“But it’s healing.”
“Yeah, slowly.”
“Are you okay?”
It was the second time he’d asked in as many minutes. I still didn’t answer. “What happened to you guys? How’d you get out of the tunnels?”
“We followed Ben. His wolf side didn’t seem to have any trouble.”
“Why’d he shift?”
“You were gone.”
The door had shut, I’d shouted at him from the other side, he’d pounded on it, trying to get to me—and then I’d fallen. Vanished. Maybe they’d even gotten the door open but couldn’t find any sign of me on the other side. Or they’d kept shouting through the door and got no answer. And Ben had lost it. I stroked the thick fur along his back, and he turned his head back to give my hand a quick lick.
I couldn’t figure out the situation. Anastasia seemed unhappy but not nervous. Cormac was cautious, like he always was. His right hand rested in his pocket—clutching a cross, I’d bet. The stake would be hidden up a sleeve. Had the vampires even searched him for weapons? Joe and Henry stayed behind me, near the door, and seemed amused. I glanced over my shoulder trying to keep them in view. Then there were the three new vampires in front of me. One of them was no doubt the Master of San Francisco. Anastasia’s old ally, or her old nemesis? This felt like a tribunal of some kind, like we were being brought here to face some kind of reckoning. I couldn’t identify which one of them was in charge. All three seemed confident, and none showed deference to any other. I was used to seeing hierarchies among vampires, as much as I did among werewolves. Joe and Henry had talked about a boss—who was it?
“You’re Kitty Norville?” the one on the sofa, the suspenders-no-jacket guy, said. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, making him seem even more like a Prohibition-era gangster.
“Hi,” I said, waving my hand. “And you are?”
He waved the question away. “This is your mate?” He pointed at Ben, who growled.
I pressed his shoulder, quieting him. “Yeah.”
“Well. Thanks for joining us.”
“Did we have a choice?”
He smiled broadly, and the muscles across my shoulders twitched. “I have to ask, what are you doing in my territory?”
“Ask her.”
He glanced at Anastasia, his expression souring before he looked back at me. Maybe checking for confirmation, or fishing for a reaction. “Then you do serve a vampire? The gossip about you says you don’t serve anyone.”
I straightened, tipping my chin up in a show of pride, hoping to demonstrate that the gossip was right. And there was gossip about me? What gossip? What were people saying about me behind my back anyway?
“Actually, I’m really pissed off at her right now,” I said.
Everyone except me looked at her for a reaction; she didn’t oblige them, only spoke calmly in a cold, creamy voice, “She doesn’t serve me. She’s here as a favor. As an ally.”
“What the hell did you do for her to deserve a favor like this?” he said to her.
Anastasia and I glanced at each other, trying to egg each other on. For a moment I even thought, what had she done for me? But that wasn’t the issue. Favors weren’t currency you could line up and trade, one for one. At least, not to me. I was here because we both wanted to take down Roman.
I had to tell her about the figure in the alley, the imperious spy.
We were at some kind of stalemate. We’d answered questions, but the vampire—I had to assume the one in suspenders was the boss—wasn’t happy with the answers. They didn’t seem likely to let us go, but they were also treating Anastasia with kid gloves. Was this the Master who had taken power in the 1920s? It seemed likely. At any rate, this was Anastasia’s bailiwick, and I didn’t know the rules here. I ought to let her do all the talking. What were the odds?
When he didn’t get an answer, he shrugged. “Well then. Welcome to San Francisco. It would have been nice if you’d called first. You’re from Denver, right? Who’s running things there now? Rick, isn’t it? You could have asked him, gotten an introduction, made it all official—”
“He said you wouldn’t mind it if I just passed through.”
“Did he? He’s either getting senile in his old age or he has a lot of confidence in you. Which is it?”
I tilted my head. “How old is old? All of you,” I said, glancing at each of them, even Joe and Henry behind me. “Rick says you’ve been running San Francisco since the twenties, so that’s at least a hundred.”
The members of the vampire entourage wore crooked, amused smiles. The woman had blood-red lips.
“It’s rude, asking vampires about their age,” said Boss.
I shrugged. “Yeah. I keep doing it anyway.” I was getting my groove back. I came as close as I could to staring at him without looking him in his hypnotic eyes. He had a slight hook in his nose. “I have some questions. You’ve been running San Francisco for almost a century, so you were here during the sixties. Summer of Love and all that, right? You ever meet Janis Joplin? Jerry Garcia? Country Joe? Any of those psychedelic guys?”
“What if I said yes? What do you expect me to say about any of them that hasn’t already been said?”
“Maybe I just wanted to see if you had any concert bootlegs.”
Ben bumped my hip with his nose and whined a little. Yeah, maybe I was talking too much. But what if he’d said yes? And what if he’d actually given them to me? It never hurt to ask.
Boss raised an eyebrow. “You are definitely Kitty Norville.”
“So that’s a no?”
“You’ll have to ask Henry, that was more his scene.” Behind me, Henry gave a little wave.
The thing was, as long as we were all talking, nobody was fighting. If I got Boss
