I got to the DA's office and stood at the glass door, looking in. No sign of any guards. I began pounding on the glass. No one came. I pounded again. Soon a middle-aged man in a blue security uniform walked slowly to the door. He looked annoyed.

"Sorry, ma'am, the offices are closed." He yelled through the glass.

I pulled out my ID and showed it to him. "I know it's late, but I forgot something at my desk. Can I just run in and get it please?"

"No can do. You don't have the right ID. You're just cleared for weekdays. Sorry. Unless you were with someone with the right clearance, I can't let you in."

I sighed and looked around. I hoped I'd bought Mick enough time to get out.

"Well, thanks anyway," I said, and walked back toward my car. It was then I saw Ben Talbot, pulling in to the space beside my car. Busted again, I thought in dismay.

He naturally was surprised to see me.

"What are you doing here, Beth?" He asked as he got out of his car. "Is your friend okay?" His slightly sarcastic emphasis on the word made me immediately defensive, but I still had a roll to play.

"I don't know yet. I just stopped to get something I left on my desk, but the guard wouldn't let me in."

He looked at me a moment, as if weighing his options. Then, he said: "I can get you in, if it's that important."

My phone suddenly rang. Thank God it was Mick. "Excuse me—I've got to take this." I prepared myself to lie again. "Yes, Simone, I'm on my way. I'm going now." I looked apologetically at Ben. "I better go. I shouldn't have stopped first." I waved absently and got in my car. "Mick," I said into the phone as I drove away. Ben watched me leave, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Did you get out okay?"

"Yeah, that was close."

"Where are you?"

" I'm about two blocks north, in the Stake and Fang Pub parking lot."

"You're joking me. I've never heard of that place. Sounds like something a vampire would call his bar."

Mick laughed. "It's Daryl Morgan's bar."

"I'll be there in a minute," I said, and hung up. I definitely remembered hunky Daryl Morgan from my recent crashing of a vampire poker game. He looked like a body builder with the face of Brad Pitt. I certainly looked forward to seeing him again.

I pulled into the lot where Mick was, leaning coolly against his classic Mercedes convertible. He opened my door and helped me out. I fell into his arms, relieved that he was safe.

"I hated lying to Ben like that," I said against his hard chest. "I hope you found that list."

"I did," he said, holding the file up by my face. I pulled away in surprise.

"You took the whole file? Mick, if he finds that missing, he'll know I had something to do with it. I just ran into him at the office."

"He can't prove anything, Beth. And I'll get it back as soon as I can copy it." He leaned down and kissed me lightly on the lips. "Thanks for the rescue. I just knew I was going to have to sleep on Talbot's floor."

"You wanna go in?" I asked, indicating the bar.

"No, maybe some other time. It's a fun place. Can we go back to your place? It's closer than mine."

"Sure. Follow me." And I got back in my car and led the way home.

I parked near Beth on the street in front of her condo, and we walked inside together. The folder was underneath my jacket, seeming to burn a hole in my side.

"I called Josef to join us, if that's okay," I said. "He'll be here in a few minutes. Or, knowing Josef's driving, he's already here." My joke fell a little flat. I knew she was still worried about Talbot and the missing file.

She unlocked her door and let us in, turning on lights as she entered. I made myself at home in her living room, taking the file out and setting it on the coffee table.

"Can I get you a drink? I have some wine."

"Sure," I replied absently, opening the file. This time, the list was not on top of the documents in the file. I was. Talbot had several pictures of me, taken in sequence, as I had been hit by a car, then tossed on the road. In the last picture, Beth was helping me up, where, of course, I had been unharmed by the hit and run. This had happened a couple months before, when the paparazzi were after me when I was working security for Tierney Taylor. She had just been murdered.

I suddenly felt Beth's presence near me, and I looked up at her. She held two glasses of wine, and they looked precariously close to spilling on her floor. Her eyes and mouth were wide in shock.

"Where did you get those?" she asked in a shaky voice, just above a whisper. It didn't take my vampire senses to figure out she had seen those pictures before. Her heart rate was through the roof, and I reached out to take the glasses from her before she could drop them.

"They were in the file," I said slowly, gauging her reaction. "Have you seen these before?" I was testing her; I hate to admit it. She didn't answer me.

