She had no idea what she was going to say, until it came tumbling out of her mouth. “What happened earlier with Mr. Sanchez was unspeakable.”

Del Torro’s gray-green gaze regarded her gravely. “You refer to the candidate with the sick child, yes? Unfortunately, she was much too young to become an attendant and she was never a viable recipient for a visa—it’s against the law to take blood from children or to turn them into Vampyres. Those situations are always difficult, and there is no good way to handle them.”

“But nobody did anything.”

The Vampyre inclined his head in acknowledgment. “In the past he would have been taken from the stage, yet that policy caused its own outcry. In the end, it was deemed best to allow those like Sanchez the same dignity as any other candidate, although of course we can’t ignore regulations and choose any of them, no matter how sad their story.”

“Dignity?” The word shot out of her with quite a bit more force than she had intended. “Do you think there’s any dignity in that auditioning process?”

One of his slim eyebrows lifted. Amidst his stillness, that slight gesture seemed like a shout, but when he spoke he sounded as calm and unflappable as ever. “An individual has as much dignity on that stage as she chooses to have, Ms. Graham. Take yourself, for example. You went out there and did exactly what you intended to do. Those who cared to pay attention did so. Nothing more, nothing less. Nobody promised you anything more than that.”

He was right, of course, although she did not like him for saying so. They were Vampyres, not a social service agency.

With effort she tried to rein in her careening emotions, while more truth spilled out of her mouth. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m so angry.” She tried to smile but her facial muscles felt so stiff, she gave it up almost immediately. “Believe me, I’m quite aware that this is an odd and counterproductive way to start an interview.”

“You’re frightened,” he said. “For some people, fear quite naturally turns into anger.”

His voice had gentled, and that might have been the most shocking thing that had happened all evening. Embarrassment burned in her cheeks. Nothing was going like she imagined it might. She thought about denying what he had said, but of course that would be stupid. He could hear her accelerated heartbeat and no doubt smell her fear. Sitting here fully clothed, she still felt as naked as if she had stripped just as Haley had.

“I’m curious.” Del Torro cocked his head, his all too discerning gaze dissecting her. “Why are you here tonight, when it clearly distresses you so? You do not carry the scent of illness, nor do you appear to have any interest in Vampyre kink. What do you hope to gain from an attendant-patron liaison?”

Vampyre kink.

She hadn’t expected him to be so blunt, and her cheeks burned hotter.

“I need a job. The Ball was this weekend, so I got in line along with all the other candidates.” She paused. Technically, all of that was true. She was running low on cash, and she didn’t dare access the money in her bank accounts. But if he pressed her for any more details, she was going to run into some rocky ground very quickly. She had to turn the question away from herself, perhaps back onto him. “If you don’t mind me asking, what about you? Why did you request an interview with me?”

Any other person she had ever met would have gestured or shown some flicker of response. Del Torro didn’t. He just looked into her gaze steadily. His eyes were clear, intelligent and revealed absolutely nothing.

“Your defiance intrigued me, as did your claims. What skills would you bring to a liaison—that is, assuming you would agree to one?”

Was he actually considering her for a position, or merely satisfying his curiosity? He had no tells. He was utterly impossible to read, and his restraint of manner all but unendurable. She felt completely at sea and caught on a hook, and while she twisted at the end of a line, he slowly reeled her in.

As she tried to let go of some of the tension in her aching muscles, she found herself studying him, looking for any kind of flaw. When she discovered a thin, white scar at the corner of his mouth, she stared at it. Whatever had caused the scar had to have happened before he had been turned. It should have made him seem more human, but it didn’t.

“I can speak Japanese, French and Italian,” she said. “I can also read French and Italian, along with a bit of Elvish, although I can’t speak that with any fluency yet. I like languages, so I’m working on that. And I have degrees in accounting and computer science. I have experience with managing money, and I can build a firewall like nobody’s business. My skills may not be flashy or sexy, but I’m very good at what I do.”

The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled slightly. If she hadn’t already been staring at him so intently, she would have missed the subtle expression. “I disagree. Competence is quite sexy.”

She blinked. He had brought up sex twice in the last five minutes, but the utter dispassion with which he spoke left her with no room for misunderstanding. He wasn’t flirting, simply asking questions and stating facts as he saw them.

Still, she had no idea how to respond. Before she could decide, he asked, “How are you at breaking through firewalls?”

Of everything they had discussed so far, this was the one question that didn’t surprise her. Still, she hesitated as she decided how to answer. Most people didn’t really understand firewall security, or the fact that you didn’t actually break through a wall.

In the end, she chose to keep her answer simple. “I’m good at that too.”

“How good is good?”

“Very.” She had done more than her fair share of hacking in her teenage years, and she let the certainty fill her voice. “I also don’t promise anything I can’t deliver.”

His eyelids lowered. “Are you willing to do other things, besides accounting and computing?”

Involuntarily, she flashed to an image of them naked in a bed, with him bending over her, his normally composed, self-contained expression filled with fire and white, sharp fangs descended.

Something powerful welled up inside, although she had no idea what it was. Her emotions were already in a chaotic uproar, while he still wore the same, dispassionate expression.

Was he needling her to see how she would respond, or was he trying to find out how far she would go to get the position? She felt like she stood at the edge of a cliff, and her next step would send her hurtling into air.