Piscary’s savage tutorial had made her old before she had begun to live. She wouldn’t think about what she was doing until it was over. Kisten hadn’t yet learned the trick and lived every moment as it happened, instead of over and over in his mind as she did. It made him slower to react, more…human. And she loved him for it.

“Is there a car to get rid of?” she asked, already on damage control. She hadn’t noticed one in the parking lot, but she hadn’t been looking.

“No.” Kisten headed downstairs with her following, his vampire strength handling the weight without stress. “She came in with Piscary right around midnight.”

“Off the street?” she asked in disbelief, glad the restaurant had been closed.

“No. The bus station. Apparently she’s an old friend.”

Ivy glanced at the woman over his shoulder. She was only twenty at the most. How old a friend could she be? Piscary didn’t like children, despite her size. It was looking more and more likely Piscary had orchestrated this to help Kisten stand on his own. Not only planned it, but built in the net of the woman’s cryptic origins in case Kisten should fall. The master vamp hadn’t counted on Ivy catching him first, and she felt a pang of what she would call love for Kisten—if she knew she could feel the emotion without tainting it with the desire for blood.

Ivy caught sight of Kisten’s grimace when she moved to open the door to the kitchen. “Piscary killed her on purpose,” he said, adjusting the woman’s weight on his shoulder, and Ivy nodded, not wanting to tell him about her own part in the lesson.

Tucking a fabric napkin from the waiting stack into her waistband, she yanked up the handle of the walk-in refrigerator and slid a box with her foot to prop it open. Kisten was right behind her, and in the odd combination of moist coldness Piscary insisted his cheese be kept at, she moved a side of lamb thawing out for Friday’s buffet, insulating her hands with the napkin to prevent heat marks from making it obvious someone had moved it.

Behind the hanging slab was a long low bed of boxes, and Kisten laid the woman there, covering the blur of human features with a tablecloth. Ivy had the fleeting memory of seeing a similar bundle there once before. She and Kisten had been ten and playing hide-and-seek while their parents finished their wine and conversation. Piscary had told them she was someone from a fairy tale and to play in the abandoned upstairs. Seemed like they were still playing upstairs, but now the games were more convoluted and less under their control.

Kisten met her eyes, their deep blue full of recollection. “Sleeping Beauty,” he said, and Ivy nodded. That was what they had called the corpse. Feeling like a little girl hiding a broken dish, she moved the slab of lamb back to partially hide the body.

Cold from more than the temperature, she followed him out, kicking the box out of the way and leaning against the door when it shut. Her eyes went to the time clock by the door. “I’ll get the living room and stairs if you take the elevator,” she said, not wanting to chance running into Piscary. He wouldn’t be angry with her for helping Kisten. No, he’d be so amused she had put off Art again that he would invite her into his bed, and she would quiver inside and go to him, forgetting all about Kisten and what she had been doing. God, she hated herself.

Kisten reached for the mop and she added, “Use a new mop head, then put the old one back on when you’re done. We’re going to have to burn it along with the rug.”

“Right,” he said, his jaw flushing as it clenched. While Kisten filled a bucket, Ivy made a fresh batch of the spray they wiped the restaurant tables down with. Diluted, it removed the residual vamp pheromones, but at full strength, it would break down the blood enzymes that most cleaning detergents left behind. Maybe it was a little overkill, but she was a careful girl.

It would be unlikely to have the woman traced here, but it wasn’t so much for eliminating her presence from a snooping I.S. or FIB agent as it was avoiding having the restaurant smell like blood other than hers and Kisten’s. That might lead to questions concerning whether the restaurant’s mixed public license, or MPL, had been violated. Ivy didn’t think her explanation that, no, no one had been bitten on the premises—Piscary had drained a woman in his private apartments—and therefore the MPL was intact, would go over well. From the amount of aggravation Piscary had endured to get his MPL reinstated the last time some fool Were high on Brimstone had drawn blood, she thought he’d prefer a trial and jail to losing his MPL again. But the real reason Ivy was being so thorough was that she didn’t want her apartment smelling like anyone but her and Kisten.

Her thoughts brought her gaze back to him. He looked nice with his head bowed over the bucket, his light bangs shifting in the water droplets being flung up as it filled.

Clearly unaware of her scrutiny, he turned the water off. “I am such an ass,” he said, watching the ripples settle.

“That’s what I like about you,” she said, worried she might have made him feel inadequate by taking over.

“I am.” He didn’t look at her, hands clenching the rim of the plastic bucket. “I froze. I was so damn worried about what you were going to say when you came home and found me with a dead girl, I couldn’t think.”

Finding a compliment in there, she smiled, digging through a drawer to get a new mop head. “I knew you didn’t kill her. She had Piscary all over her.”

“Damn it, Ivy!” Kisten exclaimed, lashing the flat of his hand out to hit the spigot, and there was a crack of metal. “I should be better than this! I’m his fucking scion!”

Ivy’s shoulders dropped. Sliding the drawer shut, she went to him and put her hands on his shoulders. They were hard with tension, and he did nothing to acknowledge her touch. Tugging into him, she pressed her cheek against his back, smelling the lingering fear on him, and the woman’s blood. Eyes closing, she felt her bloodlust assert itself. Death and blood didn’t turn on a vampire. Fear and the chance to take blood did. There was a difference.

Her hands eased around his front, fingers slipping past the buttons to find his abs. Only now did Kist bow his head, softening into her touch. Her teeth were inches from an old scar she had given him. The intoxicating smell of their scents mixing hit her, and she swallowed. The headiest lure of all. Her chest pressed into him as she breathed deep, intentionally bringing his scent into her, luring fingers of sexual excitement to stir along her spine. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, her voice low.

“You’d be a better scion then I am,” he said bitterly. “Why did he pick me?”

She didn’t think this was about which one of them was his scion but his stress looking for an outlet. Giving in to her urge, she lifted onto her toes to reach his ear. “Because you like people more than I do,” she said. “Because you’re better at talking to them, getting them to do what you want and having them think it was their idea. I just scare people.”

He turned, slowly so he would stay in her arms. “I run a bar,” he said, eyes downcast. “You work for the I.S. You tell me which is more valuable.”

Ivy’s arms slipped to his waist, pressing him back into the edge of the sink. “I’m sorry for the pizza delivery crap,” she said, meaning it. “You aren’t running a bar, you’re learning Cincinnati, what moves who, and who will do anything for whom. Me?” Her attention went to the wisp of hair showing at the V of his shirt. “I’m learning how to kiss ass and suck neck.”

His gaze hard with self-recrimination, Kisten shook his head. “Piscary dropped a dead girl in my lap, and I sat over her and wrung my hands. You walked in and things happened. What about the next time when it’s something important and I fuck it up?”