Shoving my right hand through my hair, pushing it away from my eyes, I gazed down at Mira, who seemed to be staring at the table, lost in thought. “It doesn’t sound like she was chosen because she was involved with any particular nightwalker, but because she was involved in this world,” I said. “It’s not enough that she was a senator’s daughter who died under suspicious circumstances. That could be covered up.”

“But a little digging into her habits, her friends, the people that she was known to associate with could reveal our entire world,” Mira continued, picking up the thread of my thought. She looked up at me, a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth. “It would at the very least start pointing fingers at the Dark Room. Nightwalkers can do without the publicity.”

Gregor suddenly sat forward, his hands coming to rest on his knees. “You’re not going to shut down the Dark Room again, are you?”

Mira shook her head, looking down at the table again. “So far, it’s been quiet. The media haven’t gotten past her squeaky clean background as an honor student and museum curator for the Girl Scouts. Unless we close this case soon, they’re going to start digging deeper and it’s only a matter of time before people start pointing out where she spent her nights.”

“She frequented a number of the bars around the city,” Gregor argued. “The Dark Room is just one of the many.”

“The Dark Room is also the only exclusive, members-only club in the city. It’s going to raise some eyebrows and put this place in the spotlight,” I said, drawing Gregor’s ire. When I was hunting for Mira, I quickly learned to keep my distance from the club, as the concentration of nightwalkers would easily overwhelm me. The temptation had been to linger not far away and watch for someone of Mira’s description to appear, but the risk had been too great.

“I’m content to leave things as they are for now,” Mira said with a heavy sigh. “Since you are so partial to the Dark Room, I put it in your hands to keep an eye on the media and see to it that they don’t go looking into our little establishment.”

Gregor jerked in surprise at this pronouncement. “Really? Isn’t such a thing within Knox’s domain?”

“He’s got enough to worry about,” Mira snapped. “Maybe you’ll prove to be useful to me at long last instead of a pain in my ass.”

“As you wish,” he said, with a nod. The nightwalker then looked over at me and waved absently. “Watch yourself.”

My would-be attacker’s footsteps were nearly silent under the loud music that now blasted through the nightclub. As I turned, a young woman carrying a blade rushed me. Her teeth were clenched and bared so that I could hear the low rumble of a growl coming from her as she lunged. I hesitated, my brain struggling to understand why this complete stranger had decided to attack me unprovoked. At the last second, I caught her wrists with both hands, but not before she managed to bury the tip of her knife in the meaty part of my shoulder, slicing through muscle.

A hiss slipped from between my clenched teeth as I shifted my weight to my left foot so that I could shove the woman away from me. She kept her tight grip on the blade, pulling it out of my arm as she stumbled backward.

The scent of my blood hit the chilled air and I was immediately swamped by the wave of hunger that washed red through the club. I blinked a couple times, struggling to focus on the world around me, the pain in my arm, anything but the swarm of nightwalkers that suddenly felt the urge to drain me dry. Suppressing a growl, I closed up my mind as much as possible, dampening the hunger pangs echoing through my brain. Mira was the only creature that I couldn’t completely block out. I could feel her as a slim shadow in my thoughts, simply watching while hunger gnawed at her insides.

The enraged woman shoved away a chair that had become entangled with her feet and tightened her grip on the bloody blade in her right hand. She took another swipe at me, but I easily slipped out of her reach as I sidled away from the booth. Unfortunately, my back was now turned toward a growing throng of nightwalkers who were intently watching the scuffle. I needed to end this as quickly as possible before anyone else decided to join in the fray. In Mira’s weakened state, I wasn’t so sure she would be able to control this mob and I wasn’t about to put it to the test.

“A fan of your work?” Mira inquired from behind me. She sounded as if she were still lounging in the booth with Gregor.

“You fucking bastard!” the woman snarled, looking as if she was searching for an opening.

“Guess so,” Gregor muttered, but I ignored them both. My focus was on the woman. A quick scan revealed that she truly was just human. Not a vampire. Not a lycanthrope. Not even a witch. I killed nightwalkers by the light of the moon. How could she possibly hope to kill me? Unless she didn’t. Maybe she was the distraction. I couldn’t take any chances surrounded by this many nightwalkers. I had to end the confrontation as quickly as possible, and preferably without any additional bloodshed.

“What do you want with me?” I asked, taking a step away from the woman in an effort to establish a little breathing room.

“I want you to die!” she screamed. As she swung the blade at me, a swath of brown hair fell across her face, momentarily blocking her vision. I snatched up the opportunity, ripping the knife from her grip. She shrieked at me in rage, lurching toward me with her fingernail aimed to remove a layer of flesh from my face. Placing my hand on her bony shoulder, I shoved her backward. Nightwalkers scattered as the woman stumbled away from me until she finally fell to her butt in the middle of the dance floor. The grinding music had been stopped and the silence was broken only by the woman’s jagged breathing.

“I don’t know you,” I said in a firm voice. “Why do you want me dead?”

The first of her tears started slipping down her pale face as she stared up at me from where she continued to sit on the dirty floor. “You killed him,” she started in a low, haunting voice. “They told me that you hunted him down and killed him.”

A new darker sense of dread took hold in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t like the direction this was headed and my only hope was that someone had lied to this poor woman.

“Who?” I asked, my voice losing some of its former strength.

“Mark! His name was Mark and you killed him,” she shouted. Her hands balled into fists at her sides and shook with her anger and her obvious pain.

I turned so that I could look at Mira, while still being able to watch the woman out of the corner of my eye. “Mira?” I prompted. She was the keeper of this domain; she would know what had happened to this lost soul.

“She’s right,” Mira said in a weary voice. “Mark was the third one you killed when you came into my territory in July.

My shoulders stiffened and my fingers tightened around the handle of the knife as I turned back to face the woman, who was now gasping for air amid her sobbing. Her slim shoulders jerked as tears streaked down her cheeks to splatter on the floor.

“You don’t remember him?” the woman demanded in a ragged voice. “You fucking bastard. His name was Mark and he had soft brown hair and gentle brown eyes. Would never have hurt anyone! You killed him and he never did anything to hurt anyone!”

I had killed someone important to her—a friend, a lover. And I couldn’t remember his face. He was lost to the overwhelming tide of blood and death that had followed me for endless centuries.

In July, I came into Mira’s domain searching for the Fire Starter. I killed any nightwalker that attacked me and any that refused to answer my questions. Five died in all, but I couldn’t recall the faces of any of them. They were just nightwalkers; dark creatures that fed upon the life of humans.

And yet I had succeeded in wounding the very creatures I had sworn to protect. The poor human weeping at my feet had been hurt by my decision to kill her lover.