I looked at the vampire towering over me, a monster in a suit of high-tech armor.

“I have a job for you,” Aaron said, his voice easy and arrogant.

I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m not working for you.”

“Why not?”

“I have a policy of not taking on clients who will try to screw me over. It’s bad for business and bad for my sanity.”

The vampire’s blue-green eyes narrowed. “So you won’t help me.”

“No,” I told him. “Experience has taught me that helping you is not a good idea.”

“I can pay you this.”

He reached into his pack and pulled out a wooden box, opening the latch to reveal a headband made of interweaving gold and platinum strands that glistened with magic. I knew that headband well. It had once been mine.

“Where did you get that?” I gasped.

“I bought it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

My sacred armor and magic-augmenting accessories had been stripped from me, then sold, the profits going to the Galactic Assembly to pay for the cost of the invasion of Pegasus. They’d screwed over me and Jason, then paid for that military operation with my things.

“I didn’t steal it.” Aaron showed me the receipt. It showed he’d bought the headband from the Galactic Assembly two years ago for two million credits. Holy shit.

“Why did you buy it?” I asked him.

“I knew it was important to you.”

Oh, no. He was not going to pretend he cared about me. Not after what he’d done.

“What do you say?” He held out the headband. “This in exchange for your help?”

The headband wasn’t just a pretty trinket. It had the power to calm my mind and slow my foresights. It meant I wouldn’t go insane. But it was more than that. It was the last gift Jason had ever given me. I was tempted. So tempted.

It took all my willpower not to snatch it out of his hands. “Not interested.”

Aaron frowned. “You’re being unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable?” I laughed. “What do you want, Aaron? Why are you really here?”

“I told you. I would like to hire you. I’m in need of a private investigator.”

“Let me guess. You finally found yourself a pretty, proper lady to marry, and now she’s trying to kill you,” I said with a smirk.

“You’re half right. Someone is trying to kill me. But I’m not married.” He shot me a hopeful look through long lashes.

“No way, Forget it. Hell will freeze over and the stars will drop out of the sky before I go out with you.”

He’d tried to talk me into going out with him two years ago. I’d known it was a bad idea even before he’d set me up and ruined my life.

“Leave,” I said, showing him the door.

His face was blank. “Your anger is duly noted. Now can we return to the matter at hand?”

“There is no matter of any kind between us. You betrayed me, and a lot of people suffered. Now get out of my office before I taser your double-crossing ass.”

He reached toward me. “I know you’re upset, but that’s no reason to—”

I grabbed my Taser out of the desk drawer and pressed the button. Sparks sizzled to life on it.

“Come now, Terra,” he said with strained patience. “This is just childish.”

I clicked the Taser again. “Get out.”

Aaron took a step back. He must have been afraid that the Taser would fry the electronics in his armor. A weakness of vampire armor? I filed that information away for future use.

“Just hear me out.”

“Don’t come back,” I snapped. “I’m a private investigator, not a bodyguard. And I don’t want to protect you.”

He snorted, and his eyes danced with amusement. “I can take care of myself. I don’t want you to protect me, sweetheart. I want you to solve a murder.”

I was just about to go get my sword, but his words stopped me. “Whose murder?”

“The murder of Emperor Ambrose Selpe.”

A month ago, the vampires’ emperor had been assassinated. On that same night, his sons were kidnapped.

“You’ve heard?” he said, responding to my continued silence.

“Yes.”

“I want to find out everyone who was involved in the murder of my uncle.”

He dropped a photo of the dead emperor’s body on my desk. Ambrose Selpe hadn’t just been murdered. He’d been mutilated, stabbed so many times that there was hardly anything left of him. I swallowed down the bile rising in my throat.

“And I want to find my cousins before they share his fate.”

He set down a second photo, this one a portrait of the twin princes. Hayden and Ian Selpe were the same age as I was, twenty years old. In the photograph, they were smiling at the camera like they didn’t have a care in the world. But now they were in the hands of a psychopath—my gaze shifted to the bloody photo of their father—of someone capable of this.

Aaron slid something in my hand, and a barrage of foresights hit me. Someone was torturing the princes. Blood was spilling out everywhere. Even as I pulled away, retreating from the foresight, the princes’ screams echoed in my ears. Overwhelmed, overloaded by my magic, I stumbled to the side and threw up on the floor.

The object Aaron had given me dropped from my hand, clunking against my desk. I looked down at it: a pin with the symbol of the Selpe Empire.

