Without preamble, Julian said, “You saw the statement?”

“Yes, sir.” The younger Vampyre’s eyes were wide and worried.

“I won’t be able to justify keeping the demesne under martial law for long,” he said. “It will help to have the human population outraged, so we might be able to get a few weeks. If Justine is still in the demesne — and even if she isn’t — it will make it harder for her, and anyone else working with her, to maneuver. In the meantime, we need to speed up the search.”

“I’ve frozen her assets,” Gavin told him. “At least those that I could find. You must know she’ll have hidden assets. Cash deposits, offshore accounts.”

Julian looked at him from under lowered eyebrows. “Of course.”

“I’ve programmed some searches to see what I can find.”

“Just do the best you can.” He moved on to the next thing. “What about the computer? Were you able to get any information from that?”

“No. I’m sorry.” Looking frustrated, Gavin rubbed the back of his head. “I’m going to try a few more things, but I don’t think I’ll be able to retrieve anything. Sometimes you can actually recover files after a factory reset, but I think she used another program to make sure the hard drive was wiped clean.”

“Understood.”

If she had gone to the trouble of making sure the hard drive was completely wiped, why hadn’t she simply destroyed the computer? Had she done it to taunt him?

Scowling, Julian turned away and headed back to his suite. He had a million and one things to do before Dominic arrived that evening. After that, he would be free to go after Justine personally.

Even if he had managed to cripple Justine’s movements — at least for now — she had already crippled him by taking Xavier out of commission. He needed to get eyes on each of the council members, especially Darius, but aside from the two held in Evenfall, the others would be scattered all over Northern California.

Again, he got the sense of time slipping away from him. He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening working with Yolanthe to deploy handpicked soldiers to each council member’s home. Twice he talked to Xavier. While the other man was clearly tired, he was more than willing to help. He had a handful of people he could send out on reconnaissance as well.

By the time Dominic arrived late that evening, Julian had a plan in place. Those who were deployed would report their findings to Xavier, who would then contact Julian with anything newsworthy that looked suspicious. Julian would follow up the leads in person. The search would be brutally meticulous, but that was often how wars were won — by gathering painstaking intelligence and winning one battle at a time.

Meeting with Dominic strained his patience. Yolanthe’s team was rested and waiting for him. He forced himself to be thorough as he went over final details, while the part of him that had broken strained to be on the move.

If Dominic had been born in modern times, he might have been the star quarterback for his college team. Standing six foot four, the other Vampyre was broad shouldered and lean hipped, his powerful frame perfectly suited to wearing heavy armor and waging war atop a horse.

He had icy blue eyes and blond hair, and the kind of looks that made him a favorite with the opposite sex, while his handsome face bore a scar from temple to jawline that gave him an aura of danger. The danger was very real, but not so much the romance. Dominic was one of the most coldly pragmatic men Julian had ever met.

At the end of the meeting, Dominic asked, “How’s the search going?”

While Julian was willing to share administrative details about Evenfall, he had no intention of talking about the hunt for Justine. All he said was, “We’ll get her — and anyone else who is working with her.”

Speculation shifted in Dominic’s icy gaze, but he nodded. “Fair enough.”

Julian’s phone rang. Not his cell phone — thanks to Gavin’s efforts, that wouldn’t work until he left Evenfall. The phone in his office rang, on one of the two dedicated lines in the castle.

Very few people had that number. Quickly he strode into the other room to check the caller ID.

His eyebrows rose. The incoming call was from Tatiana, the Light Fae Queen in Los Angeles.

Reflexively, he checked the time. It was almost three o’clock in the morning.

He could think of no good reason for Tatiana to be calling him at three in the morning. Tatiana had hated him ever since he had broken off his affair with Melly.

He let the call roll to voicemail. After he listened to what she had to say, he would decide when he would get back to her.

Almost immediately, the phone rang again. Instead of leaving a voicemail message, Tatiana had called back.

Unease ran cold fingers down his spine. This time, he answered the call. “Tatiana, you might have seen in the news that I’m in the middle of something urgent right now.”

The Light Fae Queen’s voice sounded in his ear. Usually she was the epitome of elegance and iron, but this time the iron sounded rusted and strained. “So am I. Julian, I need for you to come as quickly as you can.”

What the fuck?

His stomach clenched. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t tell you that,” said Tatiana in measured tones that spoke of extreme control. “You know as well as I do that phone conversations might not be secure.”

His mind flashed to the one possible reason Tatiana might have for calling him. He demanded, “Has something happened to Melly?”

The possibility was inconceivable. Melly was so vibrant, so young, just a few hundred years old. An array of images flashed through his mind, each worse than the one before. Melly, in a car accident — Melly in the hospital, badly injured… or dead.

That last thought caused dread to wash over him in a sick, cold wave.

“All I can say is, please, for the love of all the gods, can we put our differences aside just this once? Will you come to help me?”

In an instant, he abandoned the one thing that had consumed him for the last forty-eight hours. He had already set his plan in motion. Yolanthe could take it over and spearhead the search for Justine.

He told her, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Come on, Melly, will you wake up already?” someone demanded. An impatient woman, with a familiar voice. “Hell’s bells, I didn’t realize I compelled you to go down that hard. Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”

Melly had been having the strangest dream.

The first part had been awesome. She dreamed she was skiing, whipping along the downhill slope so fast she could hear the wind whistle in her ears. Gods, she loved that rush.

Something snagged her left ski, and she lost all control. The world flipped as she tumbled head over heels. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Then with the sneaky suddenness that dreams could sometimes have, the scene shifted and she landed in a sprawl in the living room of her small Malibu house. Through the open archway that led to her bedroom, she saw Julian lying in her bed.

The tangled sheets had fallen around his hips. She knew from memory every muscled bulge and hollow of his broad, scarred chest. Her heart started to pound as she stared at him. It’d been so long since they’d been together, so very long.

Could it be possible for skin to feel hungry? Her skin ached for the sensation of his rough, callused fingers.

His white-flecked dark hair tousled, he watched her with wolflike eyes. “Pick up your damn phone, will you?” he snapped.

He was such a killjoy. Furiously, she threw her phone at him, and he blurred to catch it. As she watched, Julian crushed the phone in one hand.

“Okay,” the director said. (Who was directing this film? Squinting, she tried to look past the bright set lights.) “We need just one more thing before we call it a wrap. Come on, Melly — give us one of your awesome screams. Wake up and don’t hold back, just let ’er rip.”