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  Ambrose swung his gimlet eye away from Asher. “I dislike surprises. This one betrayed us once. What’s to say he didn’t jump into bed with Moreau, hmm? That he ain’t still taking orders from that cur?”

  Halloran thrust out his chin. “My word.”

  Silence fell over the table. Asher barely dared to breathe for fear of Ambrose latching on to his exhales as a sign that he was lying after all. For a brief moment, he contemplated telling the truth. He wondered what might happen if he were to throw himself upon Ambrose’s mercy.

  A slow and painful death, most likely.

  Sargasso had seen its fair share of noble acts. The only thing worse than cavorting with Moreau was killing him. Vampires always stuck together. This much was known.

  A hacking cough broke the stalemate, shaking Angelita like a demon trying to worm its way out. It wouldn’t have been half so spectacular if her whole body didn’t rattle with it.

  “Sweetheart!” Blood ran over the rim of Ambrose’s glass as he rushed to steady her. “Doc!”

  Already on his feet and rounding the table, Matheson brushed aside one of the maids, who struck the wall with her face even though her hands were free and could’ve gentled the impact.

  Angelita doubled over in her seat, clutching the tablecloth in white-knuckled fists. Whatever ailed her seemed to plateau without ceasing before another bout of coughing snatched hold.

  It took Asher a moment to realize those weren’t moles on her hands but blood spatter, that her bowed lips were stained with red.

  Dr. Matheson shoved his way to her side and gripped her bony arm. The sleeve of her deep emerald gown was short enough that he could easily find the crook of her elbow. He tapped once, twice at a blue-green vein, then stuck the needle of a long syringe into her flesh.

  Asher cringed on her behalf, though Angelita didn’t seem to notice the injection. After a few moments, the coughing began to ebb. She slumped back into the chair, more washed out than ever.

  With astonishingly gentle hands, Ambrose combed the loose curls from her brow. His guests had been forgotten. The matter of Moreau’s getaway no longer seemed to preoccupy him.

  Asher dropped his voice to a whisper and looked to Halloran for answers. “What’s the matter with her?”

  It was Malachi who replied. “Father’s blood is killing her.”

  Even a whisper was a shout to vampire hearing. Ambrose flung a glare at his progeny, but this time there was no accompanying metaphysical slug.

  No grimace twisted at Malachi’s features. “I think that’s excitement enough for one night.” He trained a tepid smile onto Halloran, dismissal audible in his voice. “Thank you for your delightful company. We must do this more often.”

  Halloran rose with a stoic expression and gestured for Asher to follow. Halfway to the door, Asher turned and grabbed the soup bowl off the table. Fuck it. He was human. He needed sustenance.

  Malachi caught his eye, the left corner of his mouth quirked in amusement.

  An apology was warranted, but Asher chose to make his escape before anyone decided he didn’t actually deserve any supper. The last he saw of Ambrose and his decimated family, the mayor was poised over Angelita’s chair, murmuring softly to her.

  For his part, Malachi had gone back to his dinner as if nothing were amiss.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Although he’d been spared the awkwardness of eating before a clutch of vampires, Asher was nevertheless forced to make allowances for the one he belonged to. The compromise no longer galled him as it once had.

  The room put at their disposal in the mayor’s manor was by no means small, but there was nowhere for him to take his rapidly cooling soup without feeling as though he was intruding on Halloran’s space. Dunking and chewing his sodden crust of bread seemed to echo in the stillness of the boudoir. For want of anything better to say, yet compelled to fill the silence somehow, Asher broached the only topic that seemed palatable in this house. “What’s happening with Angelita…is that like what happened with me?”

  Halloran tipped his head back against his seat but didn’t reply.

  “You’re not still down in the mouth ’cause we went, are you? I didn’t know it’d be that bad…” Given that they’d walked out with the correct number of fingers and toes, Asher was almost tempted to count it as a success.

  “I ain’t cross,” Halloran said, the dismissal belied by the deepening crease between his eyebrows. He was fidgety, for a vampire, either drumming his fingertips against the armrests or tapping his heel to some unheard beat.