“This belonged to Hayden, didn’t it?” I said.

If an object was important enough to a person, it could connect me to them, to their future.

“Yes, it was Hayden’s.” Aaron looked at me. “What did you see?”

“Pain. Torment.” My voice cracked. My hands shook. “They will be tortured.”

I didn’t know when, but this was in their future. I could feel their suffering as though it were my own. I had to stop it. I had to save them from that terrible fate. The drive to protect them consumed me.

Aaron’s armored hands captured mine, steadying them. “I’m sorry I had to do that. But I’m desperate. I need you to find them before this future comes true.”

I pulled away from him. “How did you know what I would see?”

“As soon as I saw my uncle’s body, I knew what kind of person we were dealing with.” His face was grim. “The question is why my cousins were taken and not killed.”

“They were being tortured. Someone was asking them questions.” I blinked. “Their captors are trying to condition them.”

His mouth tightened. “Brainwashing?”

“Yes.”

“They must be planning to use my cousins for something. Information perhaps. Or to turn them into puppets they place on the throne.” His eyes met mine. “Will you take the job?”

“You have the entire vampire imperial army and spy network at your disposal. Why do you need me?”

“Because I don’t trust anyone,” he said fiercely. “This was an inside job.”

He placed a third photo on the desk, that of a woman with dark curls and a sweet, venomous smile. From the style of her expensive silver and blue dress, she was a wealthy vampire lady.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“Lady Cassandra, ruler of Seadusk.”

Seadusk was a vampire world. A very powerful one.

“On the night Ambrose was murdered, Lady Cassandra made sure he and his sons were exposed,” Aaron continued. “Because of her machinations, the assassin got to my uncle and my cousins. One of my investigating teams exposed her as a spy for the witches. She was thrown in prison.”

“It sounds like your mystery is solved.”

“She escaped.” He bit out the word like it burned his tongue. “Someone let her go. Lady Cassandra was in a maximum security cell. It was almost impossible to get to her. Someone killed over twenty of my men—all highly-trained soldiers wearing full body armor—and walked out of there with her. And I have no idea who. All the prison security footage from that night has been erased.”

I glanced down at the photographs he’d set down on my desk. They showed a prison. Dead soldiers lay dead on the floor.

“There were no holes in the walls, no explosions to make room for their escape,” Aaron said. “Lady Cassandra and her accomplices just walked out of there. Every time I go digging, I’m attacked.”

“Someone doesn’t want you to discover the truth.”

He nodded. “We have no evidence, no leads, and I don’t even know who to trust. Lady Cassandra had many allies, all well-placed in the vampire nobility, all wealthy and powerful.”

It sounded like a hot mess.

He showed me another photo, this one of a woman with dark locks, luminous caramel skin, and a sly smile.

“Who is she?”

His expression was guarded. “My cousin Lady Veronica, ruler of Frostwater.”

Another vampire world.

“You think she was conspiring with Lady Cassandra?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Veronica does benefit from the situation. With the emperor dead and his sons missing, the Selpe Advisory Council is voting on the line of succession. My cousin and I have an equal claim.”

“It sounds like you benefit as well.”

His eyes were hard, his voice a menacing whisper. “I have no love of politics. My cousin Veronica, however, relishes in them. She has tried to kill me in the past.”

“How do you know?”

“I confronted her.”

“And what did she say?”

“Oh, Aaron, it’s nothing personal, you know,” he quoted in a woman’s voice, giving his hand a feminine, dismissive wave.

Even with his armor on, he sounded just like a noble lady, not a vampire soldier. He’d missed his true calling as a stage actor.

“Your own cousin tried to kill you?” I said.

The vampire soldier returned. “Politics,” he said with disgust, as though the word tasted awful. “Veronica is a vicious opponent.”

“You wear armor at all times,” I pointed out.

“I know this is hard to believe, but I don’t sleep in my armor,” he replied seriously.

I snorted. I just couldn’t help it. “You’re also surrounded by highly-trained soldiers all the time. Not only that, you are one of those highly-trained soldiers. Why don’t you just kill her? Or frame her for something? That’s what you do.”

That’s what he’d done to me.

“Terra,” he said, his voice soft, almost gentle. “What I did was in the best interests of everyone.”

“I’m sure your cousin is saying the same thing as she poisons your soup.”

“No doubt,” Aaron agreed. “But I mean it.”

