DIDN’T WANT to get himself sold into slavery over this. On the other hand, since the proponents of the slave trade were in Kendra’s house for the party, they wouldn’t be in the woods, would they?

And what did the vampires have to hide that was important enough and powerful enough that it was concealed with a spell that Jay couldn’t even begin to discern?

Just one thing: Midnight.

The first version of Midnight’s empire had been founded in the sixteen hundreds, around the time when Jay’s line had come into existence. The vampires had effectively ruled the supernatural world through a combination of trade sanctions, economic incentives, and an iron threat to back up their laws. Despite protections given to nonhumans, many of the witches were killed. The Light line was eradicated entirely, and the Arun and Vida lines, both of which were exclusively hunters, were cut down to a bare handful of survivors.

When the original Midnight had burned to the ground in 1804, there had been celebrations throughout the world. Unfortunately, though destroying its base of operations had weakened the empire sufficiently for other groups to regain control, the hunters at the time had not been able to eliminate the vampires themselves. Whispers of Midnight’s return had become increasingly common lately.

The original Midnight had been out west, beyond the area claimed at that time by the newborn United States, in the no-man’s-land where white men had not yet established dominion. Could the new one really have its heart here, arrogantly close not only to human civilization but to the headquarters of so many of Midnight’s most serious enemies? Most of Jay’s extended family, including almost all the vampire-hunting witches he knew, lived in New England. The Bruja guilds—a trio of mercenary groups that reputedly had originally been founded specifically to oppose Midnight—had their guild halls in Massachusetts and New York. Jay couldn’t help but feel that such placement was meant to be a deliberate slap in the face.

If Midnight was here, Jay needed to know. If he was right, this would give hunters a chance to bring the empire to its knees before it could get back on its feet. He just needed information, and then he could contact his allies and begin to plan the hunt of a lifetime.

He changed clothes quickly in the backseat of his car and then went hiking behind Kendra’s home, which bordered the same unnaturally quiet forest he had explored behind Xeke’s apartment. Jay might not have been