Sometimes it was better to just walk away.

Not that Elise necessarily felt any better about the confrontation with her father. But at least, as she sat up in her bedroom, staring at her reflection in her vanity mirror, there was consolation to be had that things hadn’t gotten even worse.

Which, considering the stuff she’d said to him …

What came next? Her lighting their house on fire?

She’d meant every last word, though. None of it had been for show or distraction. And maybe if they’d been a different kind of father and daughter, the hard things she’d laid out would have opened the door to greater closeness, and forgiveness, and a mutual grieving.

Instead, there had been anger on both sides, and now her father was going to petition the King to make her a sehcluded female. If she’d thought she’d had problems before? Assuming the petition was accepted—and given his station in the glymera, why wouldn’t it be—she would have less than no rights. She would be a physical possession of her father’s, like a lamp or a car. A toaster oven.

A fricking couch.

As far as her father was concerned, the issue was closed. She wasn’t going to university anymore, and she was going to accept punishment for lying in the form of that guardianship. Done and dusted.

In the background, the details of her room became oh, so glaring, the silk brocade drapes, the canopied bed, the French antiques and the hand-painted wallpaper like a set for a Merchant Ivory film.

You know, something Keira Knightley would be in, wearing a corset and a cascading hairpiece.

None of it was Elise’s style. Hell, she didn’t even know what her style was.

As her cellphone started to ring, she took it out of the coat she still hadn’t bothered to take off yet and looked at who it was.

“Thank God,” she said as she braced her head in her hand. “I need you.”

“Hey, I’m in the middle of training. Are you okay?” Peyton’s voice was hushed, as if her cousin had cupped his hand around his mouth.

“No. I’m not.”

“Look, I can’t really talk now. I’m playing dead in an alley.”

“What?” She knew the guy was into some kinky things, but really? “Where are you?”

“Like I said, in an alley,” he whispered. “I just got killed in a field exercise and I’m waiting for my punishment. Meet me in an hour.”

As he gave her an address downtown, she shook her head even though he couldn’t see her. “No, you don’t understand. While you’re playing dead, I’m under house arrest. I’m stuck here.”

“What?”

Guess two could play at the surprise, surprise! game. “Long story. I can’t get away to see you—”

“Of course you can. Just crack a window and ghost out. I’ll see you in an hour.”

The connection was cut off, and Elise took the phone away from her ear as if she could will her cousin back on her cell.

Peyton had been the one to come and tell the family what had happened to Allishon. And although Elise had been forbidden to be in the room or hear any of the details, he had visited her afterward and told her if she needed anything, she could always come to him.

He’d probably meant that more in terms of dealing with Allishon’s death, but Elise didn’t feel like she had anywhere else to turn.

When her phone rang again, she answered immediately. “I’m serious, I can’t leave.”

“I’m sorry?” a male voice said.

“Troy! Oh, jeez. I, ah, was expecting someone else.”

“I just wanted to know …” Her professor cleared his throat. “You know, that you got home okay. And I was, I was sorry we were interrupted.”

“Well, you’re a popular guy.” Elise took a deep breath and really wished she could go back to worrying about something as simple as when they were going to go out. “You’re bound to be approached in the library.”

“Hey, are you okay? You sound off? Is it because—”

“Home problems. Nothing to do with you.”

“You know, you’ve never spoken about your family. I mean, I know you’re not married—but other than that …”

He had a nice voice, she thought. And his human accent was exotic in her ear. But it was so hard to switch gears from the very real trouble she had with her father to something as frivolous as dinner.

Which was clearly where he was headed.

“I don’t even know where you’re from,” Troy prompted when she didn’t say anything. “I’ve never been able to place your accent. European, I know, but …”

As he went quiet again, clearly hoping she’d fill in the details, she said, “No, I’m not from the States, it’s true.”

“How long ago did you come here?”

Oh, I was born in Caldwell. Just into a different species from you entirely.

“Am I prying too much?” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s just … my father found out I was going to school and he’s really angry at me. I’ve been sneaking around behind his back, and when I came home tonight, I got caught.”