I looked in his eyes—and, curse it, I actually believed him. Of course, he’d fooled me before.

“What makes you think I am the person for the job?” I asked.

“You’re resourceful and principled. You can’t be corrupted.”

“So now you need my annoying idealism?”

“It’s not annoying. It’s charming,” he told me, with a half-smile. “But you have to admit it does get you into trouble.”

“Trusting you got me into trouble. And I won’t make that mistake again.” I picked up his photographs and handed them to him. “You’ll just have to find another idealistic fool to do your dirty work.”

His hand flashed out, taking mine. “I never meant to hurt you.”

I shook him off. “But you did, Aaron. You are not a good person. You ruined countless lives to further your government’s agenda, to strike out at the witches. And they struck back. Attack and counterattack. Over and over again. It’s a vicious, never-ending cycle, and I will have no part of it. I left this game two years ago. And I’m staying out.”

“You’re condemning two innocents to death,” he said as I turned my back on him.

I stopped. He knew my weakness. It was the reason I took all those missing kids jobs, even when the families could pay me so little. I couldn’t stand to see innocents suffer. But I couldn’t let Aaron drag me into his mess again.

I turned back to face him, my heart heavy with the burden of the foresights I’d seen. “I wish I could save Hayden and Ian. I really do. My heart aches for them. But you are trying to use my compassion to serve you. Just like you did last time. And then, as soon as it suits you, you’ll betray me.”

“I won’t.”

I shook my head. “I don’t trust you. I can’t.”

He set his hands on my cheeks. “Look at me, Terra.”

With a heavy sigh, I met his eyes.

“What I did was for my empire.”

I tried to pull away, but he held on to me.

“Even so, I regret what I did to you.”

“You?” I said in disbelief. “The head of the Diamond Edges, the master of evil deeds, regret something?”

“Lord Adrian wanted you to join us. I wanted you to join us.”

“You could have asked me instead of ruining my life.”

“I could have.” Regret burned in his eyes, but was it regret over what he’d done to me or because he’d failed to recruit me into the Diamond Edges? “But you would have said no.”

“And that would have been my choice.”

“Yes. I was wrong. And I’m sorry.”

I laughed. “And you think that fixes things, just like that? You destroyed my life, Aaron. You destroyed the lives of millions of mages. People died because of what you did. Sorry doesn’t cut it. Not even close.”

“What does cut it?” He sounded almost desperate. “What would make you forgive me?”

“I don’t know that I ever can.”

“So you won’t help me?”

I could still picture the princes. I could still hear their screams. Damn it. I couldn’t leave them like that. I had to help them. I couldn’t abandon them, no matter how I felt about Aaron and the vampires.

I sighed. “I will help you.”

His face lit up.

“But I have conditions,” I added quickly.

“Name them.”

“This isn’t about revenge. Or about continuing the cycle of hate. If we find the people responsible, you will turn them over to the Galactic Assembly for justice, not shoot them in the head and dump their bodies in a dark alley.”

“Agreed.”

“I’m not done,” I told him. “You will sign a contract that states you’ve hired me for this job. I won’t have you making up some wild tale later to cover your own ass or set me up. Not this time. This contract will be filed in the PI Directory. If I go down, you go down with me.”

He nodded. “Very well.”

“I’m also going to need another twenty thousand credits in addition to the headband.” I needed the extra money for Father’s gift.

He looked amused. “You’re certainly bold.”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Agreed.” Aaron gave his hand a dismissive wave, as though an extra twenty thousand credits were nothing to him. It probably wasn’t—not if he’d dropped two million on a magic headband.

“One more thing,” I said. “Before we begin, you will deposit the headband into my safe. If during the course of this investigation, I decide you’ve betrayed me or plan to do so, I will drop you like a hot plate, and I will keep the payment.”

His brows furrowed. “And what’s to keep you from dropping me before you even begin?”

“I guess you’re just going to have to trust me.”

He looked at me for a while, then said, “Agreed.” He handed over the headband.

I placed it in the safe. “Trust is a delicate thing, more precious than any treasure. I always keep my word, so people trust me—even you, a suspicious man by nature.”

We drew up the contract and signed it. Aaron gave me a memory stick that contained all the evidence he’d collected, as well as detailed files on the ruling lords and ladies of the vampire nobility. Then he left the office.

“I think I’ll start with you,” I said, tapping my finger on the picture of Veronica Frostwater.