“Hasn’t everyone?” A short pause. “How’s Kovit?”

“Stable. The doctors think he’ll make a full recovery, but it’ll take many months. They’re amazed he survived.”

“How did he survive, Nita?”

Nita shrugged, fingers awkwardly skimming the flask of vampire blood at her belt. It had her own blood mixed in there too, for good measure. What Kovit didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. And she wasn’t sure what had kept him going through the surgery, so better safe than sorry.

“Who knows?” she responded, evading the question. “What matters is that he did.”

“I’m glad.”

Nita swallowed heavily. “Me too.”

Adair let the silence linger a bit too long before he addressed the elephant in the room. “I assume you’re calling to give me your answer to my proposal.”

She nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “Yes.”

“And?”

She hesitated. “I want to learn. I want you to teach me about the black market. Who the main players are, where the dangers lie. I want you to train me in the information business.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “You want to be my apprentice?”

“Yes.” The words caught in her throat. She didn’t like the idea of working for Adair. She’d fucked that relationship up before, and she didn’t want to put herself in a lower position than him, but she sucked in her pride because she knew it was the right decision. “I have the information. We have similar goals. But I can’t just trust you to do what’s in my best interests forever. I need to learn these things myself, I need to build my own foundation of knowledge to stand on. I’m tired of being ignorant. Knowledge is power, but it’s useless if you don’t know what to do with it. So I want to know. I’ll give you access to all the information I gathered, and in exchange, you teach me about the market. The players, the history, the deals. Everything.”

He was silent a long time. “That’s something that would be hard to do long distance.”

“I know.” Nita bit her lip. “The University of Toronto has an excellent undergraduate program in unnatural biology, and their admission acceptance times run much later than American universities. If I get my act together, I could apply next week for September start.”

Adair’s voice was careful, but not dismissive. “It’ll be hard, being a full-time student and full-time information broker apprentice.”

“I can manage.” Nita was firm. “I’m not giving up on my dream. If I’m not doing this so I can live the life I want, why the hell am I doing it?”

He laughed softly, and she could imagine those swampy eyes calculating even as he laughed, examining her proposal from every angle.

“All right,” he said finally. “We’ll try it.”