  Asher had dealt with enough fickle vampires for one night. He chose to go back to his soup rather than push and prod at Halloran until he hit on something real.

  Not long after they’d retreated upstairs, a maid knocked on the door to offer a nightcap, compliments of Master Malachi. A note accompanied the offering, its elegant cursive restoring a little of the sophistication the maid’s tinny monotone lacked.

  Asher took the bottle and glasses without waiting on Halloran’s permission. He handed back the empty soup bowl.

  “My dear Franklin,” he read. “A little something to make for tonight’s unpleasantness. I trust you’ll forgive us for being less than exemplary hosts. Hope you two enjoy your evening.” A snort tore out of Asher as he passed Halloran the note. “Signed, Your Favorite Jailer.”

  “He couldn’t sign his name?”

  Asher frowned. “No, he did. See…”

  Halloran scowled at the missive in his hands before crumpling it up. “Eager to accept his gifts, aren’t you?” Halloran’s glare was icy. The note wound up in the lit grate.

  Asher shrugged. “If you can’t beat them…you know. I’d like to think I’m growing as a person.” No longer plotting murder by vampire, but reaping the fruits of his dubious accomplishments.

  Whiskey splashed into the two glasses, reflecting the gaslight with an amber tint.

  Halloran didn’t touch his drink. “He’s curious about you. Asking you to dinner with the family, coming by the shop…”

  “Ah. You heard.” With Nyle as architect of that encounter, it was little wonder that word had gotten back to his boss. A month ago, Asher would have felt cornered by vampire machinations. He was beginning to understand there was no way out of his maze except through.

  Halloran turned his gaze from Malachi’s letter crisping among the logs. “What did he want?”

  “Other than to invite you to sit at his table?” Asher shook his head. “To taunt me, I suppose. Did you know everyone heard us fuck?” The harshness of the word helped dissimulate the formless impression it had made on Asher’s mind.

  The mottled bruises on his body weren’t as easy to hide. Much like the armor welded into his flesh, they were exposed as soon as he pried off his shirt, a constellation of purple and brown marks standing in sharp contrast to the pale skin of his hips and forearms.

  Halloran was quiet for a long moment. “Yes.”

  “Could they hear us back at Willowbranch, too?”

  The pause was briefer this time. “My outfit, yes. Everyone else…”

  So there were limits to a vampire’s hearing just as there were limits to their superhuman strength. Asher filed away the observation and shucked off his pants. Halloran’s eyes were till on him. His skin prickled with heat at the thought.

  “When do we go back?” he volleyed, hoping the slight hitch in his pulse would go unnoticed.

  “I thought you liked it here. All the nice things, all the maids—”

  “You, sneering at all of it?” It came as no surprise. Halloran could’ve had a town bowing and scraping for him just like Ambrose. He had the manpower and the innate capacity for cruelty.

  Too righteous to deny it, Halloran merely squinted. “We’ll stay until I decide otherwise. Got a problem with that?”

  “No, sir.” Asher helped himself to another drop of whiskey before climbing under the covers.

  The sheets were crisp and perfumed. Ambrose’s creepy maids must
have changed them. He wasn’t half as ashamed of the sigh of relief that crawled out of his throat as he made himself comfortable as he was of his cock hardening between his legs. Sense-memory was a dangerous, imperfect thing. It made him crave what he knew he shouldn’t.

  “You gonna sit there and watch me sleep?” he wondered aloud, when Halloran made no move to rise from his chair.

  “I’m a vampire,” Halloran drawled, as if there was the slightest chance Asher had forgotten. “I don’t need rest.”

  “Then shut off the goddamn light.” Like many apex predators, bloodsuckers didn’t need much of that to get by at night, either.

  The floorboards creaked and snapped beneath Halloran’s heavy footfalls. His shadow blanketed the bed. For the space of a breath, the gas lamp flared with a brighter, taunting glow. Then its light dimmed and died. Darkness filled the room. Millions of stars fell and shattered before Asher’s eyes like crumbling wishes.

