Tempt the Stars

didn’t think it was a good idea to go looking for him.
    Because the train was headed back this way.
    “Run!” I screamed at Jonas, and sprang for the office door, just as the storm barreled back at us again, flinging a deadly cloud of debris ahead of it. He dove in behind me, damned spry for an old guy, as jagged shards of paneling whipped by outside like knives.
    And then he slammed the door.
    I stared at him incredulously.
“Ghosts, remember?”
    He looked a little shamefaced. “Right.”
    And then they were back.
    We hadn’t even made it into the inner office when Billy zoomed through the door, screeching something I couldn’t understand because an infuriated tornado was right on his nonexistent heels. Something tore through the outer office as we dove into the inner one, upending filing cabinets and sending a blizzard of paperwork dancing madly through the air. Jonas leapt for the hat rack, I leapt for him, and Billy grabbed me around the neck, still babbling something.
    “What?”
    “You owe me, you
so
owe me!”
    “Did you get it?”
    “Yes,
I’m fine
. Thanks for asking!”
    “Billy! Did. You. Get—”
    “Yes, damn it, yes! I got it! I got it!”
    “Thank you,” I told him fervently.
    And shifted.

Chapter Three
    “Don’t,” I told Marco, a decade and a half later, when he opened the door to the Vegas hotel suite I called home. “Just . . . don’t, okay?”
    Marco is my chief bodyguard. He’s about six foot five, maybe two hundred and fifty pounds, and built like a freight train. My legs aren’t as big around as his arms, which might feel weird except that most
men’s
aren’t, either. He’s a swarthy, hairy, foulmouthed, cigar-munching, example of machismo who is usually covered in weapons he doesn’t need because he’s also a master vampire.
    Which is why it’s annoying when he decides to play mother hen.
    Not that that appeared to be happening tonight.
    “Hadn’t planned on it,” Marco said, and yanked me inside.
    “What’s wrong with you?” I asked, because Marco was looking kind of freaked-out. That was worrying on someone who, I strongly suspected, had been assigned to lead my bodyguard because he was the oldest of Mircea’s masters. He’d seen it all and he didn’t rattle easy.
    Although he was kind of looking rattled now.
    “We got a problem,” he told me grimly.
    I shook my head, letting loose a little cloud of Tony’s lousy housekeeping. “No.”
    “What does that mean?”
    I’d have thought that was obvious since I was dragging in at two a.m., covered in soot, plaster, and sweat, with a bruised ring around my neck and an all-but-destroyed T-shirt. But apparently not. I edged around him, balancing a cup and a bag of heart-destroying pastries from the coffee shop downstairs, because it wasn’t like I was going to live long enough to have to worry about cholesterol.
    “It means I’ve had enough for one night. I’m tired; I’m going to bed. If there’s a problem, it can wait until—”
    I stopped, because I’d just noticed the living room. It would have been called sunken if it hadn’t been on the twenty-second floor of the hotel. It was a tasteful medley of white and blue and yellow, since I’d had a say in redecorating after the last disaster hit. It was also usually deserted, the guards preferring to hang out in the lounge with the pool table and the beer fridge.
    But that wasn’t true tonight. Tonight, every guard on duty was either sitting in the little conversation area, smoking out on the tiny balcony, or gathered by the bar. It was like a party.
    Or maybe a wake; the guys were looking pretty damned grim.
    “Why’s everybody out here?” I asked Marco, who had followed me down a short flight of stairs.
    “’Cause of them in there,” he said, hiking a thumb at the lounge. Which I’d just noticed was closed off, with the pocket doors shut tight. I’d never seen them that way; the guys preferred an open floor plan to better keep an eye on me.
    But it looked like they felt they could do without an eye on whoever was inside.
    “Who’s ‘them’? I don’t have any appointments tonight.” At least, I really hoped I didn’t. The kind of guest I got at two a.m. tended to be of the fanged variety, and not the fun kind. “Tell me it’s not more senators,” I said, because I really, really wasn’t up to that.
    “I wish.”
    I sighed and crossed my filthy arms. “Okay. Out with it.”
    But he didn’t come out with it. “Where’s