“I stopped him. I would have stopped her.” With a sigh, she turned to face me. “They used to be human, until magic changed them into something else. Do you think that girl truly understood what she would become?”

I picked up the butterfly knife Mel had dropped. With the immediate threat passed, I was feeling rather shaky. “I’d have more sympathy if not for the part where she tried to cut my throat.”

“What did they say to you?”

“They thought someone from the Porters had been hunting vampires, and wanted me to tell them who was involved.” I dropped to my knees and crawled beneath the computer desks, searching through tangled cords for any sign of Smudge. I found him hiding in a nest of blue network cables. From the smell of burnt plastic, we’d have to call the computer guy in the morning, but Smudge appeared unharmed. He scurried up onto my shoulder, searing tiny black dots on my sleeve.

“So what did you tell them?” asked Lena.

“Nothing. I’m retired, remember? Nobody tells me anything.” I picked up Vulcan’s Mirror again and flipped to chapter eight. I searched the inner edges for char, but this was a new release, and the pages were clean of magical decay. I dissolved the disruptor back into the text and set the book on its cart. “Thank you.”

She picked up one of the overturned tables. “Any time.”

I hadn’t seen Lena since I moved back up north two years ago. The last I knew, she was the only dryad living in North America, and was currently serving as live-in bodyguard for Doctor Nidhi Shah, a downstate shrink who worked with a number of “unusual” clients. Myself included, back in the day.

“You mentioned another attack. What’s going on, Lena?”

She returned to the doorway to check outside. “From what I can tell, the vampires have declared war on the Porters.”

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

THE IDEA OF VAMPIRES DECLARING WAR on the Porters was about as ridiculous as the Upper Peninsula marching to war against Canada.

Originally known as Die Zwelf Portenære or The Twelve Doorkeepers, the Porters had been around for roughly half a millennium. The original twelve had consisted of nine libriomancers, a sorcerer, a bard, and an alchemist. All save two were long dead, but the organization had grown over the centuries, and now numbered between four and five hundred members worldwide.

Its mission was unchanged. Every Porter took an oath to preserve the secrecy of magic, protect the world from magical threats, and work to expand our knowledge of magic’s power and potential.

“Vampires get stronger every year,” Lena commented as she examined the wall where the Green Bay vamp had ripped himself free, exposing the studs. Chunks of plaster littered the carpet.