It was early afternoon when I woke, disturbed by a slim, sliver of sunlight peeking through the drapes. It hadn't touched me - if it had I'd have woken with a shock and the smell of my own burning flesh in my nostrils - but vampires are sensitive to light as they sleep, for obvious reasons. I checked the clock: three thirty in the afternoon. Though it wasn't how I would have chosen to be woken, I was glad to be awake early, it might give me the opportunity I needed to find out more about my generous hosts.

I flexed my body in the bed, testing it out. I felt a slight ache where the knives had pierced me the night before, but I had healed quickly, as my kind does, and was a good ninety to ninety-five percent back to full fitness. I got out of bed quickly and put on the clothes I had been wearing the night before - a skimpy dress designed to make men look somewhere other than my face.

Tentatively, I opened the bedroom door and peered out into the living room. Fortunately, the windows were angled away from the sun, so although it was light, I didn't have to deal with direct sunlight. Still, I went and closed the drapes - light of this intensity wouldn't burn but it would give me a wicked migraine and acid reflux.

"Kael?" I called. "Milo?"

No answer.

I looked about to see if they had left me a note, but found nothing. Chances were, they expected me to sleep through the day and that, by the time I woke, they would be back. Excellent. It gave me the chance to snoop about the place and see what I could find out about these unlikely security firm managers.

The place was sparsely decorated in an almost minimalist style, which didn't give me a whole lot to snoop through. I found some mail tossed on the kitchen table but it was mostly bills, nothing to excite suspicion. I found plenty of healthy food, energy drinks and keep fit equipment, which seemed to fit their story. I didn't notice anything that suggested these were two men running a very successful technology business, but then, I didn't find anything that argued against it either. Some people prefer to keep their work and home lives separate.

I ventured into a bedroom, feeling a thrill of intrusion as I did so. I was violating the private sanctum of one of a pair of insanely hot guys with whom I had gone home the night before. I forced my mind back onto the job at hand - this was all about Layla. Were these guys anything to do with her disappearance? There was much that was suspicious about them, and although none of it pointed directly - or even indirectly - at my blood sister, the fact that they had entered my life now seemed more than mere coincidence.

At first, the bedroom yielded no more clues than the living room. There was a set of weights by the mirror, which seemed a little narcissistic, but there was no crime there. I tried the weights out - not bad, most humans would have struggled to pick them up, let alone curl them. I did a few reps just to prove a point to myself, and I had to admit that watching myself in the mirror was fun. I looked good. Back to it. I rifled through drawers, dwelling on the underwear drawer for just a little longer than perhaps I should have. I was unable to stop myself from picturing Kael in the hugging shorts that I found. Then Milo. Then Kael again. Then both of them, posing in my mind's eye like catalogue models. I closed the drawer and moved on, opening a wardrobe that stood by the wall. As I flicked through a collection of expensive shirts, something dropped to the ground at my feet and I stooped to pick it up.

It was a train ticket to Center Plaza. And in itself, that meant comparatively little, there were lots of reasons for which a person could go to Center Plaza. Lots of big businesses had their offices in the area and so, of course, there were lots of smaller businesses that catered to the needs of the workers in the bigger ones. Probably thousands of people went to Center Plaza station every day, using tickets just like this one.

But some of those people were Lawkeepers, the branch of the police specializing in all vampire-related crime. Lawkeeper Central was located right on the Plaza, dominating one end to remind them that vampires had a leash around their necks, and these were the men who kept a tight hold on it. There was nothing on the ticket to indicate the eventual destination of its owner, but when that owner had the speed and strength of Kael and Milo, then it made you think.

The one group of people who had legal access to the most extreme bio-enhancements were the Lawkeepers. From what I had seen of the guys’ abilities so far, they were not on Lawkeeper level. On the other hand, if I was right about them holding back during the fight, then...

I flicked the ticket over, not expecting to find anything else, but instead I found a number scrawled in a messy hand: VR-762-01. That rang a bell with me. Not the number itself, but the pattern of it. I had seen a number like that before, and recently. But where?

My train of thought was suddenly derailed by a sound from the living room. Someone was out there. My mind raced; the only way out of here was through the living room. If I was lucky, then whoever was out there would go into one of the other bedrooms to give me a chance to make a break for it. If I was unlucky, then he would stay out in the living/kitchen area, trapping me in here. If I was very unlucky, then he would come in here to find me with no good reason for being there and a piece of potentially interesting, and definitely stolen, evidence in my hand.

Thinking fast, I shoved the ticket back into the pocket of a random shirt hanging in the wardrobe - my sexy 'date' dress was not big on pockets. Next, I stripped off the dress and stuffed it under the bed. From outside, I heard footsteps, coming towards the door. Hurrying back to the wardrobe, I grabbed out a shirt and pulled it over my head. I had come in here looking for something to wear - that was a perfectly believable explanation. Still a little intrusive, but a hell of a lot better than; I came in here snooping around for clues. Plus, it is a scientifically proven fact that women never look hotter to men than when they are wearing an oversized man's shirt, and you can't argue with science.

As I pulled on the shirt and heard a hand on the door, something dropped to the floor beside me. Unluckily, I had chosen the shirt into which I had hastily stuffed the damn train ticket, which, as I pulled the shirt over my head, had fallen out to the floor. Perhaps a train ticket on the floor was not wildly suspicious - even with a strange code number scrawled on the back - but to me, right now, it looked like a red flashing light attached to a siren blaring the word 'SNOOPING' repeatedly. There was no time to pick it up now as the door was already opening. I would have to distract Kael or Milo and hope they didn't notice. Again, the woman in the oversized man's shirt would go some way to accomplishing this. Only science knows why.

