He contemplated the toe of one shoe. “A blue one.”

“A cheap, blue one,” said Raoul, as he scribbled it on a Post-it note. “Along with cheap high heels.”

He heaved a sigh. “Raoul, don’t do that to her feet. You do want her to be able to run in the mornings, don’t you?”

“Fine.” Raoul crossed out the Post-it note with strong, dark lines and wrote another one. “Good high heels. Are you satisfied now?”

He smiled. “I am, thank you. Have you scheduled meetings for me this evening?”

“Yes, the first one, Marc, will be in to see you at midnight, if that’s okay? I’ve scheduled one meeting per hour, for each of the five men.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“Do you know where you’ll send Marc? I think he would do well with a challenge.”

“I thought he could keep an eye on either Justine or Darius,” he said. Unlike Tess, one huge advantage of all five men was that they had been recruited in secrecy. That widened his choices considerably in choosing how to use their services. “Let me know who you would recommend to send to the other. I want an extra pair of eyes on both of them right now.”

“That assignment might be too weighty for Scott,” said Raoul, tapping his pen against his lips as he thought. “I’d like to see him get an assignment that builds on his confidence. Right now, I’d have to pick Brian.”

“Good enough.”

He left Raoul’s office and the gym, and strolled back to the main house. The night was sparkling clear, with thousands of stars sprayed along the wide, dark expanse of sky like crystals sewn on velvet.

Tess would look good in a dress made of black velvet too.

He glanced at the attendants’ house. Her room was in darkness. Detouring from the path to the main house, he walked over to the attendants’ house, listening carefully to filter out all of the sounds made by the others.

She was in her room, and her breathing had turned deep and even. He imagined how she looked. Did she wear a nightshirt, or did she sleep nude? When he had entered her bedroom before, she had worn a dark red shirt that had come to the tops of her thighs.

The bedcovers would drape around her slender form in a gentle canopy. Her hair would spill onto the pillow like black silk, and the lines of her angular face would be relaxed and peaceful.

He would like to see her look peaceful. Unguarded.

But it was none of his business how she looked when she was alone, asleep in bed. Despite all his clever arguments, Raoul had the right of it. He was in danger of growing too attached.

Turning, he made his way back to his own silent house.

ELEVEN

Late the next morning, after everyone else had started work and Tess relished the quiet of an empty house, she made a pot of coffee and sat down to read through several newspapers.

Even though print newspapers were dead, apparently Xavier’s household hadn’t gotten the memo. Daily, twenty or more newspapers from all over the world were delivered to the estate, including all major human news outlets and several Elder Races newsletters and papers that she had never heard of before she had come to work for Xavier.

One of her duties was to keep abreast of current events, but she didn’t mind doing it. She wanted to read all the news she could get her hands on, and the papers saved her the trouble of trying to figure out how to glean information from the Internet without leaving any kind of discernible trail.

Ten minutes later, she rested her elbows on the dining table, propped her forehead in her hands and stared in horror down at the Boston Herald spread out before her.

U.S. SENATOR’S SON DIES

Eathan Jackson, twenty-one-year-old son of Massachusetts senator Paul Jackson (R.), died off the coast of Florida Saturday afternoon in what officials are calling a “freak boating accident.” A senior undergraduate at Harvard, the younger Jackson was taking a long weekend break with his girlfriend and two other friends. The four had gone sailing on an otherwise cloudless day, when a sudden squall capsized their boat.

Jackson’s girlfriend and friends were able to employ an inflatable emergency dinghy until help arrived, while Jackson disappeared from sight. His body was discovered several hours later. . . .

Pain filled Tess’s chest like a gigantic bruise. As tears pricked the back of her eyes, she rubbed her face and thought, Freak squall, my ass.

Eathan had been a spoiled, ungrateful boy who had carried around a sense of entitlement wherever he went, but he hadn’t deserved to be killed for it. She had always hoped there was something finer in him that would emerge as he matured.

Now he wouldn’t have the chance. He was dead, and she knew in her bones that Malphas had killed him.

It had been an entirely unnecessary murder. While the senior Jackson was a politician of some repute and sat on several Senate committees, Eathan hadn’t known any state secrets or carried any kind of deadly, magical Power.

He wasn’t a player, in any sense of the word. He hadn’t even finished college.

Killing him had been an act of pure, deadly spite.

All the tentative hopes and dreams she had begun to nurture about building a new life vanished like so many illusions. Malphas hadn’t forgotten or let go of anything. He simply hadn’t gotten around to finding her. Yet.

But he would, and when he did, he would be so much more spiteful toward her than he had been toward Eathan. Eathan had just been a mark that got away. She had actually worked for Malphas, and she had owed him a certain amount of loyalty.

It wouldn’t matter that she had never promised to stand idly by and watch while he trapped people into making crippling gambling debts just so that he could enslave them. She had taken away something he wanted, and he was never going to let that go.

Wiping her eyes, she noticed the time. She was late for her session with Raoul. She tried to care, but after so many weeks of trying so hard, she felt as if something had broken inside.

Still, if she didn’t show up, he would come looking for her. Forcing herself to move, she pushed upright and cleaned the table, bound her overlong hair back with a rubber band and got to work.

When she entered the gym, Raoul was waiting for her. He said, “You’re late.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

She tried to inject something that sounded like genuine emotion into her voice but knew she had failed from the look on his face.