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Eric waited.

“Did I love you?” I knew Eric wasn’t going to give up, and I might as well figure out an answer. “Maybe. Sort of. But I knew all along that whoever was with me, it wasn’t the real you. And I knew sooner or later you’d remember who you were and what you were.”

“You don’t seem to have yes or no answers about men,” he said.

“You don’t exactly seem to know how you feel about me, either,” I said.

“You’re a mystery,” he said. “Who was your mother, and who was your father? Oh, I know, you’ll say they raised you from a child and died when you were a little girl. I remember you telling me the story. But I don’t know if it’s exactly true. If it is, when did the fairy blood enter your family tree? Did it come in with one of your grandparents? That’s what I’m supposing.”

“And what business is it of yours?”

“You know it is my business. Now we are tied.”

“Is this going to fade? It will, right? We won’t always be like this?”

“I like being like this. You’ll like it, too,” he said, and he seemed mighty damn sure.

“Who was the vampire who tried to kill us?” I asked, to change the subject. I was hoping he wasn’t right, and anyway, we’d said everything there was to say on the subject, as far as I was concerned.

“Let’s go find out,” he said, and took my hand. I trailed along with him, simply because I wanted to know.

Batanya was standing by the vampire’s body, which had begun the rapid disintegration of its kind. She’d retrieved her throwing star, and she was polishing it on her pants leg.

“Good throw,” Eric said. “Who was he?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. The guy with the arrows, was all I know. All I care.”

“He was the only one?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what he looked like?”

“I was sitting next to him,” said a very small male vampire. He was perhaps five feet tall, and slim besides. His hair trailed down his back. If he went to jail, he’d have guys knocking on his cell door within thirty minutes. They’d be sorry, of course, but to the unobservant eye, he did look like the world’s easiest target. “He was a rough one, and not dressed for the evening. Khakis and a striped dress shirt . . . well, you can see.”

Though the body was blackening and flaking away as vamp corpses did, naturally the clothes were intact.

“Maybe he had a driver’s license?” I suggested. That was almost a given with humans, but not with vampires. However, it was worth a shot.

Eric squatted and inserted his fingers into the man’s front pocket. Nothing came out, or from the other front pocket, so without further ado Eric rolled him over. I took a couple of steps back to avoid the flurry of flakes of ash. There was something in the rear pocket: a regular wallet. And inside it, sure enough, was a driver’s license.

It had been issued by Illinois. Under blood type was the designation “NA.” Yep, a vamp, for sure. Reading over Eric’s shoulder, I could see that the vamp’s name had been Kyle Perkins. Perkins had put “3V” as his age, so he had been a vamp for only three years.

“He must have been an archer before he died,” I said. “Because that’s not a skill you’d pick up right away, especially that young.”

“I agree,” Eric said. “And in the daytime, I want you to check all the local places you can practice archery. Throwing arrows is not a skill you can improvise. He trained. The arrow was specially made. We need to find out what happened to Kyle Perkins, and why this rogue accepted the job to attend this meeting and kill whomever necessary.”

“So he was a . . . vampire hit man?”

“Yes, I think so,” Eric said. “Someone is maneuvering us very carefully. Of course, this Perkins was simply backup in case the trial went wrong. And if it hadn’t been for you, the trial might well have gone wrong. Someone went to a lot of trouble to play on Henrik Feith’s fears, and stupid Henrik was about to give that someone up. This Kyle, he was planted to prevent just that.”

Then the cleanup crew arrived: a group of vampires with a body bag and cleaning supplies. The human maids would not be asked to mop up Kyle. Luckily, they were all occupied in refreshing