Jones squirmed and moaned as Nikos tasted him. When Nikos lifted his head, his eyes glowed bright red. “All right, Jones. You will tell us what you did.”

The gray-haired man struggled. Nikos held him firmly until he quieted. Jones spat. “I’ll tell you. But not because of vampire mind tricks. Because you can’t stop it. In fifteen minutes the Ball’s lights are going to unleash the monster in every vampire in Times Square. And unless my demands are met, I’ll do the same in Chicago. Los Angeles. More.”

The lights of the New Year’s Ball. Not the sound system at all. A laugh-or sob-rose in my throat. Bujný, not zvuk. Not Nixie’s bailiwick but mine. Nikos was right again.

“What are your demands?” Nikos’s face was carved granite.

“One hundred billion dollars. Release of five hundred political prisoners. Air Force One, fueled and ready to take me to Asia.”

“Impossible.”

“Then I guess we’re gonna have some blood.” Jones laughed.

“No. Tell me exactly what you have done.”

“I…changed…the program-” The man’s eyes went wild. “No! I won’t tell. You can’t make me!” His jaw clenched, and there was a crunch.

Nikos grabbed Jones’s shoulders, started shaking him like he was a rag doll.

No. It wasn’t Nikos shaking him. It was Jones himself, shaking uncontrollably, as if every muscle in his body was contracting simultaneously.

Jones grabbed his chest and started panting, like he was having trouble breathing. Nikos eased him onto the grating just before Jones threw up.

“My God.” I ran over. “Is he having a heart attack?” I tried to remember my last CPR refresher.

Nikos peeled back Jones’s eyelids, difficult because the man was jerking hard with convulsions. “His pupils are pinpricks. Drug or poison of some sort. Call 911-damn it.”

Jones stiffened like a board, his eyes suddenly glazed and fixed.

I clapped hands over my mouth. “Oh my… Is he…?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, God. So fast. How?”

Nikos opened the man’s mouth and felt inside. Whatever he felt made him withdraw his hand with a grimace. He rubbed his index finger against his thumb, staring at his fingers in distaste. “Thick and oily. Like motor oil. Maybe VX, although I don’t remember it working this fast.”

“VX?”

“Nerve agent. Extremely toxic, highly illegal. Maybe Novichok.”

The crunch, just before Jones started shaking. “A suicide pill?” Another thought struck me. “You’ve been exposed!” I tore out my phone only to stop when Nikos dissolved, reforming holding me tight.

“It’s fine. Even if I weren’t indestructible, the mist will have taken care of it. Twyla. We need to concentrate on more important things.”

“But you…and Jones…and Klaus…” My eyes shifted to another crumpled form, blond hair flashing red and blue in the Ball’s light.

Nikos barely spared him a glance. “Klaus’ll be fine. Twyla, love, I know this is horrific but you can fall apart later.”

I blinked at him, wondering how I could possibly process everything that had happened in the last minute. My sister the neurosurgeon would have known how. Or my brother. Colin had been in situations like this, and worse, in Iraq. And yet he’d gone on.

But I wasn’t Colin, and didn’t know how to handle myself in an emergency-wait.

I had never faced sudden death before, but I did know how to handle myself in a crisis. In fact, I was the epitome of calm in the madhouse that was City Hall. I could fall apart later. Nikos was right. I didn’t need to process everything now. In fact, it was too big-I couldn’t process it now. I’d simply pack it away until I could.

Right now I had a job to do. I sucked up my competence and applied myself to the problem at hand. Jones had sabotaged the Ball. Discovering how needed to be our first priority. “What about the man Jones was holding hostage? Maybe he can tell us something.”

“That’s my soldier.” Nikos’s eyes waxed even more eloquent in his relief, pride and…love?

Well. Deal with that emergency later too.

The man in the Giants hat lay a few feet from us, his hands bound behind him with a zip tie. As Nikos sliced it off with one razor claw I checked the time. Eleven fifty. The whole drama had taken less than five minutes. It still didn’t leave us a lot of time.

Released, the man chafed his wrists. “I can’t believe I’m free.”

I took the man’s hands in mine. They were freezing from exposure and lack of circulation. “What happened?”

“That guy…he had clearance. He was one of us.” The man shook his head. His cap was askew. “No, I knew something was wrong about him…yeah, I knew all along. Well, about eleven he pulls a gun. Makes us all tie each other’s wrists. Carted us down one floor then picked me as a hostage and brought me back up-shit, nearly forgot. There’s another guy down there, crusted blood on his pants.”

“We’ll take care of that,” Nikos said. “But first, is something wrong with the Ball?”

“The Ball? Not that I know. But I’m only doing the fireworks. Security, fireworks…the guy was doing the Ball, I think. Maybe that was a cover, though. This guy was bad, you know? He took us all out-even the security.”

I patted the man’s hands soothingly. There was some warmth coming back, and some color to his face. I shifted my eyes to Nikos, telling him that I thought we could leave the man safely on his own for a while. Nikos nodded, stood.

Then I realized what I had done. Was I getting as taciturn as my Spartan? Channeling Queen Gorgo? Were we becoming alike, like two old married people?

It was cute, it was scary, and it would have to get stuffed away in the burgeoning pack of later. I rose next to Nikos. “I know some kinds of flickering light can cause seizures in people. And the color red makes them hungry. But could light or color hypnotize vampires, like Jones said?”

“Our senses are heightened. We may actually be more vulnerable than humans.”

I frowned. “Speaking of Jones, how did you know his name? Or were you guessing?”

Nikos’s nose wrinkled. “He smelled of cigarettes, like the door across from your cousin’s in the brownstone. And I smelled faint traces in Aylmer ’s apartment, recent. When I rang doorbells to get in I noticed 7A was labeled Jones. A guess, but logical.”

“Jones was Aylmer ’s neighbor? He could have found out about vampires the same way Aylmer did.”

“Yes. That might have also triggered their association.”

“Speaking of vampires-” I nodded toward the fireworks man. He was watching us with wide eyes, and his color had drained again.

“I will deal with his memories later. Now we must discover what Jones has done and stop it. We have only…damn.” Nikos had pulled out his cell phone and was staring at the readout. “It’s eleven fifty-one.”

Nine minutes. Only nine minutes to figure out what Jones had done to the Ball. “Okay. We know Jones was the Jones I got in as the American rep for Bujný a Zvuk Magie. Specifically, he worked with Steale Programové. He could have directed the Ball’s programming, saying certain things would appeal to American audiences. Maybe he even did some final adjustments here, if he was a coder.”

“We also we know he would target the sixty seconds while the Ball is descending.”

“And everybody’s riveted on it, yes. But I have no idea what kind of visual might rile vampires. Do you?”

“No.” Nikos did not look happy. “This is beyond the reach of my sword, Twyla.”

“I don’t know enough either. We need a lifeline.”

“A what?”

I smiled. Spartan generals must not watch too many game shows. “You’d say time to gather information and allies.” I pulled out my cell phone, hit my own Emerson speed dial. “Nixie, I need to know what kind of colors or lights might make vampires go on the rampage.”

A flash of numbers caught my attention-the time, thrown up on the side of the huge building next to us. Eleven fifty-two and five seconds. Six. Seven. “And please hurry. The clock is ticking.”