  Before sense could stop him, he twitched a corner of the covers back in silent invitation.

  There was a beat of hesitation before the thump of Halloran’s boots echoed through the room.

  The mattress dipped.

  Asher rolled over, his back to Halloran, and willed himself to sleep.

  * * * *

  Dreams had been a sanctuary once, when new ideas blossomed between the waking hours. Asher’s mind had never produced anything close to his uncle’s inventions, but it was ripe soil for solutions to Sargasso’s vampire problem. Most of these disintegrated under scrutiny. A few endured. Hiring the Riders had been a passably good scheme that only faltered in its execution.

  Gathering up the last of Uncle Howard’s automatons and taking a hammer to them seemed far less sensible. The neighbors who poked their heads in the door certainly appeared to think so.

  “You all right there?” asked Mr. Pinkham on his way to the store. He was a portly man with a thick mustache that had veered from gray to snow-white since Asher had last seen him.

  Losing his only daughter would’ve had that effect.

  Asher wiped a hand over his brow. “Yes, sir, just doing a little reworking.”

  Pinkham’s mustache twitched. “Is that right? Ought to show more respect for them contraptions. All you got left of your uncle.”

  Like everyone else in town, Pinkham had been told that Asher and only Asher had survived the attack on Redemption. Whispers had followed him when he made the journey from mayor’s house to shop in the morning. They chased him back up again come dusk.

  In the beginning, Asher had itched to tell them the truth. Now he knew that no good would come of it. Better for Connie to be dead than to have abandoned her family.

  Better for her to have been an agent for Ambrose than—against him.

  “Got no choice,” Asher lied, hefting the hammer. “They ain’t lettin’ me get any materials from outta town and clocks won’t fix themselves.”

  He delivered a similar lie to Halloran’s Riders when they were drawn to the ruckus. He noted with some pleasure that Nyle kept his distance, though he was quick enough with a joke.

  “I know Halloran’s turned your asshole inside out, but there’s no call to take it out on them unsuspecting…thingamabobs. What’s next? You’ll start disassembling Ambrose’s house staff?”

  Asher did his best to ignore the taunts. Like a buzzard roving aimlessly, Nyle would eventually tire of needling him.

  Another thud of the hammer all but drowned out Nyle’s snicker.

  “Aw, don’t you like me no more? And here I thought we was friends.” Emboldened, Nyle took a step into the shop. “This about the other day? Don’t be such a ninny. I was only following orders.”

  “Last I heard Halloran was the one givin’ you orders.”

  “Halloran, Malachi,” Nyle scoffed, “what’s the difference? You dance to whatever beat you’re told to.”

  His footsteps described a wide circle around the pile of scrap in the center of the shop. Asher gritted his teeth. “There’s a dent in my wall with the shape of your skull in it. Keep talking and there’ll be another.”

  “Now we’re talking!” Nyle clapped his hands and dropped into a crouch, something vaguely lizard-like in the motion. About ten inches from his right foot, a metal plate reflected sunshine onto his pallid face. His cheek began to redden where the ray touched it. “Still some fire left in you, huh? Good, good. Wouldn’t want the boss to snuff it out before the rest of us get a taste.”

  “Does the boss know you’re making eyes at his property?”

  “What Halloran knows only Halloran knows.” Nyle’s smile widened. “Like what’s under those clothes. Is it true your dick fell off too?”

  Despite the exasperation thrumming in his bones, Asher snorted out a laugh. “Two hundred souls in this town and you haven’t found one to scratch that itch. Don’t you reckon it’s time to start askin’ yourself if it’s them or you?”

  “Oh, it’s them all right. Look at me.” Nyle gestured to himself. “Thirty-two years, prime vampire pedigree, and I can read. What’s not to like?”

  Asher shook his head. “Ain’t that the truth.” It was a curious thing, to feel something close to affection for a man who routinely joked about doing him harm—a man who’d tried to rush him only days earlier. But there it was. Familiarity bred fondness.

  Fondness couldn’t be allowed to curb Asher’s ambition.

  “You gonna clear out so I can get back to work?” he wanted to know.

