Better than . . . ? Vexing female! “Perhaps I’ll tell you more—when you start talking about yourself. For instance, do you have a mate or family?”

A hint of sadness flashed over her face. “Neither. I’m all by my lonesome.”

A lone vampire without even a coven? Maybe that was how Nïx had recruited her. Two could play at that game. If Rune turned Josephine to their side, he could bring Orion a powerful female vampire, an asset.

“Do you have a Mrs. Rune you routinely cheat on?” she asked.

He gave her a thin smile. “I’m all by my lonesome.”

“No little Runes running around? Would that take another dark fey?”

There was no possibility of his siring offspring. He hedged. “My kind is very rare in the Elserealms. In Gaia, it’s more accepted for different species to breed. Even fey and demons.”

“Have you been with a dark fey?”

“I haven’t.” But he’d once gotten so close. His first brothel master, a sadistic pig, had bought two rare females, promising one to Rune if he satisfied a particularly perverse client over an entire season. The things I did . . .

Rune had been moments from kissing the dark fey female—before he’d been yanked away, his bargain ignored. How the master had laughed.

The prick had sold off the pair. When freed, Rune had searched for them in vain.

Yet as much as he’d burned for that kiss, he craved Josephine’s more. The thought made him uncomfortable, so he said, “I have a lead on a dark fey female in your very city.”

The vampire seemed to mull this information. “So you’ve never been able to do whatever you want in bed?”

“Correct.” He longed to twine his tongue with another’s as they traded moans of pleasure. He hungered to go down on a female for the first time, to taste her warm honey, straight from the source. He swallowed. He could with this one. “But you learn not to miss what you can’t have.” A lie.

She gave a bitter laugh. “Bullshit.”

“You sound like you speak from experience. What do you miss that you can’t have?”

She studied the sash on her robe. A dead end.

For now. “Tell me about Nïx.”

Josephine raised her face. “Why are you hunting her?”

“I’m an assassin by trade.” He’d been a killer for longer than he’d been a whore. “She’s my target because she seeks to bring down me and my allies.” She’d bring down the entire Gaia realm and all its connected planes if she continued unchecked.

“Who are your allies?”

“Brothers. Not by blood, but by choice. We’ve banded together for most of my life.”

“But they’re not dark fey?”

“They’re immortals of all different species.” Though they had little in common on the surface, each Møriør sought something in Gaia.

When asked what he desired, Blace had cryptically told Rune, “I want my blood.” Typical for a vampire, he supposed.

Allixta intended to find and punish the rebellious witches who’d settled there.

Sian refused to specify, would only say, “In Gaia lies my future.”

Before she’d been recruited into the Møriør, Allixta had cursed Sian with a spell that caused unbearable agony. Delirious, the demon had muttered about a treacherous fey girl with one amber eye and one violet.

Maybe Sian yearned for vengeance. He was the only being Rune had ever met who despised the fey as much as he did.

And Orion? Their liege intended to stop an apocalypse. . . .

“Enough about me, Josephine. I don’t even know where you hail from.”

“Earth,” she said. “Texas initially.”

That explained her drawl. “You’re not afraid of the vampire plague in the mortal realm?” She was probably immune; she’d withstood his poison easily enough.

Yet she looked as if she’d never heard of the sickness that had wiped out females of her kind. “Very little frightens me.” She rubbed that necklace.

“Those are bullets.”

She dropped her hand. “So?”

Did she keep them because she’d been shot? Rune’s fangs sharpened, the demon in him rousing protectively. His fey half was quick to point out that Rune himself had contemplated beheading her—and still hadn’t decided Josephine’s future. “Who shot you?”

“It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”

“Those are modern bullets. How long ago could it be?”

She jutted her chin. “It’s past.”

“I wonder if your friend Nïx grew angered when someone fired a gun at you. Perhaps an oracle like her could have warned you what would happen? Or was she busy granting wishes to others?”

Josephine merely stared at him.

“Tell me how you met Nïx.” Nothing. “Did your parents die in the last Accession? What was your family name?”

Silence.

“You won’t answer any of my questions?” He sighed and rose. “I have other ways of making you talk. On that note, it’s time for bed. . . .”

NINETEEN

Jo stood and turned toward the fire, keeping her back to him. Time for bed?

After her shower, she’d tested her ghosting, and yes, she could possess him, even in his super lair. If he tried to force himself on her, she had a place she could hide.

Inside him.

He’d been a world away from her previous shells. She’d sensed his power from their first meeting, but inside him, she’d been cocooned by his strength. She’d even perceived his warmth. His heartbeat had lulled her—