“He doesn’t want you to get your degree?”

“No, not really. He’s very …” She tried to think of the human word. “He’s very traditional. Old school, you know. The only reason I got to go at all was because my mother talked him into it, but she passed during my freshman year and there you have it.”

“I am so sorry for your loss.”

Elise rubbed her aching head. “I appreciate that. Listen, Troy, I don’t mean to be rude but—”

“It is a totally different culture for you, then.”

“You have no idea,” she muttered as she bared her fangs at the mirror. “Completely different.”

“So what are you going to do? I mean, are you going to come back at all? And I’m not just asking because you’re my T.A. Is there anything I can do to help? Maybe I can talk to him—”

“No, no. Honestly, that would be …” If her father knew she was actively associating with a human? Maybe thinking of dating him? Chains in the basement. “I don’t know. Right now, it’s not looking good for me.”

The problem with figuratively dying in the middle of a training exercise? At the end of the session, you got to experience literal death.

Or as close to it as you could come while still having a damn heartbeat.

Axe let out a groan as he lay flat with his legs raised and held off the floor of an abandoned rooming house. Next to him, Novo was in the same pose, back against the cold concrete, legs extended out with heels six inches off the floor, palms down and by the hips. Every muscle, in both of them, was shaking, to the point where Axe’s teeth were knocking together and sweat was pouring off his face.

At least they weren’t the only ones getting schooled.

Everyone had gotten “killed,” even Craeg.

The Brother Rhage swung his flashlight away from Axe and Novo, the beam falling over to where Paradise and Peyton were doing push-ups, Marine-style … before moving farther on to Boone and Craeg, who were rocking sit-ups.

When it came to stuff like this, the rule was, you went to exhaustion, and no one wanted to no más first. Even as Axe’s body was in a full-on fist of pain, he set his brain free, taking himself back to The Keys, to the scaffolding, to that human female and the audience. He embedded his memory in the particulars, the feel of her under his hands, the taste of her mouth, the driving thrusts of the sex. There was nothing emotional in it; if his last experience before coming to class had been rotating tires on a car, he would have been thinking about wrenches, radials, and hubcaps.

He remembered everything he could and—

The blinding light of Rhage’s torch splashed into Axe’s face like acid. “Bkdw nbh, koy dwn skfg.”

Axe tried to squeeze out a What? but it was like forcing a city bus through a keyhole.

Rhage bent down and spoke slowly. “You can stop, son. You’re finished. Everyone else has quit.”

It was like releasing a rubber band after you pulled the thing tight. His body let go with a corporeal snap!, all parts of him hitting the floor, the back of his skull included. As pain red-lit his brain, he didn’t have the strength to tell his lungs to get pumping. They were either going to or not, and he didn’t particularly care one way or another what the result was.

In his mind, he had a passing thought that that was not normal. Not healthy. Not right.

But it was not the first time he’d had such a blasé attitude to his own life and death.

Conversation happened above him, Vishous and Rhage talking at the rest of the class, but Axe was too busy with the re-oxygenation process to follow any of it.

When he finally sat up, he found that it was only trainees in the tenement. The Brothers had left.

A lighter flared, and Peyton’s face got washed with orange illumination as he lit up a cigarette. “It’s one a.m. We need food and a drink. This was a cluster-fuck tonight.”

Muttering. Cursing. And then Craeg stuck out a hand to Axe to help him to his feet.

“You coming with us?” the guy said.

“Yeah,” Axe heard himself reply. “What the hell.”

He was tired, he was hungry, and he was poor—and whenever they went out, Peyton insisted on putting the bill on his AmEx. Good enough equation for Axe, especially as this way, he didn’t have to admit to anyone that he survived on ramen noodles when he wasn’t eating in the training center’s break room.

“Come on,” Craeg said at his elbow. “There’s always tomorrow night.”

“I want to fight now,” Axe muttered.

“Hell, yeah. This sucked.”

