He smiled again. It was supposed to be sexy, and it was. But he smelled like a vampire to me—and I had Adam.

“I could kill you and try again,” he offered gently.

And like turning a valve, he shut off the magic he’d been using to influence me.

Maybe I should have pretended to be interested in him, but vampires have better-than-human noses. Most people who are attracted to someone don’t stink of terror and stress. I wasn’t a bad actor, but I could not have disguised my reaction to sitting this close to the Lord of Night. If I’d tried, I’d probably have thrown up on him.

He pursed his lips. “You aren’t doing this right,” he informed me. “You need to convince me that leaving you alive is in my best interests. What can you do for me? What information can you provide to me to advance my goals?”

I rolled my eyes. “I think you screwed the pooch when you hit my car and kidnapped me. You’ll have to figure your own way out of this one or wait until my head doesn’t hurt.”

He leaned into me. His body was warm—and all I could think about was how much blood he’d had to consume to raise his body temperature to a few degrees warmer than human.

“Poor little one,” he crooned, cupping my face. “It was not my intention to hurt you.”

I really wasn’t myself. I am generally very good about accommodating megalomaniacal egomaniacs and waiting until it was safe to torment them. I had grown up doing that. But my head hurt, and he was creeping me out.

“Epic failure,” I told him. “I’ll have you know that I expect my archenemies to be competent.”

He laughed, and I forgot to breathe because he was so scary. All that joyous sound and the empty eyes. The seduction had failed—the terrifying, not so much. It wasn’t magic. It was just him.

“I do want a deal with Hauptman’s pack,” he said. “It is good for you that I don’t think he’d forgive me for killing you. Werewolves are sentimental that way. But it would be easy enough to kill you—and kill him. His second might be grateful.”

I met his gaze steadily and said, “I don’t think he would.”

Vampires cannot tell truth from lies the way werewolves (and I) can. But the older ones can usually sort it out anyway. Darryl would not deal with someone who killed Adam. I was certain of it, and I let the vampire know.

He smiled faintly. There was the sound of a polite knock on the door.

“Come,” he said.

The werewolf who entered was a surprise, and she shouldn’t have been. I knew that he had exiled Marsilia for feeding from his werewolf mistress. He and Marsilia were still lovers at the time—and that probably had made for added complications. I had the impression that Marsilia’s feeding from the werewolf had some deeper vampire meaning, like maybe she’d been trying to claim the werewolf for herself. I’d been told once that the whole event had to do with Marsilia disapproving of Bonarata keeping a werewolf. Werewolf blood was apparently more enticing than human, and the implication I’d gotten was that the Lord of Night was addicted.