Bruiser didn’t argue; he stood and led the way. The rooms for the were-guests were on the second floor, each with an exterior wall and windows: walls two feet thick, built of reinforced poured concrete, bulletproof glass in the windows. Inner walls were soundproofed. The intercom in each room rang directly to security, the kitchen, or housekeeping. New, secure phone lines were being installed, allowing the envoys to make unmonitored calls, as the walls’ iron rebar reinforcing made sat phones and cell phones unreliable. Both rooms would be swept for electronic monitoring before the guests’ arrival and daily thereafter.

The rooms were really two small suites, one decorated in brown, the other in green. Each suite had a sitting room with love seats, the ubiquitous fireplace, a small table and two chairs, a minuscule desk, and a minirefrigerator filled with drinks of every conceivable kind. The bedrooms were small, the space mostly taken up by queen-sized beds and one upholstered chair. The baths were elegant but not spacious, the closets comfortable but not walk-ins.

There was a sprinkler system in case of fire. An alarm rang if emergency doors were opened, and security cameras monitored them constantly. Static security cameras were set at the ends of all hallways. “Secure Internet for their computers?” I asked.

“Password protected and capable of encryption, if they wish,” Bruiser said. “We have a dedicated antenna dish on the roof, installed yesterday. We’ve tested the alarm system and the intercoms. There are two small rooms across the hall for their bodyguards.” He nodded to the rooms across the way.

“When is the last time the sprinkler system was tested?”

Bruiser’s face ran through a series of muted expressions as he looked up at the ceiling.

“Never, then,” I said. “Get the company who installed it in here to check it out. Make sure the workers are accompanied at all times. Also, electronic monitoring equipment was a lot easier to detect back in the old days. If you have someone who wants to see what’s happening in vamp HQ today, they’d use fiber optics, installing a system separate from any audio or electronic information monitoring. Systems could have been installed at any time, with any upgrade, or even yesterday when your dedicated dish was installed.”

“They might install multiple separate systems?” When I nodded, Bruiser asked, “And how would they go about that?”

I said, “It’s easy to install and hard to locate fiber optics. You just thread the cable conduit through a vent or alongside an existing cable. The conduits can be run quite a distance as long as there aren’t many bends. If there are too many bends, then surveillance would require junction boxes. The boxes themselves are problematic and much easier to detect than the actual cable, and would likely have to be installed during original construction or remodeling, like when this place was wired for cable or when satellite TV was installed.”

Bruiser looked at the flat screen television on the wall of the bedroom. “We had cable until yesterday.”

“And no one pulled the old cable out of the walls, because it’s too much trouble,” I said, making it a statement. Bruiser gave me a nod that said I was correct so I continued. “They just left it in place. Having cables in place for other things makes it difficult to discern what cable is good cable and what cable is spyware. However, fiber optics don’t provide audio monitoring, which is usually a lot more effective in terms of info gathering, but if someone managed to get fiber optics installed, then they probably got audio somewhere too.”

Bruiser was looking at me in unhappy surprise.

“What? It’s what I do, besides hunting and killing rogue vamps. Licensed security expert and PI, remember?”

“I do. And yet, knowing that, I have apparently been underusing your talents and skills. Something I intend to remedy immediately.”

There was a double entendre in there but I decided to pretend I hadn’t heard it. “Lucky me. But since I’m earning my retainer, walk me through the hallways to the ballroom and the conference rooms and anywhere else your guests might be. I’ll talk about the pros and cons of micro-sized audio transmission devices, long distance mikes, heat sensing, and Internet info capture.” Bruiser had thought his security measures adequate. I was sure he cursed under his breath, but I pretended not to notice.

Another hour later, I knew twenty times more about the council building than before. I’d seen the ballroom—holy fancy pants, Batman—and gone over the logistics for the press.

Most people thought that blood-servants were smarter and knew more than an average human, due to their increased lifespans and brains kept healthy with vamp blood feedings. But living longer meant more to keep up with, more to learn, all on an adult’s brain power—the learning centers already hardened into slow-changing patterns. Most blood-servants were behind the times, no matter how hard they tried to keep up. In terms of security measures, Bruiser was stuck somewhere in the last decade of the twentieth century and the business was changing fast.“One final thing,” I said. “The fixed security cameras installed throughout the building are fine, as long as you map out blind spots and cover them too. If I wanted to disrupt this meeting for political reasons, or kill a were for religious or mental instability reasons, or just make trouble, I’d get the building specs and security specs from whomever installed the system, memorize them, and come in with the guests or the caterers at the party, mill around, and then put an incendiary device in or near the guests’ rooms and set it to go off when a door is opened, or a toilet is sat on or something. You got holes in the system, and if I wanted in, I’d get in.”

