"First things first," said Kael as they sat down to dinner and I sat down to watch. "What do we do with Self?"

"I can kill him, if you like?" I suggested, mostly joking.

"Not sure that would solve anything," said Milo, with a smile.

"The problem is," said Kael, "someone will notice that he's gone. Will already have noticed, in fact. You can't kidnap the head of the Lawkeepers without people noticing. After your diversion today, Sonja, they'll have guessed your involvement, and the fact that we vanished shortly after turning up for work also suggests ours."

"Do we have to do anything with him?" asked Gage. "We're heading for Lafferty's mansion soon. If that goes well, then we should have proof that Self is crooked and it won't matter we kidnapped him. If it goes badly, then nothing matters."

"Just leave him here?"

"That's what I'm saying. He's not going anyplace."

Kael nodded. "I don't see any other obvious alternative."

But Milo was still frowning. "Maybe we're looking at this all wrong by seeing it as a problem."

"What do you mean?"

Milo shrugged. "Maybe it's an advantage. Our bigger problem right now is getting into the mansion of one of the richest men in the country. A mansion defended by his own private army and by an artillery of technical security systems that he developed himself. We can't just kick the door in. Not even Sonja can just kick the door in. Well, we now have a man who has been there before and who is a known friend of Lafferty, locked up in our spare room. Seems to me we might be able to use that."

It sounded pretty good to me, but Kael was still unsure. "It's a risk. If Lafferty knows that Self has gone missing, then us turning up with him just looks suspicious."

The disappearance of the Lawkeepers’ Head of Operations was not being reported by the media, it was being kept a secret for the time being. But might a man like Lafferty have means of finding out? Might he have contacts in the Lawkeepers besides Self?

"Seems to me like a risk worth taking," said Milo.

"I don't know about that," admitted Gage. "But I can't think of any other way to get in. Lafferty's place is a damn fortress."

Kael turned to me. "Could you get him to call Lafferty and fix a meeting?"

I shook my head. "He's out of my influence now. And I won't be able to drink from him again for days yet. At least, not without killing him."

"It's a risk," Kael repeated. "And we don't know what Self might do once we're in the gates."

"But we know he betrayed Lafferty." A thought had occurred to me. "And we know that he's terrified of the man."

Kael's eyes gleamed. "Damn it, the vampire's right. If he gives us away to Lafferty, then Lafferty's going to ask: how did they know I had the girl? There's no way he can betray us without betraying himself, too."

I nodded. "If we make that damn clear to him before we go in, then I think we can count on the bastard to play ball."

Milo looked at his watch. "It's not late, yet. Can we go tonight?"

Every part of me wanted to say: yes, let's get Layla out of there. But this was our only chance, it had to work, and doing it now came with a major issue. "Self can barely stand and he looks like shit. We'll have to wait until tomorrow evening, let him get enough of his strength back that he looks presentable, and not like he's just been drained."

Kael nodded and looked at me with a sympathetic expression. "It's just one more day. I know that every day of waiting must be agony for you with Layla out there, but... Better to wait and do it right than rush in and fail."

I wanted to snap back at him, to tell him that I knew that and to stop stating the obvious. But it actually felt good to have someone acknowledging how hard this was on me. It felt nice to have someone understand that a vampire has feelings. These guys...

I still couldn't get over them. We were sitting here planning how to rescue my sister. I knew why I was doing it, but I didn't have the first idea why they were. Not so very long ago, I would have assumed malign motives, but I was well past that now. I trusted them implicitly. They were helping me because they liked me, because they wanted to, because it was the right thing to do. None of which were motives I associated with humans. Humans helping vampires didn't happen. Humans laying their life on the line for vampires? That was a fucking fantasy. And yet, here they were.

But then again, that's what they all were; fantasies. The three of them together were my fantasy guy. I had never thought in those terms before, never allowed myself to dream of love because it seemed so impossible. I wasn't the type to get a happily ever after. Now...

I suppressed the hopes as they pushed their way up, breaking through the toughened years of engrained disappointment that filled me. This was what it felt like to be loved. Not in an involuntary way as Layla and Max loved me, not in an overblown Hollywood way - all flowery language and huge declarations - but in a very everyday way. True, they were about to do something extraordinary for me, but they were doing it for the most ordinary of reasons; because they liked me. The mundanity of it was what I cherished the most. If I had asked one of them why they were doing this, then they would not even have understood the question. They liked me, so of course they were willing to risk their lives for me. It was almost matter of fact. That was what real love was, and I found myself hoping that I could be worthy of it because, for the first time in my long life, I had found a man – technically, three men, but who's counting? - who I wanted to be there for a long time.

"Next problem," said Kael. "You."

I nodded. How the hell did we get me into the mansion? If Self was telling the truth, and I was pretty sure he was, then this Cosgrove Lafferty had been obsessed with me for years - he knew what I looked like. We could try disguises or hiding me in the trunk of a car, but I had a hunch that Lafferty's clever security tech would see right through that kind of deception.

"Any chance that once we're in, we can just open the back door?" asked Milo, trying to raise the mood, which had slipped back into somber.

We sat in silence a long while, until Kael finally spoke. "I don't see it. I think we'll have to do this without you."

It went without saying that I wasn't about to accept that, but the offer blew me away. "You would go in to get Layla alone?"

"There're three of us," pointed out Gage.

"Yeah, three of you against an army. You'd do that?"

The guys looked at each other in bafflement.

"Of course," said Milo. "How can you think we wouldn't?"

I had just gotten past being overwhelmed by the fact that they were helping me at all, and by the strength of my own feelings for them, but this hit me afresh. "I can't believe you would do that."

Kael looked me in the eyes. "We would do anything for you, Sonja. We've talked, and we all love you, and we're all cool with that. And however this goes, however you feel, whatever you want to do about... this. We're still going to love you and be cool with whatever choice you make."

But I wasn't about to make choices between these guys. Fortunately, it seemed to me that I didn't have to.

"I love you all," I said, as pure and simple a declaration I had ever made. "That's what I want."

We weren't going anywhere for almost twenty-four hours - planning could wait.