“Who the hell is Mattheus?” Roland grumbled.

“Mattheus got screwed?” Tracy said. “That sucks. He’s so hot.”

“Who’s Mattheus?” Sheldon seconded.

“He’s an immortal from Brazil,” Chris said. “His mortal lover, whom he thought was completely trustworthy, videotaped them having sex—”

“Awesome!” Sheldon interjected with a grin.

Everyone looked at him.

“What? I like porn.”

Still they stared.

He frowned. “I have to give up booze, parties, and porn? Can’t a Second have any vices?”

Chris sighed. “Anyway. She videotaped them having sex and intended to auction it off to news outlets once it had been authenticated by an expert who would swear the glowing eyes, fangs, and . . . ah . . . unusual speed and other things demonstrated were not special effects produced by a post-production house.”

“Maybe they were,” Sheldon suggested somberly. “Maybe she was out to discredit him. I think we should all watch it and—”

“The tape has been destroyed,” Seth cut in.

“Damn.” Sheldon slumped down in his seat.

Chris met Richart’s gaze. “Anytime you want me to get rid of him . . .”

Richart shook his head. “He amuses me.”

“Chris does have a point,” Seth said, returning to the subject at hand.

At the opposite end of the table, David nodded. “We have seen it countless times. This is a lonely existence that can sometimes drive us to trust where we should not.”

“Chris,” Seth continued, “perhaps if you allowed the immortal to be present when you met with his lover, he would no longer feel wary of your possible treatment of her.”

“Or him,” Lisette tossed in.

Etienne raised his eyebrows.

“What? I can’t date?”

“Fine,” Chris said. “If any of you acquire a lover with whom you wish to share the truth, you can be present when I meet with her. But I do need to meet with her. Or him. If you’d consent to a telepath being present or listening in from the next room, all the better.”

When no one spoke, Seth spoke for them. “They’ll take it into consideration.” The casual words carried the weight of an order. “Is that all, Chris?”

“For now, yes.”

Seth turned to Etienne. “So?”

“So?” he repeated.

David leaned forward and braced his elbows on the table. “Tell us what happened last night.”

Etienne hesitated. He wasn’t sure how to tell them without explaining Krysta’s role in it. And he thought it best to minimize that as much as possible.

No one seemed to have caught her reference to their hunting together. They had all been too titillated by the idea that he had been hiding away a girlfriend.

Which, as she had pointed out, was not to say that Krysta was his girlfriend.

You’re rambling, David spoke in his head.

Etienne shot him a glance. Much to his surprise, the elder immortal seemed amused. No, I’m not.

Yes, you are, Seth said.

Is everyone listening to my thoughts? he demanded with exasperation. His barriers were usually stronger than that.

No, just us, David answered.

Go ahead and tell them what happened, Seth advised. We’ve already gleaned it.

Etienne leaned forward and braced his elbows on the table. “I was out hunting with Krysta—”

“Wait,” Chris interrupted. “You two really do hunt together?”

Etienne looked at Krysta, who shrugged. “In a manner of speaking.”

Chris threw up his hands. “Okay. Another point of business. Most of the immortals at this table are at least a hundred years old, so I didn’t think I had to remind any of you of this, but you cannot recruit your own Seconds. All Seconds must be assigned by the network, which thoroughly vets and trains them. What the hell, Etienne?”

Now Krysta leaned forward. “I’m not a Second.”

Before everyone could start bitching at once, Etienne held up a hand. “Krysta came to my attention a couple of weeks ago. I was out hunting and saw several vampires tracking her with the clear intention of preying upon her. Much to my surprise, however, the vampires turned out to be the prey. Krysta is a vampire hunter.”

“No way!” Sheldon blurted.

Etienne scowled at him. “As soon as I realized this, I began to follow her.” As swiftly as possible, he caught them up on his adventures with Krysta.

“No wonder you’ve been so distracted,” Lisette said, studying Krysta curiously.

Marcus frowned. “By vampire hunter you mean . . . ?”

“She hunts vampires. She lures them into traps, then dispatches them.”

“That’s impossible,” Ethan said.

Krysta stiffened. “Then I’ve been doing the impossible for six years.”

Disbelieving stares.

“Mortals can’t defeat vampires in battle,” Edward said.

