She shoved those thoughts away for another time, and asked, “And Novikova? What do you know about her?”

“In a coma for the past twenty years after a failed assassination attempt. The doctors say she’s brain-dead, but pulling the plug requires consent they can’t get.”

Nita licked her lips, and even though she knew the answer, she needed to hear it. “Who tried to kill her?”

“Ah, there’s no actual proof, but I believe it was another founding member of INHUP, a woman who goes by the name Monica Veer. Not her real name, which, I suspect you already knew,” Adair said softly.

Nita didn’t rise to the unspoken question, and simply asked, “How did Novikova survive at all?”

When Nita’s mother went to kill someone, usually they stayed dead.

“Novikova had been drinking vampire blood for nearly forty years. She healed faster and was more durable than any regular human. If she hadn’t been drinking so much blood, she’d be dead,” Adair explained. “There’s so much aggregate vampire blood in her system that she hasn’t visibly aged since she was in her mid-thirties.”

An idea formed in Nita’s head, and she asked, “Do you know where they’re keeping her?”

“An INHUP research facility in southern France, near Nice.”

Nita actually knew the one he meant. They’d been publishing groundbreaking papers on the long-term effects of vampire blood in humans. Now she knew where they were getting their data.

Nita was silent a long moment, mulling things over. Her computer beeped, and the file transfer was completed.

“Can you access the files I sent?” she asked.

“Yes, I see them.” A short pause. “You really weren’t kidding about the volume, were you?”

“Nope.”

Adair was quiet before asking in a carefully modulated tone, “What do you plan to do with all this information?”

Nita hesitated. “Use it.”

“To?”

“Intimidate the market. Take down INHUP and their list.”

“Okay.” His words were slow and precise, as though chosen with deliberation. “Do you know what information will do that?”

The words echoed Nita’s earlier thoughts so precisely that she wondered if kelpies could read minds.

She opened her mouth to brush him aside, to tell him she had it handled, but what came out instead was the truth. “No.”

He sighed softly, a brush of static over the line. “I thought as much.” A soft rustle of noise. “Nita, I’m going to make you an offer.”

“I won’t sell it all.”

“That wasn’t the offer.”

“Oh.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Go ahead.”

“You don’t know the value of this information. You don’t know how to sell it. You don’t know how to use it to its best effect. You overpaid me today—by a lot.”

Nita rubbed her temples. “I figured as much.”