“He’s in the back.” Eve pointed. “In the office. Claire? Is there anything wrong?”

“No,” she said. “I think something’s about to be right for a change.”

The door marked OFFICE was closed. She knocked, heard Oliver’s warm voice telling her to enter, and came in. He was sitting behind a small desk in a very small room, windowless, with a computer running in front of him. He smiled at her and stood up to shake her hand. “Claire,” he said. “Good to see you’re safe. I heard there had been some…unpleasantness.”

Oliver was wearing a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt and blue jeans with faded patches on the knees—not so much style as wear, she figured. He looked tired and concerned, and she thought suddenly that there was something about him a lot like Michael. Except that he was here in the daytime, of course, and at night, so he couldn’t be a ghost. Could he?

“Brandon is very unhappy,” he said. “I’m afraid that there’s going to be retaliation. Brandon likes striking from an angle, not straight on, so you’d better watch out for your friends, as well. That would include Eve, of course. I’ve asked her to be extra careful.”

She nodded, heart in her throat. “Um…what if I have something to trade?”

Oliver sat down and leaned back in his chair. “Trade for what? And to whom?”

“I—something important. I don’t want to be more specific than that.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be, if you want me to act as any kind of go-between for you. I can’t trade if I don’t know what I’m offering.”

She realized she was still holding her teacup, and put it down on the corner of the desk. “Um…I’d rather do it myself. But I don’t know who to go to. Whoever can order Brandon around, I guess. Or even higher than that.”

“There is a social order to the vampire community,” Oliver agreed. “Brandon’s hardly at the top. There are two factions, you know. Brandon is part of one—the darker side, I suppose you could say. It depends on your viewpoint. Certainly, from a human standpoint, neither faction is exactly lily-white.” He shrugged. “I can help you, if you’ll let me. Believe me, you don’t want to try to contact these people on your own. And I’m not sure they’d even allow you to do so.”

She bit her lip, thinking about what Michael had said about the deals in Morganville. She wasn’t good at it; she knew that. And she didn’t know the rules.

Oliver did, or he’d have been dead a long time ago. Besides, he was Eve’s boss, and she liked him. Plus, he’d been able to keep Brandon from biting her at least twice. That had to count for something.