Sid touched the side of her neck. It was tender, but the wounds were almost gone. If she hadn’t been so pale, there’d probably be nothing left to see, no evidence of a vampire’s bite at all.

Her phone was still ringing. Two more rings, and it would go to voice mail. She should really answer this time. If her brother Jamie didn’t hear her voice soon, he’d get someone to knock on her condo door. And when no one answered the door, he’d get the super involved. Jamie took his responsibilities as the oldest child very seriously. Particularly when it came to his baby sister.

She exhaled a long-suffering sigh and took the call.

“Hey, Jamie.”

“About damn time,” he shouted. “You disappear from the party and then don’t even bother to answer the phone?”

“I’m sorry. Didn’t you get my e-mail?”

“Seriously, Sid? I’ve been calling for two days.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “You know how I get when I’m finishing a story.”

He grunted wordlessly, but said, “So the slave story’s almost done?”

“Almost,” she agreed.

“You’ll be coming back home then?”

That had been Sid’s plan all along. Her move to Chicago was supposed to be temporary. A few months to write a story about drugs and violence, then back home to the suburbs. But the drug story had become a slavery story, and then Janey had died, and the slavery story had become a crusade to shut the whole ugly thing down. And now it was almost two years since she’d left her parents’ safe and cozy suburb for the wilds of the big city.

If Jamie had asked her that same question two weeks ago, she’d have told him, yes¸ that she was leaving Chicago and coming home soon. Her condo lease was up in a month, and she’d have been more than ready to get out of the big city and back to the quiet comfort of her parents’ suburb. There’d been nothing keeping her here.

But now that she’d met Aden, the idea of leaving Chicago made her chest hurt, because it meant leaving him. And she didn’t know if she could do that.

“I don’t know,” she answered Jamie’s question honestly.

“Mom misses you, you know. So does Dad, but Mom especially.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. But . . . I haven’t decided yet.”

“Hmm. I hear Will’s getting married,” he ventured carefully, as if testing the waters.

“That’s not the reason I’m staying in Chicago, Jamie,” she told him patiently. “Will and I haven’t been a couple for a long time.”

“Just thought I’d check. I’d hate to break the guy’s bones, but you know I would if he hurt you.”

“Will would never hurt me.” She didn’t add that that was part of the problem, that Will was simply too nice, just like every other man she’d met until now. She hadn’t realized it herself until she’d met Aden. Apparently, she needed a man with an edge.

“Okay, well . . . I’ll be in town next week,” Jamie told her. “We can do lunch, or dinner. You can cook for me.”

Sid made a dismissive noise. “Yeah, right. You can take me out, how’s that?”

“How’re you ever going to get a husband if you don’t cook, baby girl?”

“Who says I’m looking for one?”

“Mom wants grandbabies.”

“Mom’s got two perfectly good sons who can pop them out for her.” She paused. “Unless you’ve got something to tell me? Maybe the popping doesn’t work so well?”

“Fuck you.”

“Now that’s just sick.”

“Jesus, Sid, that’s disgusting. You’ve been hanging around the wrong class of people for too long.”

“Maybe.”

“Look, I’ve got to go, but we’ll definitely get together next week, okay?”

“Sure. Call me when you get here, we’ll work something out.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.” Sid disconnected, then put her computer aside and sat up, feeling suddenly restless. Maybe it was the call from her brother, trying to drag her back within the circled wagons. If it were up to her family, Sid would never leave the suburbs. She’d get married and have a few grandchildren for her mom to spoil, if not with Will, then with someone equally suitable. Suitable meaning one of their own—white, educated, and moneyed. She didn’t know how much formal education Aden had, but he clearly had plenty of money. On the other hand, she was pretty sure suitable didn’t include a vampire, no matter what.

Needing to stretch some of her sex-sore muscles, and desperate to think of something besides her immediate future, she grabbed a bottle of water and headed for the hallway. Aden’s office was one of three interconnected rooms, with the receptionist area the only one with a door to the hallway. The other two rooms opened off the receptionist area, with Aden’s office the largest of the three and the only one with windows. The lounging area where she’d been hanging out was the other room, with its small kitchen area and man-cave ambience.