“You are a dangerous woman, Jane Yellowrock,” he said, his tone guarded and reserved. “Thank you for the advice and your time.”

“Thanks for the paycheck. See you at the big bash.” Spotting Wrassler, I waved down my escort and headed for the stairs.

“Wear the dress with the yellow jeweled collar, and whatever armaments you deem appropriate.” I looked over my shoulder and Bruiser’s eyes fell from my face to my boots and back up, lingering on my butt in the leathers. Okay. That was different. Warmth spun through me and my toes curled. Beast, who had been unusually silent all day, perked up finally. She liked Bruiser. She liked him a lot. His voice dropped to a low vibration that made my blood heat. “I promise I’ll let you keep your toys this time.”

“You paid for the dresses. I guess you get to dress me.” Which was not at all how I meant to say that. I opened my mouth to correct it but everything that came to mind only made things worse. I snapped my mouth closed. Bruiser laughed in that securely masculine way that made a girl’s heart race. Wrassler was looking back and forth between us in speculation. I turned tail and headed for the stairs before I said anything more stupid.

From behind me I heard Bruiser say, “I’ll be swinging by to pick you up in the limo. Nine o’clock.” The last time we had been in Leo’s limo we had ended up on the floor in a mad make-out session that had stopped way too late. And way too soon. I lifted my fingers to show I’d heard but I didn’t look back. No way. I was a one-man woman, and Rick was that man. Most of the time. When he was available. I remembered the cheek peck and the cavalier adios from earlier with a curious dissatisfaction.

By the time I got home, the itchy feeling left from being near Bruiser had blown off in the warm breeze created by riding Bitsa. In deference to my houseguest, I turned the bike off and walked her the last few feet to the side gate of the house. The house, not my house. It was, by definition and contract, temporary housing. I unlocked the gate, carefully locking it behind me to keep out potential robbers, rapists, or gangbangers looking to make street cred. The paperwork and cleanup after killing a human intruder would be a pain in the butt.

No gates could keep out the really dangerous things; for that I had Molly’s, and now Evangelina’s, wards. With Beast-vision, the magical shield looked brilliant, electric blue in the night, and it buzzed over me, slightly uncomfortable, as it let me through. And this time it sent a static tingle through my fingers that hurt. I mimed a silent owwww and shook my hands. I’d have to ask Evangelina to back off on the power levels. I parked Bitsa against the house on the side porch and went inside. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, I heard Evangelina’s steady breathing, and Beast stirred deep inside me.Hunt?

“Yeah,” I breathed. Moments later I was standing in the backyard, naked except for the gold nugget necklace that tied me to the mountains I had left only hours before. The gold wasn’t skinwalker magic. It was something darker that my skinwalker forebears would have considered black magic. In an arcane way, the nugget coupled me to Beast, a symbol of the event that had originally bound us together. In ways I didn’t understand completely, the gold made my shifts into mountain lion faster, easier, and helped me find my way back home when in beast form, even if it was a temporary home. Without the nugget, I’d be back to shifting only when I had lots of time to meditate my way into the change, or force it, painfully.

I dropped five pounds of steak, slightly heated in the microwave, onto the grass, fastened a small travel pack around my neck, containing clothes, the throwaway cell phone, my IDs, and money. I sat on a boulder that was still more or less in one piece, wrapped a fetish necklace made of the bones and teeth of a mountain lion around my fist, and curled my legs into a half-lotus position on the boulder. I could shift into Beast without the necklace if I had to, but this was easier. Tonight I was doing everything the easy way.

I relaxed, listening to the wind. Felt the pull of the slender sickle moon overhead. I listened to the beat of my own heart. Beast rose in me, silent, predatory, claws digging into my consciousness. I slowed the functions of my body, my breathing, my heart rate, let my blood pressure drop, my muscles relax, as if I were going to sleep, the ritual motions and meditation of the shift bestowing their own power to the change.

Mind clearing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the excitement of a hunt. I dropped lower, deeper, into the darkness where the lost memories of my first human life swirled, broken and jagged in a gray world of shadow, blood, uncertainty. I heard a distant drum, smelled herbed wood smoke, and the damp heat of the night beaded on my skin. As I dropped deeper, memories began to firm, memories that, at all other times, were submerged, both mine and Beast’s, memories that had been brought closer to the surface by time in a sweat lodge with a Cherokee elder and shaman, Aggie One Feather. Guilt struggled with the relaxation of the change. I hadn’t been to Aggie’s in a long while. Beast dug in with her claws, forcing me back.