Despite their roughly ten-year age difference, Phillip was crazy about Eva Grayson, Owen’s younger sister, although he was waiting for her to finish college and grow up a bit before pursuing a real relationship with her.

“Anything would have been better—warmer—than this.” He popped up the collar of his trench coat so that it would cover more of his neck, then slouched down even farther in his seat.

“Aw, poor baby. Stuck out here in the cold and dark with me tonight.” I clucked my tongue in mock sympathy. “And to think that I was just about to offer you some hot chocolate.”

His blue eyes narrowed with interest. “You have hot chocolate? Homemade hot chocolate?”

I reached down and pulled a large metal thermos out of the black duffel bag sitting between our seats on the van floor. “Of course I do. You can’t have a stakeout on a cold winter’s night without it.”

I grabbed two plastic cups out of the bag and handed them over to Phillip, who held them steady while I poured. The rich, heady aroma of the decadent drink filled the van, cutting through the icy chill that had crept inside the vehicle. I breathed in the fumes as I capped the thermos and put it away. Phillip passed over my cup, and I drew in a couple more deep, steamy breaths before taking a sip. The dark brew coated my tongue with its bittersweet flavor, softened by the vanilla extract and raspberry puree that I’d added to the mixture.

Phillip cradled his cup like a bum huddled over a trash-can fire. He took a long slurp and sighed again, this time with happiness. “Now that’s more like it.”

We both settled back in our seats, watching the mansion and sipping our hot chocolate.

The folks who’d been hosting the dinner party must have decided to go to bed, since the recorded carols abruptly cut off, and the holiday lights winked out one door, window, and plastic snowman at a time, further blackening the landscape. The icy drizzle picked up as well, turning into more of a steady rain, each drop tinking against the van windshield. It truly was a night fit for neither man nor beast, but these were my favorite kinds of environments as an assassin. The cold, the rain, and the darkness always made it that much easier to get close to your target and then get away after you’d put him down. If I’d wanted someone dead, I would have waited for a night just like this one to strike.

And I was willing to bet that someone might have the same idea about the man in the mansion.

Phillip tipped his cup at the shadow still pacing back and forth behind the patio doors. “You really think that he knows something about the Circle?”

I shrugged. “He’s the best lead I have right now—and the only person still alive who might know anything about them.”

Two weeks ago, I’d been kidnapped and held hostage by Hugh Tucker, a vampire who claimed that he was part of a secret group that supposedly pulled the strings on the underworld and everything else in Ashland. That had certainly come as news to me, since I was supposedly the head of the underworld these days. But Tucker had claimed that the Circle was an organization of criminals so high-and-mighty that no one could touch them, especially not a lowly assassin like me. The vamp had also said that the Circle monitored everything from behind the scenes—and that they could kill me and my friends anytime they wanted to.

But the most shocking thing he’d revealed was that my mother, Eira Snow, had supposedly been one of them.

My mother had been murdered when I was thirteen, a deep loss that I still felt to this day. But I’d viewed her like any other kid. She was my mom—nothing more, nothing less. I’d never really thought about who she was, much less what kind of person. The good things she did, the bad ones, how she felt about all of them. I didn’t know any of that. But Tucker had turned my world upside down with his accusations, and I wanted to know if they were true: I had to know if my mother had been the good person I’d always assumed she was, or just as rotten, heartless, and depraved as the rest of this shadowy Circle.

“You know, we could just go knock on his door and ask him about all this,” Phillip said.

I snorted. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. Nothing I could trust anyway. He hates me too much for that.”

Phillip shifted in his seat again. “Well, at least we could get this over with and go home. That would certainly keep my balls from turning into ice cubes—”

A pair of headlights popped up in the van’s rearview mirror. I gestured at Phillip, and we both slouched back down in our seats.

A black SUV cruised down the street, passing our van. The vehicle stopped at the end of the block and made a right, disappearing from sight. Phillip started to sit back up, but I held out my hand, stopping him.

“Wait,” I said. “Let’s see if they come back.”

He rolled his eyes, but he stayed still. “Why would they come back? It’s probably just somebody who lives in the neighborhood—”

Headlights popped up in the van’s rearview mirror again, and that same SUV cruised by our position. This time the vehicle turned left at the end of the block.

“Maybe they’re lost,” he said. “All these cookie-cutter Northtown streets and mansions look alike, especially in the dark.”

I shook my head. “They’re not lost. They’re seeing how quiet and deserted the area is for whatever they have in mind. They’ll be back. You’ll see.”

We sat in the van, watching our mirrors. Sure enough, a minute later, that same SUV cruised by us again. Only this time, the vehicle didn’t have its headlights on, or even its parking lights. It whipped a U-turn in the middle of the street, pulled over to the curb, and stopped—right in front of the mansion we were watching.

“Hello,” I murmured. “What do we have here?”

The doors opened, and two people got out of the front of the SUV, both wearing long black trench coats akin to Phillip’s. They were giants, each one roughly seven feet tall with thick shoulders and broad chests; most likely they were the muscle and bodyguards for whoever was in the back of the vehicle.