Walking out into the hallway, Sid paused and glanced in both directions. Aden’s suite, and what she assumed were the apartments of his other vampires, were all to her right, secured behind the heavy red doors. At the other end, to Sid’s left was the elevator, and that was it. As she stood there, she was abruptly struck by the nearly total silence. No phones rang, no music played. There was the quiet rush of air that was the heating system, but nothing else.

She felt suddenly very alone. And very vulnerable. Not simply for her own sake, but for Aden and the other vampires. There was a war of sorts going on in this city. Call it a challenge or a competition, but vampires were dying left and right. What if one of Aden’s enemies decided to play dirty and attack during the day? Did the vampire culture have rules about these things? This was the sort of question she might have asked Professor Dresner not long ago. But for now, she had to rely on her own judgment, and her head was telling her that if, by some chance, any enemies managed to get to this floor, Aden had no one but her standing between him and disaster.

She spun around and headed for her backpack, which she’d left in the lounge area. She hadn’t told Aden about her gun, thinking he wouldn’t have approved. Besides, he’d only have insisted he didn’t need her protection, because his security measures would hold, what with Earl Hamilton guarding the fifth floor and the private elevator locked down. But empires had been lost because the loser believed himself invulnerable, and Sid had studied enough to know that no one was perfectly safe. If the attackers were willing to die, anybody could be gotten to. And if Sid had learned one thing about vampires, it was that their followers would do anything for their vampire master . . . or mistress.

Crossing to her backpack, she pulled out her subcompact 9mm Glock. It didn’t look like much compared to the big Glocks, but it was enough to stop a human, and since the sun was high in the sky, that was all she’d have to worry about. After dark, Aden didn’t need her little firepower. He was more than capable of defending himself.

Shoving her shirt up and her jeans down, she wrapped the bellyband around her waist, then pulled everything back into place. She’d originally chosen the bellyband holster because she didn’t want to advertise the fact that she was armed. With the lower edge of the bellyband tucked beneath the waistband of her pants, and her usual fleece hoodie adding another layer of concealment, no one would know she was carrying unless they took the time to pat her down. And if someone had enough control over her that they were patting her down, the fight was probably already over.

Checking the ten-round magazine, she slammed it home, then worked the slide, chambering a round. Going hot was what her firearms instructor had called it. It saved a few seconds on the first round, and a few seconds, he’d emphasized, might be all she had.

Sliding the Glock into the elastic, and putting her spare mag into its own special pocket, she pulled her long-sleeved T-shirt over it, but left her hoodie unzipped for now. Feeling slightly gunfighterish, she paced back to the hallway and down to the elevator, where she spent a few minutes staring up at the floor display, until the steadily lit number “1” began to flicker in her sight. She blinked rapidly and decided it wasn’t going to change. No one was storming the battlements, at least not while she stood there waiting. And besides, she was getting hungry again, and she’d left her pitiful allotment of energy bars on the coffee table in the lounge area.

Grabbing a fresh bottle of the water from the fridge, she settled back on the big leather couch and squirmed around a bit, before finally finding a position where the gun didn’t dig into her belly or scrape against her hip bone. She unwrapped the first energy bar, flipped on the TV, and felt her eyes begin to droop almost immediately. She hadn’t gotten more than an hour’s sleep last night. Setting aside the tasteless energy bar, she settled into the thick pillows and let sleep take her.

Sid came awake with a jolt, her heart racing as she stared at the unfamiliar room, taking in the giant TV screen which currently showed a bunch of hyperactive game show contestants celebrating mutely. Aden’s office, she remembered. She was in Aden’s office, and something had woken her. She sat up and checked the time on her cell phone. It was barely noon. Long hours stretched ahead of her, and she was beginning to hate the isolation of being locked in here.

She was reaching for her bottle of water, her fingers not yet touching the plastic, when she heard the very last sound she’d expected to hear. The elevator dinged faintly, as if the car was on its way up and she was hearing its progress through the lower floors. Was that what had woken her? It was so quiet in here that the smallest noise would seem loud.

She stood, listening. And heard it again. Maybe the elevator was simply moving up and down between the lower floors. Maybe she’d misunderstood what Aden had said about the car being locked down. Or maybe Earl Hamilton was coming up for some reason. Yes, that was probably it. Maybe he knew she was here and was checking on her.