People who were impressed by him were not so likely to try to screw him over, in business or with fang and claw. He enjoyed fighting, though I didn’t think he’d ever admit it to anyone else. What he didn’t like was the way fights could spill over onto the people he was responsible for: the people, human and other, who worked for his security company as well as the pack. He preferred to stop trouble before it happened when he could—thus, the suits.
After some serious consideration, I put on a blue silk blouse, a pair of black slacks, and shoes I could run in. Next to Adam, I didn’t look underdressed, precisely—I looked like his assistant. But that was okay. Adam and I worked best together when he took point and I faded into the background. It suited our personalities. Adam was a “what you see is what you get” kind of guy, but I was happy to be sneaky.
We pulled into the Marriott parking lot, and I looked up at the balconies and sliding glass doors outside each room. The sky was still dark, but it wouldn’t be in an hour.
“Unusual hotel for a vampire,” I murmured as I got out of the car. The Marriott was covered with huge windows. Not that there was much choice; the Tri-Cities had mostly grown up during and after the Second World War, when the old hotels of small-windowed rooms, chandeliers, and ballrooms had given in to the practicality of the motel, efficient and graceless—with lots and lots of windows. Still, it seemed to me that the Marriott was awfully light and airy for a vampire to feel comfortable with.
I tucked my arm through Adam’s, and we started for the hotel. We hadn’t gotten three steps from the car before the sound of hard wheels on blacktop had us both turning to see a skinny teenager approaching us rapidly. Casually, I dropped Adam’s arm and stepped back. The kid hopped off the skateboard with a kick that threw the board up so he could catch it without bending down. He stowed it under one arm as he walked.
“Hey, man,” he said, his voice familiar from the early-morning call, but it was far more laid-back—less meth-head and more stoner. “I looked you up on the Internet to see why suddenly I’m dealing with the werewolves and not the vampires. Nice work on that troll.”
“Was it?” asked Adam. “There aren’t many trolls left, I am given to understand.”
The boy spat on the ground. “They can all rot for all I care. Nasty pieces of work, trolls—killing ’em ain’t no cause for tragedy. Now, I’d like to get paid and get out of here before someone wonders why I’m riding around on this toy at five in the morning.”
“What did the vampire look like?” I asked.
He shrugged, but there was something sly in his eyes when he said, “Weren’t me what saw him.” He held out his hand.
Adam handed him an envelope. The goblin in human guise dropped the skateboard back on the ground and hopped on the battered and scarred surface. He didn’t stop it when it started to drift backward. He gave Adam a salute with the hand that held the white envelope, dropped a toe, and spun his board around to speed off into the night.
Three cars down from where Adam had parked there was a white Subaru Forester with California plates. I remember cars, a hazard of my job. I tugged Adam to a stop and examined it more carefully.
Subaru Foresters weren’t uncommon—there were three others in the parking lot. But I’d followed this one for miles last winter. I sniffed at the driver’s-side door and smelled a familiar vampire.
“Thomas Hao,” I said. I’d fought beside Thomas a couple of months ago, and we’d helped Marsilia destroy a nasty vampire. I wondered if Marsilia had known who he was when she turned him over to us this morning. I considered the goblin’s half lie about not being the one who saw the vampire and decided she did.
“This should be interesting,” said Adam after a moment, but he’d relaxed a little, and so had I.
Thomas Hao was the Master of San Francisco. That’s all I’d known about him the last time we met. But it turned out that he was something of an enigma, even by vampire standards. Like Blackwood, the vampire I’d helped kill in Spokane, Hao ruled without other vampires in his city. Unlike Blackwood, Hao was the opposite of crazy. He’d never had a large seethe, but a couple of years ago he’d shooed the few vampires he controlled out to other seethes and remained in San Francisco alone. No one knew why, though there were lots of stories about Thomas Hao, about what happened when someone made a move against him. I’d seen him hold off two very powerful, very old monsters all by himself.
There was no question that Thomas was a very dangerous vampire. But he was also a man of principle and logic, not driven by ambition. It wasn’t just me who thought so. As vampires went, Hao was almost a good man. I liked him.
It didn’t take long to find his room. We got on the elevator that smelled of him and hit every button on the way up. His room was on the top floor. We followed Thomas’s scent down the hall.
“There is a fae here, too,” I whispered. I’d first scented her downstairs, and her track followed Hao’s too closely for coincidence.
Adam nodded and knocked softly at the door where Thomas’s scent had led us. No need to bother the neighbors, and a vampire would hear us.
“A moment,” said Thomas’s voice. It would not have carried to human ears, so he wasn’t expecting room service.
The vampire opened the door and regarded us for a moment. He was dressed in a brown silk button-down shirt and black jeans. His feet were bare, and his hair was damp. I never had been able to read his face, but I could read his body language. Whoever he’d been expecting, it had not been us.