LITMIR.BIZ

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      Darius enjoyed that. He didn’t reply, but his easy smile deepened. He took another sip of blood and then looked at her. “And…?”

      “Your play—or movie,” she said.

      He frowned. “What about it?”

      “Darius, it’s about a vampire on a killing spree,” she said.

      “Oh, please!” Darius said. He was clearly irritated. He swung his feet down and stared at her hard across the desk. “What? I’m going to stop the world from making vampire movies?”

      Rhiannon drew a deep breath. “It’s come to my attention, Darius, that three bodies have turned up in the area, drained of blood.”

      He arched a brow. “Really?”

      “Really.”

      “Then you’re not doing a very good job, are you?” he asked her.

      She froze but refused to let him see her reaction in her expression. Instead, she leaned closer, staring at him. “The first body appeared before I ever arrived, Darius, and the second when I had just gotten here. But now there’s a third.”

      “Then I suggest you bring it up at the local council meeting,” he told her. “I haven’t heard anything about this.”

      She didn’t know that much herself yet, but she decided to fake it. “It sounds like a serial killer—a vampire serial killer—is at work.”

      “How dramatic, Rhiannon. Maybe you should have gone into acting,” he said. “Bodies drained of blood. If you’re accusing me of covering up for someone—which you had best not be—remember that I’ve been making my way by playing the human game for a very long time now. I love my life, and I’m not about to jeopardize it. If I did know of any suspicious vampires, I’d let you know. But I don’t. Period.”

      “I didn’t accuse you of anything,” she said.

      He continued to eye her suspiciously. “Did you come to me for help?”

      “Yes, I suppose I did.”

      That, at least, mollified him.

      “You still need to bring it up at the council meeting,” he told her. “But I think it’s pretty unlikely that a vampire’s really behind this. I’m not the only one out here who is extremely happy. We make movies. We have a great supply of blood—I bring a lot of it in from my home state, where people are always lined up to donate—booze and women. We live in peace out here. All of us, not just the vampires. I know a dozen gorgeous Elven who are big successes in this business—I get them roles, they make me money. Werewolves, shifters and all the rest…things work for them here in L.A. This is a city where we get along.”

      “It’s also a city where lots of people don’t make it,” she reminded him. “Waitresses remain waitresses. Valets remain valets.”

      He lifted a hand. “I still don’t see it, Rhiannon. I really don’t.” He leaned toward her. “What makes you think the murders have some connection to the play?”

      “I never said they did,” Rhiannon said. That was true; she hadn’t said any such thing. She had suggested that both the play and movie might be in bad taste—for a vampire, at least—but that was all.

      Suddenly she didn’t want to tell him about Mac Brodie’s insistence that she see the show. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe because it seemed that Darius, like everyone else, didn’t have any faith in her. Maybe it was because the two men knew each other, and until she knew how well, she didn’t want to take chances.

      And on top of that, she was a Keeper.

      Which meant, for the time, as she felt her way forward and dealt with situations as they were thrust upon her, she was going to learn to keep things to herself.

      She rose, determined not to make an enemy. “Darius, thank you. I’m glad I can look to you for help. I will bring this up at the council meeting.”

      “It’s going to be your first,” he told her. “I’ll be happy to introduce you.”

      “Thanks.”

      “Thursday at midnight, the old church off Bertram,” he told her.

      “I’ll be early,” she promised.

      He escorted her out of his office, giving her a hug. Moments later she found herself out on the street, wondering what to do next.

      The answer was obvious. It was time to pay a visit to a werewolf.

      Dr. Anthony Brandt arrived in the reception area of the morgue in his clean white coat.

      He smiled when he saw Rhiannon, as if he were actually happy to see her. “Well, look who’s come to see me,” he said, then gave her with a hug she was sure was intended for the benefit of the receptionist. She knew Tony—she’d known him since she was a child. He thought she was spoiled and had felt free to tell her parents so on occasion.

      “It’s so nice to finally see you, Tony,” she said, her tone filled with artificial warmth. “You could have called me, you know.”

      “Well, I was thinking that you’d just arrived, that you were busy,” he said.

       As in, too busy to do what you should have been doing—being a good Keeper!

      “I’m here now,” she said.

      “Well, then, come on back to my office,” he told her. “Sign in first, though. You’ll need a visitor’s pass.”

      She got her pass and then followed him down the hallway.

      His office was neat—sparse, actually. His desk held his computer and a stack of files, bookshelves lined two walls, while a single window looked out on the city. L.A. and life were all around him, but Tony lived in the realm of the dead.

      “Have a seat,” he told her.

      He’d closed the door as they entered. She took a chair in front of the desk and leaned forward. “Don’t go giving me that superior-than-thou look. I just got to town. If there was a problem and you knew about it, it was your responsibility to tell me. I shouldn’t have had to rely on the grapevine to tell me about these murders—and the condition of the bodies.” She stared challengingly at him. “You would have called my father.”

      He was quiet for a minute. “Yeah, I would have,” he said quietly.

      “Tony, I know you’re a werewolf and you don’t officially owe me anything, but can’t you help me—the way you always helped my father?”

      He looked a little abashed. “All right, Rhiannon, I’m sorry.”

      “Thank you. I’m learning, Tony. I can use all the help I can get.”

      He lifted the files on his desk and riffled through them, then produced three and handed them to her. “John Does, all of them. We can’t get IDs on any of them.”

      “Did you find anything on the bodies? Any DNA from the killer? What about the bites? Any saliva?” Rhiannon asked.

      “You know as well as I do that if they were bitten by a vampire, there would be no DNA. Vampire DNA disintegrates almost instantly. But, beyond that, all the bodies were found submerged in water and massively decomposed.”

      “No fibers, tickets, wallets, anything?”

      “Totally empty pockets. All I know for sure is that they were bitten and exsanguinated.”

      “Is that what you put on the death certificates?” Rhiannon asked him.

      He shook his head, indicating the reports. “The bodies were drained of blood, but due to the condition in which they were found, I couldn’t determine an absolute cause of death. In fact, the really strange thing is that there was water in the lungs, so it’s a crapshoot as to whether

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