I had the presence of mind to drag that heifer Amanda down to the floor with me, so meat didn't start flying immediately after the glass and espresso machine behind me exploded. Dead coworker equals bad.

Wipe that smile off your face. I'm no morning person, remember? If we lost another opener, I'd be stuck in the seventh circle of coffee hell, serving soccer moms and CEOs until I went on a homicidal skull-bashing spree. Never underestimate my ability to be courageously, hardheadedly selfish under fire.

The drive-thru portion of the store was a square-shaped area that connected in an L to the rest of the employee work space behind the bar, and the rest of the baristas had the sense to stay on the other portion of this, protected by a layer of wall and counter from the blasts. I could hear people screaming, someone on their cell phone dialing 911 frantically. The rage had left everyone in the store as though a switch had been flicked off, but it dawned on me that the thymophages could have drawn it up already—not all of it, but that static, the emotional discharge that emits off people. Maybe from so many of them it was a decent meal, but I had the sense this wasn't what they'd been after.

The gunshots stopped. Amanda was blubbering a few inches from me, her makeup smeared and her face pressed into the filthy mats that elevated our feet above sticky coffee spills, creating a honeycomb impression in her pasty cheek. I almost stood, until I saw the egg-sized rock which had skittered into the drive-thru area under one of the counters. A piece of inoffensive paper had been taped around it, and it bore my name.

Shit.

White Court vampires had found and targeted me, and judging by the style of message delivery, it wasn't so we could get together over tea for tales of sexual daring-do. Thymophages are more than distasteful; they're dangerous. As with phobophages—I have cousins in this particular class of vampire—the taking of rage into your being can make you sick. You are what you eat. If what you consume is meant to destroy, then eventually it's gonna eat away at your insides, like chugging acid.

I heard wheels skid away on the other side of the wall. Glass fell out of my hair as I shifted, and before Amanda could get her wits together I grabbed the rock and pocketed it. Sirens sounded not far in the distance, and cars from the drive-thru went out to the parking lot or stayed where they were, and people came out and looked in the window, checking to see if we were sitting there like gutted fish, flittering about, calling the police, coming in to see if they could help. Others just… wandered away, in denial, in shock, not wanting to deal with it. All the rage of a moment ago, the honking horns and shouted insults, seemed forgotten.

Good grief. If all it takes to make people work together is spray machine guns at them, humans are doing just dandy as a species.

Once they were reasonably sure no one else was going to gun them down, coworkers came around the wall towards us. One girl, barely eighteen, was crying. And God help me (actually, preferably not), my demon has awful timing about this stuff.

You could make her feel better. Girls are always so vulnerable after these ordeals. She could use someone to be close to.

I flinched, this time with no answer to it. I was startled, scared for myself and for whom I lived with after the encounter, and other employees were crushing around Amanda and myself. I could feel their hands brushing my skin, then trying to haul me up—always contact, pawing at me, my flesh hitting theirs, and my defenses falling… I could hear my own voice in my head, transforming into that of the Hunger's, morphing all my thoughts into that tunnel-vision of need, infecting my rational brain.

They are most certainly up to something. It could be blackmail. They might know of Justine, or that you live with your brother. You will need all the strength you can get. And it will make her feel so much better. She'll give to you freely. See how frightened she is? You would be doing her a favor.

Damned if the thing didn't make persuasive arguments. It knew me like a favorite children's book, backwards and forwards.

Shut the hell up. I need to concentrate.

I needed, to be more precise, to get the hell away from all these touching people. My control was slipping dangerously, and already a few of the men were giving me strange looks, while the women started getting that dazed look that commonly precedes them taking their tops off. Bethany had great tits. Her inhibitions were starting to look awfully low.

I heard the sirens grow louder, and the rock pronounced itself as a leaden weight against my leg. I needed to get out of here before the police showed up, get to the office, and confer with Harry. I'd taken the Blue Beetle that morning (the damn thing is not blue—it's practically a rolling gay pride flag. Sometimes I wonder about my little brother), and he'd probably bummed a ride or taken a cab or the bus to his office. It was one of those poor months and I'd bet on him taking the bus, which is sorta cute. I should've asked him if he had his milk money. I was supposed to pick him up later on in the day after running the errands and we'd take care of dinner together, so it was a simple matter to get to him, provided he wasn't out investigating. Problem with that little plan was that my jacket and keys were in the lockers, fully on the other side of the store.

"Tom?" One of the male baristas was shaking me slightly. "You alright? Tom?"

