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“Anything?” Black asked Nick.

“No,” Nick said.

Something about the way he said it made me think that wasn’t the whole story.

He sounded frustrated, though.

He turned to Morgan. “You cleaned this area, too?” he grunted. “Was that before or after you called the lab rats up here to dust for prints?”

I blinked. Black did, too.

Both of us turned to stare at the tall security chief.

Morgan didn’t frown, or look uncomfortable. Like before, his expression didn’t seem to change at all. He cocked his head slightly at Nick, a mild curiosity in his voice.

“Why would you ask that?”

“Bleach,” Nick said. “I can smell it. A lot of it.”

Again, Morgan didn’t seem fazed, much less apologetic.

“The cleaning team here is thorough,” he said, his voice just as indifferent. “They must have been through here this morning.”

“Does that mean before you took the prints?” Black growled.

“I don’t know. I can ask.”

Nick gave Black a sideways look, but to Morgan, he only nodded.

“Right,” he muttered.

He took a step back, and but I felt the menace in the way he shifted his weight, gliding with that eerie vampire grace of his, almost like his feet floated on a small pocket of air. It was funny how the new Nick could moveawayfrom someone and it still felt like a threat.

Black glanced at me, then around at the balcony floor.

Anything, doc?he murmured in my mind.

After the barest pause where my eyes scanned over the tile floor, the white balcony, the pseudo-Greek fountains, the stone benches, I shook my head slowly.

Whatever might have been here, it was gone.

13

THE IMMORTALITY DREAM

“Well, that was a shit-show farce,” Nick muttered, throwing himself into the back of the car. “So glad I came along, Quentin. I feel so fucking useful.”

“Youwereuseful,” Black said.

“Right.”

Nick tossed his umbrella to the floor below the driver’s seat, and pulled off the dark sunglasses he wore to protect his vampire eyes. I knew he hated going out during the day––not because those protections didn’t work, more because he tended to get a lot of curious stares, and he’d never fully adjusted to that, not since he’d gotten out of the newborn phase of being a vampire. When we were out at the farmer’s market one day in North Beach, he complained under his breath the whole time that he’d turned into an unwilling performance artist.

For some reason, that hit Angel’s funny bone.

She’d laughed until she cried, and kept bursting out into fresh giggles every so often for the rest of the morning, usually after she’d looked at Nick in his hat and trench coat.

Every now and then I had to remind myself how different he was now.