Bennett looked at the photos covering Max’s desk and frowned. Max was right. “I need to make a phone call,” Bennett said as she walked to the door. “I’ll be right back.”

***

Everyone in Max’s study looked toward the door when it opened. Angelique walked in, followed by Polly and Lisa, and all were now dressed for battle.

Polly had simply added to her attire, her black boots and jacket fitted with numerous scabbards to hold numerous daggers. Angelique’s outfit was familiar to Max, for he’d seen it several times over the centuries. With a penchant for earth tones, the woman’s leather leggings and jacket were walnut brown as were her boots, and protruding from the sheaths affixed to their sides were the jeweled hilts of two daggers. Max’s lips curved into an unconscious smile.

Ever since she’d awoken a vampire, turned by a man, boastful and self-serving, Angelique had bided her time. Back then, those turned belonged to their masters, so there hadn’t been a place to seek sanctuary, for Angelique belonged to Simeon, and surrounded by the man’s sycophants, she was forced to play along. She was forced to fight by their sides, forced to watch as they pillaged and plundered, and forced to listen to Simeon’s sexist comments day after day after day. And then, Simeon and Napoleon were sentenced to ten years of sleep for what they’d done to Bennett Archer. It was the opening Angelique had waited so patiently for, and the year before Simeon was to be awoken, Angelique sought out Max.

Max had always been a breath of fresh air for Angelique. He was kind and considerate, and she would have gladly lived under his roof until her dying day, and she had almost proposed that idea when another one came into her head. Angelique knew Simeon would never change. When he was released from his coffin and ruled again, she knew that between his hatred for Bennett and his kinship with Napoleon, they’d eventually hatch another plan.

Angelique had never asked for any type of payment for being Max’s spy, and since their relationship was covert, payment was nearly impossible. Gifts, however, were simply that. In 1898, during a Christmas celebration in Simeon’s home in Paris, Max presented Simeon with a jade and ivory chess set, and to Angelique, he gave two custom-made daggers. Perfectly balanced and fitted for a woman’s hand, their blades were twelve inches long, and emeralds and green jadeite encrusted their hilts.

No sooner had Angelique, Polly, and Lisa joined Ruby and Max at the desk when Bennett strode back into the room. “There’s no need to worry about them escaping into the…into the forest any…um…any longer.” Bennett stutter-stepped to a stop because there was one other woman in the room wearing brown leather, and it was that woman who now held Bennett’s awestruck gape.