"Beth, why didn't you tell me these pictures exist? They are clear evidence that I'm more than human. And obviously Talbot has seen them. Who took them?" She was still quiet, except for her pounding heart. She turned back toward the kitchen. Then it dawned on me. "It was Foster, wasn't it?" The celebrity photographer had been stalking Tierney, and me too, apparently. Her shoulders slouched forward, and her hands covered her face.

"Beth?" I said, rising to walk over to her. I put my hand on her arm and gently turned her around. She couldn't look at me. About that time, there was a knock on the door. She practically ran to it to get away from me.

"Beth—always a pleasure," Josef greeted her, walking past her into the room. It took him about two seconds to sense the tension in the air, and no doubt hear Beth's racing pulse. She caught his eye with a panicked expression, and it was then that I knew. Josef was in on this thing too.

"Mick," he said simply, masking his curiosity with his usual bravado. "Am I interrupting something?"

I held up the pictures. He saw them at a glance, then his eyes darted involuntarily to Beth. I was right. These two, the people I loved most in the world, had kept this from me. I willed myself not to get angry. To hear them out.

"So I'll ask you the same question, Josef. Why didn't you tell me these pictures existed?"

"Now, Mick, don't get your boxers in a twist. We were just trying to cover your ass."

"You couldn't have come to me?" I looked at Beth. I wish I hadn't. The tears were freely flowing down her face. I resisted the urge to comfort her until I got the truth out of both of them.

"And what would you have done, hmm?" asked Josef. "Packed your duds and left town? Tried to pay him off?"

"I would have gotten to Foster."

"And done what? Threaten him? That kind of guy wouldn't have been scared, and flashing your fangs at him would have just made things worse. No, Beth did the right thing, coming to me." So that was the way of it.

"Beth?" Now was her chance. She wiped at her eyes, sniffed once, and looked at me.

"I'm sorry, Mick," she said, her voice quavering. "I didn't know what to do. Foster wanted to blackmail me, just like he'd done countless others before. He was going to follow you, and I knew—Josef and I both knew—that eventually he would catch you in obvious vampire mode, and you would be exposed. All of you would be." She looked pointedly at Josef. "And you told me," she continued, swallowing hard. "You told me if someone threatened your secrets, you would have to move away… And that was something I couldn't bear." Her eyes were pleading with me to understand. And I did. I just wasn't ready to be over my anger yet.

I turned to Josef. "So what did you do, Josef? Was it the tar pits for Foster?"

"Eventually," he said simply. I knew I wouldn't get any more details than that.

I sat down in a chair heavily, and reached for the wine. I drained both glasses.

"I always wondered why Foster stopped harassing me so abruptly. I just thought I'd gotten lucky, I guess. I suppose I should thank you both, but I'm not feeling too grateful at the moment." We were all silent, then Beth walked over to me and kneeled down before me.

"You have saved me a hundred times over, Mick. Finally, this was something I could do for you. And maybe I was wrong to keep this from you, but I thought I could also protect you from the anger and anxiety of dealing with Foster. It wasn't totally selfish." She smiled a little. I reached out and touched her tear-stained cheek.

"What gets me, Beth, is how angry you've gotten at me for dispensing what you call 'vampire justice.' And here you are, not even a vampire, and saw fit to deal with him in much the same way that we dealt with the Monaghans."

"Hey, go easy on her, Mick—"

"Shut up, Josef!" I roared, still looking at Beth. "I'll deal with you in a minute."

She flinched at my outburst, then started to move away. I caught her hands.

And brought them to my lips. "Don't ever do anything like this again, Beth," I said calmly. "No secrets, remember?" She nodded silently, the tears still flowing in rivers down her cheeks. I kissed them away, and held her tightly to me. She clung to me in relief. A few minutes passed, and I stood up again, Beth still in my arms. I pulled gently away and turned to Josef, who was helping himself to the wine.

"Okay, Mick. Let me have it." Josef stood calmly, sipping his wine, a smirk lingering around his mouth. I walked over to him until we were nearly nose-to-nose. I willed my eyes to glow and my fangs to emerge. Josef merely raised an eyebrow.

"If you ever keep something like this from me again, Josef…" I began, trying to think of what I'd do, exactly. In all honesty, there was pretty much nothing I wouldn't forgive—unless it involved Beth getting hurt because of him.

"You'll what?" he encouraged, taking another sip of wine.

"I'll stake you to the floor for a week," I finally managed. He smiled, but only briefly.