  Nyle straightened with the kind of elegance only a vampire could possess. The blisters on his cheek began to close as soon as direct sunlight became a nonissue. “One of these days, Franklin. One of these days.”

  The empty threat vanished into thin air before he wound around the corner.

  Asher waited a moment to make sure he wouldn’t come back. With the bell above the door still chiming its jaunty tune, he reached for the metal shard on the ground. Among so much junk, it didn’t stand out. Asher should have seen it. He had to be more careful.

  Lifting the loose floorboard under his knee just a smidge, Asher dropped the jagged fragment into the cache with the others. He’d dug out enough silver for a dozen bullets. It was a start, but it wasn’t near enough just yet.

  He yanked around another unfinished automaton toward him and went back to work.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  With expert stoicism, Halloran avoided the lure of the pristine bedding, Asher’s gaze and the indecent amount of flesh on display. “Put your clothes back on.” He spoke with his usual asperity, but the corners of his mouth tugged down as though he didn’t want to be speaking at all.

  “It’s past ten,” Asher pointed out, bemused.

  “It is.”

  “Did Ambrose want to see me?” Since the last brief and disastrous dinner party, Asher hadn’t had the pleasure of the mayor’s company for three days. The reprieve suited him just fine. “Or Malachi—”

  “Malachi don’t get a say. I told you to get dressed,” Halloran growled. “Are you defying me?”

  Too many days of almost familiar routine and too many nights of sharing his bed with Halloran with no consequences had indeed lulled Asher into a false sense of security. He was tempted to acquiesce out of sheer recklessness.

  A reminder that the creature who laid beside him night after night could rip him to shreds wouldn’t hurt.

  Sense won out. Asher tugged his pants back on and buckled his belt.

  “You’ll need your duster too,” Halloran mumbled.

  “I don’t have one… Are we going somewhere?” Timid hope flared in Asher’s chest. Perhaps Ambrose had finally given his permission and they could return to Willowbranch.

  There had been a time when the prospect would’ve sent him into a panic. That was before he knew the joys of living in a house that felt more like a tomb.

  Halloran stripped off his own duster and tossed it over. Predictably, he kept his answers to himself.

  Outside, two horses waited tethered by the
hitching post. One of them was Halloran’s. Asher’s breath caught at the sight of him. The last time he’d seen the snorting, temperamental beast, it had been fleeing Redemption—and in so doing depriving Asher of his own escape.

  The horse tossed its head as he drew nearer. It knew him and it didn’t seem especially thrilled to renew the acquaintance.

  You and me both, buddy.

  As his vision adjusted to the thick night, Asher noted three of the remaining four Riders pacing the empty street, as if they or their mounts couldn’t keep still. They were the only commotion in town.

  “Where are we headed?” Asher asked again, not particularly concerned if his voice carried.

  Sargasso was feigning sleep.

  “New Morning Farm,” Halloran bit out through clenched teeth. “Now mount up.”

  As answers went, it didn’t satisfy. But the urgency in Halloran’s voice told Asher the window for asking questions had just slammed shut.

  His placid bay took direction well, at least, and seemed more than happy to follow the rest of the herd. Caught in the crisp desert wind, the animal’s long mane fluttered over Asher’s hands. He only pricked up his ears once they’d left Sargasso well in the dust.

  It was another long moment before Asher grasped why.

  New Morning Farm was the easternmost point in Ambrose’s empire. Its stone walls had been constructed when the town was only a glimmer in the eye of the first settlers. Seventy-odd years later, it still stood proudly in the heart of the valley, breeding cattle rather than horses and spreading its profits exclusively among vampire owners.

  As long as there was profit to be made, that would always be the case. The agitated black and brown beasts dotting the plains called that guarantee into doubt. The fire engulfing the barn roof, all the more so.

  “Holy Christ,” Asher breathed, his heart slamming against his ribs. He tugged on the reins before the bay drove him any nearer to the blaze.

  Shouts echoed from the farmyard as the hands struggled to put out the flames. With only one water pump, it wasn’t likely to be an easy task.