Click, you’re dead.

At this rate, the Brotherhood wasn’t going to let them engage the enemy for months. Maybe years.

Back out in the alley, nobody was talking much, that refrain clearly playing in other people’s heads. At least the cold air felt good, and shit, the snow was really coming down now, the fall so thick the stuff was making it to the ground even in the alleys.

As they headed over to Commerce Street, Axe replayed the cluster-fuck over and over again, imaging himself with his guns out already, better prepared for the ambush, more ready to fight. Next thing he knew, Peyton’s favorite after-training haunt had somehow materialized in front of him.

The cigar bar was as pretentious as it sounded, the interior done in English Country Estate with all kinds of leather armchairs and a lot of dark, heavy coffee tables and stools. There were no TV screens, though, no human sports flickering in the corners, and the food was good—not that his noodles were much of a standard. The main negative? The human clientele were such arrogant assholes with their Mercedes and their Range Rovers getting valet-parked, and their women-as-accessories girlfriends, but at least the dipshits were so self-absorbed that they couldn’t care less about the vampires who mixed in with them.

Although Paradise and Novo got a lot of attention.

And yup, that made the males training with them want to get their weapons back out.

The maître d’ rushed forward to Peyton and started in with the welcoming act. Their regular seating area had been reserved, and Axe took a pass on the ass-kissing session, walking away from the group to the back, where the emergency exit was.

Novo sat down with him and he ordered two Scotches, one for each of them, as the others filed in and deep-seated in the stuffed chairs. There was a low table in middle with a humidor and a series of ashtrays, and soon enough, there were various cocktails and then plates of tapas filling the surface up.

“… gun range tomorrow.”

Axe rubbed his face. “What?”

“I said,” Novo repeated, “you might want to chill on that club before sessions. You’re out of it right now, and you don’t want to look bad on the gun range tomorrow.”

“What’s fucking my head is my shit shab performance tonight.” He swirled the liquor in his glass, coating the ice cubes with a wash of Scotch. “Hell, maybe I’d have done better if I had stayed at The Keys awhile longer.”

“You going to bring me sometime?” She took a pull off her glass and eased back. “I want to see what it’s all about.”

His eyes traveled up and down her body. “Yeah, I think you can handle it. Wouldn’t say that about most females.”

“Sexist much?”

“Females have better standards than males. But you’re one of us.”

Novo threw her head back and laughed. “I can’t decide whether to be offended or not.”

“If I order you another Scotch, will that help you—”

It was like a car accident in his head. One second, he was cruising along the deserted highway of his normal state as an oversexed, self-shaming guilt-whore … and the next, all his thoughts, every ounce of cognition, even on his subconscious level, slammed into a five-foot-ten-inch blond female with eyes like an angel, a body right out of heaven, and the unusual combination of a spooked look and a jaw that was forged in iron.

Axe straightened in his seat like someone had jumper-cabled his ass to a Chevy, and everything went tunnel with her the light at the end, the glow around her created by his reaction to her presence—

Peyton got in the way.

That miserable motherfucker had the colossal nerve to stand up and greet whoever it was with a hug. And then he talked to her, his muscular body blocking Axe’s view, the back of his head making an excellent target for a bullet or the claw of a hammer or maybe even a falling piano as far as Axe was concerned.

“FYI,” Novo said softly, “shooting him is not going to get my second Scotch faster. Because the waiter’s going to call the police on you before he gets me my drink.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Axe growled.

Except then he looked down, and—well, hello there, Mr. Shiny—his gun was in his hand and ready to go.

Unlike in the alley.

Great, now his brain decides to catch up with protocol.

Muttering under his breath, Axe put the damn thing away, and finished off the liquor in his glass. And then he made a show of trying to get the waiter’s attention—when what he was actually doing was attempting to lean around Peyton’s make-a-better-door-than-a-window routine.

The problem finally got solved when the SOB stepped aside and started making introductions.

But then shit got so much worse.

“This is my cousin,” Peyton said to everybody, “Elise.”