Unaware of my thoughts, Kist furrowed his brow in anger. “Where’s Sam?” he asked.

“The kitchen, sir.”

His eye twitched. Kist looked at the waiter as if to say, “What are you waiting for?” and the man hurried away.

Bottled water in hand, Ivy snuck up behind Kist, pulling him farther from me. “And you thought I was stupid for majoring in security instead of business management?” she said. “You sound almost responsible, Kisten. Be careful, or you’ll ruin your reputation.”

Kist smiled to show his sharp canines, the air of harried restaurant manager falling from him. “The perks are great, Ivy, love,” he said, curving a hand around her backside with a familiarity she tolerated for an instant before hitting him. “You ever need a job, come see me.”

“Shove it up your ass, Kist.”

He laughed, dropping his head for an instant before bringing his sly gaze back to mine. A group of waiters and waitresses were headed up the wide stairway, clapping in time and singing some asinine song. It looked annoying and innocuous, nothing like the rescue mission it really was. My eyebrows rose. Kist was good at this.

Almost as if reading my mind, he leaned close. “I’m even better in bed, love,” he whispered, his breath sending a delicious dart of sensation down to the pit of my being.

He shifted out of my reach before I could push him away, and still smiling, walked off. Halfway to the kitchen he turned to see if I was watching. Which I was. Hell, everything female in the place—alive, dead, or in between—was watching.

I pulled my attention from him to find a curiously closed look on Ivy. “You aren’t afraid of him anymore,” she said flatly.

“No,” I said, surprised to find I wasn’t. “I think it’s because he can do something other than flirt.”

She looked away. “Kist can do a lot of things. He gets off on being dominated, but when it comes to business, he’ll slam you to the ground soon as look at you. Piscary wouldn’t have a fool for a scion, no matter how good he is to bleed.” Her lips pressed together until they went white. “Table’s ready.”

I followed her gaze to the single empty table against the far wall away from the windows. Glenn and Jenks had joined us when Kist left, and as a group we wove through the tables, settling on the half-circle bench with all our backs to the wall—Inderlander, human, Inderlander—and waited for the waiter to find us.

Jenks had perched himself on the low chandelier, and the light coming through his wings made green and gold spots on the table. Glenn silently took everything in, clearly trying not to look nonplussed at the sight of the scarred, well-put-together waiters and waitresses. Whether male or female, they were all young with smiling, eager faces that had me on edge.

Ivy didn’t say anything more about Kist, for which I was grateful. It was embarrassing how quickly vamp pheromones acted on me, turning “get lost” to “get over here.” Thanks to the excessive amount of vamp saliva the demon pumped into me while trying to kill me, my resistance to vamp pheromones was almost nil.