"You would have done the same for me, buddy," said Josef, suddenly very serious. We both knew he was right.

"Yeah, but I would have told you about it first."

"Okay, I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I was trying to help Beth. She was totally freaking out, believe me. And her reasoning was sound. I'd do it again; I'm not gonna say I wouldn't. But it's all out now, so let's get on with things. We've apparently got more damage control to do now. How did you find out about the pictures?"

I sighed heavily, releasing my anger. He was right; there were more important fish to fry. "It was in a file of Ben Talbot's. Along with the list." Amazingly, I'd been so focused on my own anger that I'd forgotten why we were all really here.

I shuffled past the pictures and took out the list. It was single-spaced, typed, and several pages long. I flipped through it quickly, scanning through every name. Speed reading was another perk of being a vampire. Mine and Josef's names were among the last names on the list.

But this wasn't just a list of vampires currently living in LA. This list dated back at least 2000 years. Names in history, government, sports, and religion from all over the world. Most of the historical names were pretty shocking, and I had had no idea these people had been vampires: Julius Caesar, Nero, Rasputin, the Marquis de Sade, Thomas More, Virginia Dare. One not so surprising name was the grandfather of all vampires, at least in popular lore—Vladimir Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler. Recent deaths of vampires were crossed out, like the Monaghans, and Dr. Jeff Pollack. Talbot himself had apparently crossed out the names of the three new deaths this past week.

I handed the list to Josef, who just as quickly absorbed each name. This was bad. This was really bad. Josef met my eyes, and gave the list to Beth. I watched her expression as she read: shock, incredulity, fear. We waited patiently for her to get through the list at human speed. She looked bleakly up at us after reading our names.

"This proves nothing," she said at last, tossing the list with disdain back onto the coffee table.

"True," I agreed. "But it certainly would focus some suspicion on us."

"I can understand what it means to have names crossed out, but Julius Caesar? He was assassinated 2000 years ago. Why isn't his name crossed out?"

"How was he killed, Beth?" I prompted.

"He was….stabbed."

"Stabbing doesn't kill a vampire," said Josef.

"You mean, Caesar could still be alive? And the others, like the Marquis de Sade? Virginia Dare?"

"Unless they were beheaded or burned, they're still with us—somewhere," I said.

"They just went into hiding, changed their names. Started over again and again like so many of us have had to," said Josef, who had likely lost count of the times he had done it over his 400 years of being a vampire.

"Mick, some of these people were very evil. It's scary to think they might still be around."

"Not all of us are bad, Beth," I said needlessly, rubbing the bridge of my nose in mental exhaustion.

"This list makes no sense. This couldn't possibly be all the vampires who ever lived. You told me there were hundreds now just living in LA. There are only a hundred or so on this list."

"This could be a hit list," said Josef. "All of us on it must somehow have offended or harmed whoever composed it."

Something suddenly occurred to me. I remembered the conversation I'd overheard between Talbot and the killer.

"The killer told Talbot: 'One is the key to all.'"

"Well, that could obviously mean that if Ben figures out one of you on the list is a vampire, then all of them are."

"Or," said Josef, "One of us on the list knows who the killer is and why suddenly we all have targets on our, uh, necks."

"So, tell me, Josef," I said conversationally, "can you narrow down exactly who you've pissed off the most this past 400 years?"

Josef laughed. "It would probably be easier to decide who I haven't pissed off."

"So, what do we do now?" Beth asked.

Josef and I looked at each other.

"I guess we convene the council," I said. "Beth, can you copy this for me?"

"Sure. How many will you need?"

"Just one. The fewer we have around, the better. We've got to get the original back to Talbot's office before he misses it." She went over to her desk.

Just then, my phone rang. It was the Cleaner. I answered it with much trepidation. "St. John here."

"Mick. More bad news, I'm afraid."

"You got a name?"

"No. Same M-O. I'm at Sixth and Main." Josef nodded at me, having heard every word.

"We'll be there soon," I told her, and hung up.

"Another killing?" Beth asked. "Can I come with you?"

"It's not gonna be pretty, Beth," I said.

"Mick, after all I've seen after being around you guys this long, you know I can handle it."

Josef shrugged his acquiescence.

"Fine. We can take my car."

Josef sniffed. "Mick, if you don't mind, I'll pass on the 50's mobile. I'll meet you there." We were right behind him.