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“We’ll have the shades for the skylights by then?”

“Yeah. And they’re retractable so you’ll be able to open and lower them.”

Man, those things were going to be handy. A little sunlight was the best maid a lesser could have. She comes in, flashes through the space, and presto!, no more vampire debris.

O nodded to his truck. “I’ll take the Toro back to the rental place. You need anything from town?”

“Nope. We’re good.”

On the way into Caldwell, with the piece of machinery in the bed of the F-150, O should have been in a good mood. The building was going well. His squadron was accepting his leadership. Mr. X hadn’t brought up the Betas again. But instead he just felt…dead. And wasn’t that ironic as hell for someone who hadn’t been alive for three years?

He’d been like this once before.

Back in Sioux City, before he’d become a lesser, he’d hated his life. He’d squeaked through high school, and there’d been no money to send him to even a community college, so his career options had been limited. Working as a bouncer had called into service his size and mean streak, but it was only moderately amusing: The drunks didn’t tend to fight back, and coldcocking the unconscious was no more engaging than beating a cow.

The only good thing had been meeting Jennifer. She’d saved him from the mindless tedium, and he’d loved her for it. She was drama, excitement, and unpredictability in the flat landscape of life. And whenever he’d go into one of his rages, she’d hit him right back, even though she was smaller and bled easier than he did. He’d never figured out whether she threw her punches because she was too dumb to know he’d always win in the end or if it was because she was so used to being beaten by her father. Either way, stupidity or habit, he took everything she could give him and then pounded her into the ground. Tending to her afterward, when his fire was out, had given him the most tender moments of his life.

But like all good things, she had come to an end. God, he missed her. She’d been the only one who understood how love and hate beat side by side in the chambers of his heart, the only one who could handle both at the same time. Thinking of her long, dark hair and her lean body, he missed her so much he could almost feel her beside him.

As he came into Caldwell proper, he thought of the prostitute he’d bought the other morning. She’d ended up giving him what he’d needed after all, though she’d had to trade her life to do it. And while he drove along now, he scanned the sidewalks, looking for another release. Unfortunately, brunettes were harder to come by than blondes in the skin trade. Maybe he could buy a wig and tell the whores to put it on.

O thought about the number of people he’d taken out. The first person he’d killed had been in self-defense. The second had been a mistake. The third had been in cold blood. So by the time he’d come to the East Coast, running from the law, he’d known a little about death.

Back then, with Jennifer just gone, the pain in his chest had been a living thing, a mad dog that needed to stretch its legs before it destroyed him. Falling into the Society had been a miracle. It had saved him from tortured rootlessness, giving him a focus and a purpose and an outlet for the agony.

But now, somehow, all those benefits were gone and he felt empty. Just as he had five years ago in Sioux City, right before he’d run into Jennifer.

Well, almost the same, he thought, pulling up to the rental place.

Back then, he’d still been alive.

“Are you out of the tub?”

Mary laughed, put the phone to her other ear, and burrowed deeper into the pillows. It was sometime after four o’clock.

“Yes, Rhage.”

She couldn’t remember when she’d had a more luxurious day. Sleeping in. Food delivered with books and magazines. The Jacuzzi.

It was like being at a spa. Well, a spa where the phone rang all the time. She wouldn’t count how many times he’d called her.

“Did Fritz bring you what I