"Benjamin, go away!" Marek said.

"No," I said. "Tia, go away."

"No," she said. "If you get to be here, I get to be here."

"Neither of you get to be here!" Marek insisted. "I should have locked you back in your room."

"You can't lock me in there," I pointed out. "I'm getting really good at this stuff. I'll probably set you on fire or something."

"And if he gets to come, then I definitely get to," Tia reasoned. "I'm way less dangerous than he is."

"You're also in way more danger than I could ever be," I pointed out. "Stupid human."

"Oh, I'm so sorry that I'm not a bloodsucking creature of the night," she said archly. "I guess that means I can't be in your club."

"Tia, go away," I said. "We're about to confront Lord Amun, and he hates us anyway, and is probably mad at me for running off, it's not going to be a safe environment for someone like you. Go away."

"Make me," she said, drawing down her mouth and her eyebrows, actually managing to look intimidating despite her size.

I have no explanation for what I did next. It was just one of those leap-before-you-look moments, a logical extension of everything that had happened last night. I just wanted her to leave and be safe, and somehow that translated to me leaning toward her and catching the back of her neck and kissing her on the mouth.

I felt her gasp against me as I kissed her, but she didn't pull away—her arms had gone rigid at her sides, not touching me, but she didn't pull away. After a few seconds, it occurred to me what, exactly, I was doing—and I froze. And opened my eyes. And pulled very carefully away.

She looked up at me from half-lidded eyes, and slowly, slowly smiled. Like she was drugged or entranced, something slowing her reactions. And then she reacted.

The slow smile broke into a sparkling, forty-tooth grin, smiling looking me straight in the eye. "Well, I guess I'll go back to my room now," she said airily, and turned on her heel to leave.

"Jeez," Marek said. "Should have done that ten minutes ago."

"I don't think it would have worked as well if it was you," I said blithely.

"No—of course I didn't mean—oh shut up," he said, frustrated, and knocked on Lord Amun's door.

There was no answer. Also there were no guards outside the door, which was why we'd been allowed to stand here this long. I didn't hear anything inside the study, but I'd never seen Amun anywhere except the study. I was pretty sure he only existed in the study. "Maybe he's not there?" I suggested, after a few solid minutes of waiting.

"He's there," Marek said grimly. "I can smell him." He knocked again, harder. When there was still no answer, he took two steps back, looked the door up and down, and then walked forward again and put his foot through it.

Clearly this was not one of those reinforced steel kinds of doors. In fact, now that I looked at it, it seemed to be a sort of expensive mahogany, so I had to assume Amun would be pissed about Marek kicking it in. Hey, his fault he couldn't be bothered to answer the door.

"Wow," I said, impressed. "Lord Amun is going to kill us."

"No he won't," Marek assured me. "At least—not in the next few seconds." He reached carefully through the gaping hole, found the doorknob on the other side, and unlocked it with ease. Possibly he'd done this before. "Go ahead," he said, gesturing inside the room as the door swung open.

"You first," I said firmly. You could hardly ever see in Lord Amun's study. He kept it dark, like a cave. No way I walking in there all by myself, I might be ambushed by mercenaries or trip-wire explosives or something.

"You broke my door," came Lord Amun's voice as Marek walked in. He was really good at after-the-fact statements like that.

"You should have answered it," Marek replied evenly.

"I suppose it's your prerogative to antagonize me all you want," Amun mused, "but do you really think it's wise?"

As I followed behind Marek, I began to see other shapes in the dark room—people shapes, big, guard-shaped shadows and a lot of them. Well at least now we knew where the guards had been—staff meeting, maybe? Potluck? I didn't know. I wished there was a fire in the fireplace—that would have made me feel a little less worried about being killed.

"Why?" Marek said aggressively. "Why shouldn't I antagonize you? Are you going to tell me to think of Alice?"

"Something along those lines, yes," he said dryly. "Am I to take it that you no longer care about your daughter?"