“This one can,” Krysta insisted.

“Ami can,” Sheldon pointed out.

“Melanie could, when she was mortal,” Bastien added with a proud smile.

“But Ami and Melanie didn’t take them on alone,” Ethan said. “They fought by Marcus’s and Bastien’s sides.”

Marcus leaned forward and caught Ethan’s eye. “Ami wasn’t fighting by my side when she kicked your ass in that sparring session. And you’re faster than a vampire.”

Sheldon laughed. “Burn!”

Seth sighed. “We’re getting off topic here. I’ve examined Krysta’s thoughts. She has indeed been hunting vampires for the past six years with the help of her brother. And, before you ask, neither of them are members of the mercenary groups who keep troubling us. Her gift gives her an edge”—he held up a hand to stay him when Ethan opened his mouth again—“which I will not disclose. If Krysta wants you to know, she’ll tell you herself.”

Ethan stared at Krysta. A teasing gleam entered his eyes, making Etienne narrow his own as his hackles rose. Offering Krysta a flirtatious grin, Ethan said, “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

In a heartbeat, Etienne drew a dagger and threw it.

The hilt struck Ethan right in the center of his forehead, snapping his head back. “Ow! Shhhhit! What the hell, man?”

Krysta gaped up at Etienne, who squirmed as everyone at the table stared at him.

He cleared his throat, but didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t really meant to do that. He had just reacted.

“Oh yeah,” Sheldon said. “He has fallen and he has fallen hard.”

Snickers and head shakes all around.

“Merde.”

David held up a hand and called for quiet. “Please continue, Etienne.”

Eager to change the subject (Why did it seem to return so often to his being smitten with Krysta?), he told them about defeating the vampires, then being set upon by mercenaries.

No one reprimanded him for not getting the hell out of there as soon as he saw that first tranquilizer dart. That’s what they were supposed to do to avoid capture, but all understood his desire to protect Krysta.

Cam leaned forward and braced his elbows on the table, his attention on Krysta and Sean. “Thank you. You don’t know what they would have done to him if they had gotten their hands on him. If these are the same people we dealt with before—”

“I don’t see how they can be,” Melanie interrupted. “That threat was neutralized.”

Etienne shook his head. “These soldiers were very reminiscent of the others.” He related the events that followed at Krysta and Sean’s home.

A steady stream of curses and exclamations of disbelief accompanied him.

Marcus looked ready to snap, his fury fairly heating the room. “How the hell is this possible?”

Chris shook his head. “It must be a different group.”

“They have the fucking tranquilizer!” he shouted.

Ami placed a hand on his arm.

Etienne understood Marcus’s rage. The last mercenary group had included some of the monsters who had tortured Ami. And they had been eager as hell to get their hands on her again.

Cam shook his head. “We must have missed something.”

Seth shook his head. “We didn’t. Every mercenary who knew of our existence was either killed or had their memories wiped. And David and I saw to the latter ourselves.”

David nodded. “Darnell worked tirelessly with the network’s techno-geeks to expunge all mention of us, of vampires, and of Ami from their computers and servers.”

“And replaced it with malware,” Darnell added. “There’s no way they could recover those files. I couldn’t even recover those files.”

“And yet,” Roland said, “Etienne was tranqed and attacked by humans garbed as soldiers.”

“Could they be military?” Sarah asked, brow furrowed. “Could Emrys have gone to the military without our knowledge?”

Seth shook his head. “I would have seen it in his thoughts.”

“Donald and Nelson didn’t either,” David mentioned before anyone could ask.

Donald was the leader of the elite Private Military Company Emrys had drawn into his war with the immortals near the end. Nelson was Donald’s second in command or yes-man. Because their company was widely known by the public, killing the two men would have raised too many questions, so their memories had been erased instead and a story concocted—something about a couple of transport planes colliding in a freak accident—to explain the deaths of the soldiers slain by the immortals.

“So where does that leave us?” Cam asked.

Seth shook his head. “Without an explanation.”

Krysta studied the men and women seated around the table in the grim hush that followed.

She glanced at Sean to see how he was taking all of this.

Suspicion had fled his face and been replaced by the same fascination she suspected lit her own. This was amazing. She didn’t know what she had expected, but it hadn’t been this.