This Nita did know. She’d researched INHUP’s research facilities extensively, because she’d researched everywhere with good unnatural science programs. There were a lot of internships at INHUP for an unnatural researcher. Not that Nita would ever work there.

Well, maybe. If the right research project came along.

“I have. It’s possible,” Nita admitted. “But why would they cover it up in the first place?”

“Because they don’t want people to ask questions.” His voice was bitter.

“Like how she ended up in a coma?”

“That they can lie about. Even tell the truth about, or a version of it. No, the issue becomes when people want to visit her body. Then things get tricky.”

“How so?”

“Nadya looked very young for being in her sixties. I imagine by now, age has caught up a bit, but she’ll probably still look in her mid-forties when she hits a century.”

Nita thought for a moment, then realized. “You’d been feeding her your blood. To slow down her aging.”

“Every day for forty-odd years. That empty body will easily live to two hundred.”

Nita’s mind whirled through the implications. “It would be obvious she’d been drinking vampire blood. Very regularly. There’s nothing else that has that effect on humans.”

He nodded. “And how would that look to the rest of the world? The head of INHUP, addicted to vampire blood.”

“Was she addicted? I didn’t think it was addictive.”

“It’s not.” His head jerked slightly, as though he’d gone to make a hand motion before realizing he was paralyzed. “But people are addicted to power and looking young, which makes it more addictive than cocaine to certain personality types. And the media would spin it that way.”

They would. Nita could see the headlines now. INHUP Founder Addicted to Monster Blood. What Has She Been Sacrificing to Get Her Fix?

“So they’ve kept it under wraps.” Nita’s eyes narrowed. She still wasn’t quite sure she believed him. “But how did she end up in a coma in the first place, then?”

Andrej was quiet a long moment. “Your mother is how.”

Nita raised her eyebrows, thinking of her mother using the same hateful, disgusted voice when talking about how Andrej had killed her friend. “Do tell.”

“When I first met Nadya, she’d been hired to kill me, but somehow things worked out differently.”

“I’ll say.”

“She was riding off her fame from killing Bessanov,” he continued, undeterred. “She was getting calls from all over the world asking for her help. But she couldn’t be everywhere, so she was giving the jobs to other hunters she knew, including your mother, and taking the trickiest, most dangerous ones for herself. She loved her risks.”

“And you were a tricky, dangerous job?”

His eyes fixed on hers, eerie and clear. “Yes.”