Only people who have sex with me typically call me by shortened names, but Starbucks baristas had called me everything from Tommy to T-dawg. I flinched again, and smiled with feigned shakiness.

"Yeah… I just feel… sorta sick. I should… yeah."

He was nodding emphatically. "Need some water?"

I smiled again, more winning this time. "Thanks, man. I just need to go sit down."

With that I was off to the back like a shot, passing the manager, who was checking on customers in the store. I grabbed my keys, my jacket, left the apron and my other pair of shoes behind, took the manager's key from on her desk, and disarmed the emergency door in back. Before I left I wiped them down again with my apron, feeling paranoid, tossed them from the apron to her desk, threw the apron in the linen pile, and opened the press-bar door with my hips. It closed quietly and unobtrusively behind me. From there, avoiding the front windows and doors, I dodged over to the beetle at a sprint. I pulled out onto the road about five seconds before the police entered from the other end of the parking lot, and put-putted down the street, away from the scene. So far, so good.

When I parked at the office building, I sat in the car for a moment, regaining a modicum of control so that this didn't become a battle with Harry where I started telling him to keep his head down and not be an idiot. It occurred to me that this might not concern him at all, and that I could, rather deviously, keep him in the dark if that was the case. But that wasn't fair to him. He always made me aware of danger with us living in the same place, and if I didn't tell him I'd been targeted, I could put him in more danger than the alternative. Moreover, we could both be targeted, and the sooner we were on the same page, the better. That in mind, it was time to examine the note; I pulled the rock from my pocket, unwrapping the taped note.

It was a small envelope made from printer paper, a terse memo and two cheap Walgreens photograph prints. The first one showed Harry entering his apartment. The date stamp in the corner was a week earlier, 2:04 PM. The second was me entering the same apartment, alone, keys in hand, at 4:56 PM on the same day. I swallowed a ball of dread and fury that had begun to well in the back of my throat; it landed in my stomach with a thud, and sat there, a cold, slimy weight, the knowledge that I had placed my brother in danger. I was pathetic and he would never toss me out or turn his back on me, and these thymophages, scum even for White Court, could harm him because of me. Ignoring a faint red haze and a chuckling Hunger in the back of my head, I went on to read the note.

Thomas Raith, scion of House Raith—

The White Court and the Council of wizards would be interested to discover what we have. But there is no need for things to turn ugly. Your roommate or erotic energy source is powerful and a great spring of rage, a food supply we have been unable to resist. Help your White Court brethren acquire him and no harm will fall on you. We have already opened him to our feeding by the time you are reading this note.

You will contact us at an address we will furnish to you via the telephone at your home. Be near the connection at 6 PM sharp. You will come to the address with your lover or alone. You are being watched. Do not contact anyone, including those in the House of Raith, for assistance. Any movements we deem suspect will result in an anonymous tip to a warden of the Council to remove you.

We hope to conduct fortuitous business with you.

Sincerely,

The House Alecto

I blinked at the note for a minute. Something was niggling at me, though as I staved off the Hunger it eluded me. Were these Looney Tunes for real? They'd give up favor with House Raith by uncovering what could be termed a rogue scion, power in the White Court through the public death of Harry Dresden, just so they could eat him? Then again, they thought I was eating him too. I was sure they couldn't deem what business a the son of the most powerful White Courter family head would have living with the wizard Dresden if it wasn't to snack on him. They thought we were lovers, and that I'd part with a food source and let my fellow White Courters have a taste of Dresden a la mode in exchange for silence. A simple manipulation of our more political, subtle kind, and a transaction I would be reasonably expected to comply with, if vampires and wizards weren't so fiercely at war with one another. These thymophages were passing up a much larger political opportunity by focusing solely on their Hunger.

I can understand motivators like power, sex, and money. I can also understand family, love, loyalty, friendship, obligations. And in a deep fashion, I do understand the Hunger, intimately. But I can't think of a time when I would go to such lengths to have a particular vessel if anyone would do, if anyone could feel lust. But then again, I'd cared deeply for Justine, and what she'd fed me had been more pure and deep than any other source. Harry could be their equivalent on the scale of rage—someone who hated people like them, who was a great source of wrath for the White Court, who had a wellspring of power that he drew from in moments of anger. What sex was for Justine and I could be what feeding off Harry might be for these psychos.

But something didn't track. I went back over the note, and that's when the thing that had niggled me about it hit me, in a horrible rush.

We have already opened him to our feeding by the time you are reading this note.

Holy. Mother. Fucking. Crap.

They'd already gotten to my brother.