But when the door opened, and I and the man who entered saw each other, I was the one who was caught on the back foot. It was neither Kael nor Milo, but a total stranger.

An extremely good-looking total stranger, my brain amended unhelpfully. He was dark-skinned - perhaps Latino - with jet black hair and active hazel eyes that gave me a quick once over. He was not as tall as Kael or Milo, but made up for it by having a physique that was threatening to burst out of the shirt he wore. I noted that shirt looked to be about the same size as the one I had on. It was starting to look like Kael and Milo had a roommate they had not told me about, and that I was in his room, wearing nothing but one of his shirts. This might actually take more explaining than being caught snooping.

"Hi," I said, uncertainly.

"Hi," the man replied in a voice so low I could almost feel it vibrating through the soles of my feet. "I don't like to be nosey but..."

"Kael and Milo brought me home."

"And I didn't get them anything."

I smiled. The easy confidence, that all three guys seemed to share, was almost as appealing as their impressive physiques and handsome faces. I was in a potentially dangerous situation; a vampire, who had been a bad girl recently, and had the blood of a few humans on her fangs, caught snooping in the house of three men who might be Lawkeepers. The humans had been killed accidentally, and had been bad guys who had been involved in the kidnap of an innocent girl and more besides, but even so, vampires who killed humans were deemed to have 'gone rogue' and the punishments were harsh. And despite all of this, all I could think right now was how much I wanted this newcomer to turn around so I could get a look at his ass. I felt a tug of desire for him, similar to that which I had felt for his roommates. I'm not usually like that at all, so to feel something so powerful three times in the last few days was... Well, it was not like me.

"I didn't have anything to wear," I continued my explanation. "So I came in here looking for something to wear, and your shirt was... well..."

"It suits you." I had been looking at this guy like he was a piece of meat, it was actually kind of nice to have him return the favor.

"Thanks."

"You didn't have anything to wear?"

"Nothing but the clothes I was wearing last night," I clarified. "And they weren't appropriate. Plus, they had some blood on them."

"You're a vampire."

It wasn't a question. This guy was good - most humans didn't spot it that quick. "Yeah, but the blood was mine."

"Are you okay?"

"Fighting fit." However attractive I found this man, given the circumstances, I wanted him to know that I was far from defenseless. If he knew enough about vampires to recognize that I was one, then he knew enough to know that, if I was healthy, I could throw him across the room.

"You look it."

"Are you flirting with me?" I sidled towards him, carefully placing my body between him and the train ticket, so he had something better to look at.

The man shrugged. "Sorry. It's a bad habit, but every time half-naked women show up in my bedroom, I seem to say the wrong thing."

"I imagine that happens a lot."

"Practically daily. But usually, I do remember how they got there. My name is Gage, by the way."

"Sonja." Should I have told him my real name? I guess the city is full of Sonjas. "Kael and Milo didn't mention they had another roommate," I explained. "I thought this was one of their rooms."

"That's perfectly understandable." Was it my imagination or was there now an inflection in his voice that suggested suspicion?

"Good."

"What I must admit I'm struggling to understand is - you slept in one of their rooms, right?"

"I guess I must have," I acknowledged.

"Rooms which - I know - both have wardrobes with clothes in. I don't really understand how you ended up in mine, unless you were having a bit of a look around."

I looked coyly at him, trying to play up the sexiness of the situation and play down the whole 'me searching the apartment' thing. "I guess maybe I got curious. These two handsome men rescued me last night, I didn't know anything about them and yeah, maybe I had a bit of a look around."

"And helped yourself to a shirt?"

I looked up at him from beneath lowered lashes, delicately teasing one of the shirt buttons open and showing an inch more cleavage. "You don't think it suits me?"

Gage had been in control of the conversation up to this point, but now I saw him lose it a little. It was the first time that I was sure he felt the same attraction to me that I felt for him. His hazel eyes lingered on the flesh that that freshly popped button had revealed, and then traced a path downwards, as if noticing my long legs for the first time. As his gaze travelled back up again, I could almost feel him wishing that he could lift the hem of the shirt with just his eyes. The way he was looking, he was more likely to burn a hole in it.

"Probably looks better on you than it does on me," he spoke through a dry mouth.

"I don't know about that." I wasn't kidding. Massive though he was, Gage wore his expensive clothes well, tight enough to be almost a second skin. No girl, and certainly not this one, could resist a second look.

Gage swallowed awkwardly, trying to wrest back self-control, as much as control of the situation. "You said they rescued you?"

"It's a long story."

"Have you got somewhere else to be?"

I took a few slow, sultry steps closer to him. "Nowhere better than this."

If Gage's mind had ever dwelled on how suspiciously I was acting and how certain elements of my story did not add up, then he had forgotten all about that now, and as long as my tantalizingly half-naked body was in the room, he was not going to notice a discarded train ticket on the floor. Frankly, he wasn't going to notice if a rhinoceros came crashing through the wall. I had managed to get control of the situation, now I just had to keep control of it, and control of Gage, for long enough to get rid of that ticket, make my excuses, and leave. How hard could it be? Gage was too busy staring at his shirt, and wishing he had x-ray vision, to look anywhere else right now.

But just as I was about to suggest we move this into the living room, to give me time to clear my head and put some distance between him and the signs of my snooping, I heard a sound from the next room. The sound of the door.

"Hey, Gage, you back?"

It was Milo.

Gage didn't even have the chance to answer before Milo entered and was brought up short by the sight of his roommate and the woman he had brought home last night wearing nothing but that roommate's shirt. He looked from me to Gage and back again.

"Sonja, why are your eyes green?"