"I care if you go back on our agreement," Marek pressed. The guards shifted uncomfortably, wondering if perhaps they should intervene, but they were the sort of men who didn't move till they were told. If I were an evil vampire lord, I would have guards who were a little more proactive. That was what I would do. "I care if you hurt her."

"I'm not going to hurt her," Amun said patronizingly. I was just starting to make out the bones of his face, the red flash of his eyes. My night vision was better than it used to be as a human.

"I would love to hear your definition of that," Marek said tightly.

"Oh dear, it seems the cat's out of the bag," he said dryly, flipping his cane over once in his hand, one quick eye-catching motion that brought it flat to his palms. "Marek, I'm sorry, but the situation with your daughter has changed."

"How has it changed?" he growlied.

"Your daughter," Amun said slowly, turning the cane over in his hands, "seems to have manifested some rather interesting abilities."

"Abilities," he repeated stiffly.

"Indeed. Rather a better version of her father, if my reports are not mistaken. It seems that she's capable of channeling full-fledged predictive visions. When she becomes a vampire, I cannot even imagine what she might be able to do."

"You are not turning her!" Marek snapped. "You're not. You touch her and I will never obey another order, I will never do a single thing for you again, Amun. She is all you've got on me."

"Well, now that I have her," Amun drawled. "I certainly don't need you."

It took a moment for that to really hit Marek—I could almost see it seeping in through his pores, the realization hitting his bloodstream of exactly what Amun was saying. I saw the moment that it hit him, and it wasn't difficult to tell—because a snarl ripped out of him and he leapt for Amun's throat.

I made a belated grab for him, trying to stop him from doing something stupid—I think that was why I'd come, but if it was, then I'd failed, because he got only about three feet before the guards were on him, closing in from all sides.

One on one, they were no match for Marek. I watched him dance around the first two guards who reached him, ducking neatly under their swings like he'd known where they would be. Because of course, he had known. Hard to fight a guy who knows exactly what you're going to do next.

Eventually, though, the sheer number of them got to be too much for him, got to the point where even knowing where the blows would land was not enough to stop all of them. I saw him start to disappear behind the mass of uniforms and muscles, still struggling toward Amun, who was sitting in his chair, watching without the slightest bit of concern. He wasn't going to make it.

There wasn't a fire in the grate, and there wasn't a lot of air or earth in this room, but I'd lived seventeen years without falling back on that kind of thing. I shrugged, closed my hands into fists, and waded into the middle of the fight.

---

We lost.

I guess that was kind of a foregone conclusion, but never let it be said that I'm a fair-weather friend. No, I am at least as stupid enough as the person who's just gotten themselves into a scrape, and I'm always willing to jump on a sinking ship. My excuse after was always that I didn't know for sure that it was going to sink. There was always a chance! And there were lifeboats, and things.

I didn't know what had happened to Marek. I had to hope he was still alive, if only because it was really, really hard to kill a vampire, and I hadn't heard any limb-rending going on. I would have heard that kind of thing, right? So he was probably alive. Most likely, he had just been bundled off to a cell the way that I had been, defeated and immobilized and then locked behind a reinforced steel door.

I don't know if they were trying to kill me, or what, because they locked me back in with Tia.

Walking around in Cairo with Tia was one thing, but being boxed up in a tiny cell with Tia? That was something else entirely. How was I supposed to explain all the weirdness from the last twenty-four hours? What would she expect?

It turned out that it wasn't as complicated as all that.

"Listen, Tia," I said uncomfortably, looking over at her, sitting on the bed. She always seemed to be sitting on the bed, but I guess there wasn't a lot of other options. It was a small room. "I want to apologize for everything that's been going on today. I really don't know what came over me, must have been some kind of weird hormonal imbalance, or—"

"Shut up," she said impatiently. "Come here and kiss me."

I felt a grin break over my face. "Finally!" I said, throwing my hands up. "Something I want to do!"