Head bowing, Mia nodded and moved to the door.

“I am not weak of will,” Ivy repeated, shame joining her anger when Mia crossed the small office. Mia opened the door, hesitating to turn and look at her.

“No,” she said, a gentle sadness in her ageless features. “You aren’t. But you do need practice.” Dress furling, the woman left, the click, click of her heels silencing the entire floor, the fluorescent lights catching the highlights in her hair.

Angry, Ivy lurched to the door, slamming it shut and falling back into her chair. “I am not weak of will,” she said aloud, as if hearing it would make it so. But the idea she might be wiggled in between thought and reason, and it was too easy to doubt herself.

Her boot heels went up onto her desk, ankles crossed. She didn’t want to think about what Mia had said—or what she offered. Eyes closed, Ivy took a breath to relax, forcing her body to do as she told it. She hadn’t liked Mia using her, but that’s what they did. It was Ivy’s own fault for arguing with her.

Again, Ivy inhaled, slower to make her shoulders ease. She could ignore everything but what she wanted to focus on if she tried—she spent a great deal of her life that way. It made her quick to anger, depressed her appetite, and caused her to be overly sensitive, but it kept her sane.

Ivy’s eyes opened in the silence, falling upon the tear. As inescapable as shadows, her mind fastened on it, desperately seeking a distraction. Disgust lifted through her at the torn bag. How was she going to explain the broken seal to Art?

Leaning forward, she felt her muscles stretch as she pulled the bag closer, and in a surge of self-indulgence, shook the tear into her palm. A moment of hesitation, and she touched it to her tongue. She felt nothing, tasted nothing. With a guilty motion, she dropped it back in and pressed the seal shut, tossing it to her desk.

The tear was three years old, found in a room stinking of fear. A banshee hadn’t been responsible. The man had murdered his wife with a plan already in place to shift the blame. Where had he gotten a tear? A tear three years old, no less?

Three years. That was a long time to plan your wife’s murder. Especially when they had been married only eight months, according to Mr. Demere’s file. Long-term planning.

Ivy leaned forward in a spike of adrenaline and fingered the bag. Vampires planned that long. Jacqueline had a record. Only a vampire who worked for the I.S. would be in a position to know she was dead, unable to clear her name. And only an I.S. employee would have access to a tear swiped from the old-evidence vault. A tear no one would miss.

“Holy shit,” Ivy softly swore. This went to the top.

Dropping the tear, Ivy reached for the phone. Art would crap his coffin when he found out. But then a thought struck her, and she hesitated, the buzz of the open line a harsh whine.

The apartment had been full of fear—anger and fear that should have been soaked up by the tear but wasn’t—fear that Art had covered up with her own emotions.

The buzz of the phone line turned to beeping, and she set the phone back in the cradle, the acidic taste of betrayal filling her thoughts. Art had used her to muddle the psychic levels in the room. The guy from the collection van had commented on it when he had come in, blaming it on her after he saw the banshee tear, not knowing she had only added to what was already there. No one documented psychic levels unless a banshee was involved, and they hadn’t known until after she contaminated the scene. “After Art stole and planted the tear,” she muttered aloud. Art, who was so dense he couldn’t find his pretty fangs in someone’s ass.

Plucking a pen from her pencil cup, she tapped it on the desk, wanting to write everything down but resisting lest it come back to bite her. Maybe not so dense after all. “Motive…” she breathed, enjoying the adrenaline rush and feeling as if it cleansed her somehow. Why would Art help plan and cover up a murder? What would he get out of it? Being undead, Art was moved only by survival and his need for blood.

Blood? she thought. Had the suspect promised to be Art’s blood shadow in exchange for the opportunity to murder his wife? Didn’t sound right.

Her lips curled upward and she smiled. Money. Art’s rise in the I.S. had stopped when he died and was no longer a potential source of blood. Without the currency of blood for bribes, he couldn’t rise in the vampiric hierarchy. He was existing on the interest from his postdeath funds, but by law he couldn’t touch the principal. If the suspect gave Art a portion of his wife’s insurance money, it might be enough to move Art up a step. That the undead vampire had openly admitted he wasn’t adverse to using Ivy to pull him up in the ranks only solidified her belief that he was having money problems. Undead vampires didn’t work harder than they had to. That Art was working at all said something.

Pen clicking open and shut so fast it almost hummed, Ivy tried to remember if she had ever heard that Art had died untimely. He’d been working the same desk over thirty years.

Jerking in sudden decision, she dropped the pen and pulled out the Yellow Pages, looking for the biggest insurance ad that wasn’t connected to one of Cincinnati’s older vamp families. She would call them all if she had to. Pulse quickening, she dialed, using the suspect’s social security number to find out his next payment wouldn’t be due until the fifteenth. It was for a hefty amount, and she impatiently kept hitting the star button until the machine had a cyber coronary and dumped her into a real person’s phone.

“Were Insurance,” a polite voice answered.

Ivy sat straighter. “This is Officer Tamwood,” she said, “and I’m checking on the records of a Mr. and Mrs. Demere? Could you tell me if they upped their life insurance recently?”

There was a moment of silence. “You’re from the I.S.?” Before Ivy could answer, the woman continued primly. “I’m sorry, Officer Tamwood. We can’t give out information without a warrant.”

Ivy smiled wickedly. “That’s fine, ma’am. My partner and I will be there with your little piece of paper as soon as the sun goes down. We’re kind of in a hurry, so he might skip breakfast to get there before you close.”

“Uh…” the voice came back, and Ivy felt her eyes dilate at the fear it held. “No need. I’m always glad to help out the I.S. Let me pull up the policy in question.”

Ivy tucked the phone between her ear and her shoulder, picking at her nails and trying to get her eyes to contract.

“Here it is!” the woman gushed nervously. “Mr. and Mrs. Demere took out a modest policy covering each of them shortly after getting married…” The woman’s voice trailed off, sounding puzzled. “It was increased about four months ago. Just a minute.”

Ivy swung her feet to the floor and reached for a pen.

“Okay,” the woman said when she returned. “I see why. Mrs. Demere finished getting her degree. She was going to become the major breadwinner, and they wanted to take advantage of the lower payment schedule before her next birthday. It has a payout of a half million.” The woman chuckled. “Someone was a little enthusiastic. A data entry degree won’t get her a good enough job to warrant that kind of insurance.”

A zing of adrenaline went through Ivy, and the pen snapped. “Damn it!” she swore as ink stained her hand and dripped to the desk.

“Ma’am?” the woman questioned, a new wariness to her voice.

Staring at the blue ink on her hand, Ivy said, “Nothing. My pen just broke.” She dropped it in the trash, and using her foot, she opened a lower drawer and snatched up a tissue. “It might be in your company’s best interest to misfile any claim for a few weeks,” she said as she wiped her fingers. “Could you give me a call when someone tries to process it?”