A long silence on the line told him the pointed barb had met its mark.

“Don’t forget who controls your funding, Lucien.”

He leaned forward and glared at the phone as if Katya could see him. “And don’t forget whom I answer to. Do you need a reminder? It’s not you.”

Katya wasn’t a bad sort, but to Lucien, the Russian vampire was an infant. He was here as a favor, and it might be a good idea to remind her of that.

“Would you like me to leave?” he asked. “Would you like to appoint this Dr. Abel to head the project? I’ve devoted three years to this study. I’ve developed a test that detects the virus in humans with near perfect accuracy.”

“And you’re already sharing in the profits from that test.”

“Don’t insult me,” he snapped. “I don’t need your money.” He had caches of gold that were older than her mother tongue. “I have logged countless hours of research and treated patients with no hope of survival. I did this as a favor to Vecchio and because I believe in this project. Do you think your human doctor has that kind of dedication?”

Of course she didn’t. No human did. He couldn’t blame them. Their lives were too short for prolonged devotion. Lucien knew that from personal experience.

“You have one living test subject left,” Katya said. “One. And her time is limited. I’m sending Dr. Abel down while the subject is still alive, and I expect you to treat her with respect.”

Lucien grimaced. It was Katya’s lab. She’d do as she wanted. If this human wanted to look over his shoulder, he couldn’t stop her, but he wasn’t going to hold her hand either. She probably didn’t even read Latin.

“Do what you want,” he said. A knock came at his door, and Lucien rose. He recognized Baojia’s step on the concrete. He flung open the door and motioned the other vampire in, taking the small boy who raised his arms out for Lucien. “Katya, I need to meet with Baojia unless you have something you need to discuss with him.”

“We have a call scheduled for later,” Katya said. “You do not need to be present for our conversation.”

It was hard to miss the frost in her tone. Baojia’s eyebrows rose in question, but Lucien shook his head.

“Send Dr. Abel’s file to me,” he said. “I want to look over her previous work and get a sense of how her mind works.”

“I’ll forward it to your human. Respect, Lucien. She’s not a lackey.”

“Fine.” He leaned over and hit the End Call button with a pencil, bouncing the wriggling little boy in his arms.

“Lucy!” Jake said. “Daddy said I can play with my blocks. Can I?”

“Of course you may.” Lucien set the little boy down in front of the bookcases and let him pull out the set of intricately carved wooden blocks Lucien had made for him when Jake was a baby. They sat stacked neatly next to a pile of books the boy played with anytime his father and Lucien needed to meet.

The child was the son of Baojia and Natalie, but he looked remarkably like his father. Lucien had studied the possibility of vampire and human conception extensively at one point in his life and knew it was an impossibility, so he suspected a donor from Baojia’s remaining human family in San Francisco, but he had never asked. It was none of his business. Natalie had given birth to their second child the previous year, and the little girl was the image of her brother.

“What did you do to piss off my boss?” Baojia asked, settling into a chair and angling it so he could keep an eye on the door and his child at the same time. “And who is Dr. Abel? Is that what our conference call is likely to be about?”

“Probably.” Lucien wiped a hand over his face. “She’s a hematologist from Seattle working at one of Katya’s other labs. Successfully, it sounds like. Your boss is sending her down here next week.”

Baojia frowned. “And you object to that?”

“I don’t know her.”

“She might be able to help.”

“Or I might spend ages just getting her up to speed on the project, wasting time I could spend making actual progress, and she might not be able to understand my research direction at all. Or she’d have her own, which, frankly, would be a distraction.”

Baojia thought for a moment. “Why now? The trials for the testing kits have been a success. Katya’s making money hand over fist right now shipping them.”

“Time,” Lucien said. “Limited access to human test subjects. She’s sending Dr. Abel down here while we still have Carmen.”

Baojia’s expression went blank. “How long?”

“I don’t know.” Lucien’s voice softened. “A month. Maybe two or three. I doubt it will be longer than that.”

Jake banged his blocks together with a satisfying crash as Baojia stared at the wall.

Lucien knew the loss of their last patient would be gutting to the former assassin even if the reserved immortal would never show it. He was, at his core, a protector. And he took the responsibility to guard the women he’d rescued from traffickers seriously. Losing them one by one over the past three years had been quietly devastating, though there was nothing Baojia could have done differently to prolong their lives.

Nothing either of them could have done.

The women had come to them with a death sentence already imposed. Carmen, the last and strongest of the women, had lasted six months longer than Lucien had predicted. Curing a virus like Elixir could take years of research, even with supernatural abilities.