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A smile tipped Trista’s lips. “You mean he hasn’t told you what a hero he was?”

“He?” Brianna turned sideways in order to see him. “Joe?”

Joe shook his head slowly. “I’m nobody’s hero,” he said.

Trista waved a hand at him lazily. “Please, Joseph, don’t be so modest. You saved both their lives last night.”

Confusion clouded Brianna’s expression and she glanced between them. “Both? You were serious about threatening Matilda’s son?”

“Well,” Trista said, “she wouldn’t have lived long enough for true ‘eternal torture,’ so it seemed like the next best thing.”

Eternal torture? Was that the going cost of threatening vampire royalty?

It didn’t matter. Joe didn’t want to be there for this conversation. He didn’t want to see the look on Brianna’s face when she learned about the horrible thing he’d done.

Thinking about that look, about her reaction, finally got his feet moving again. He turned abruptly around and started toward the exit.

“Where are you going, Joseph?” Trista asked.

“Joe, wait.” That was Brianna. It was the second time he’d walked out in the middle of this conversation. One more thing she’d be mad about later—or not so later.

“I need some air,” he said without looking behind him. If he saw any sort of plea on Brianna’s face he might stop walking. But he couldn’t. He wasn’t ready to face the consequences. Not with her. So he left the room and paced in long strides down the hall with no real destination.

It was daylight out, and he was too freshly Turned to just mindlessly wander around outside. At least without supervision. So he was stuck stalking the halls and wondering whether it would be smarter to see if he could run all the way to Death Valley and let the sun dole out a little justice, or just see if Adam would take in a different kind of stray.

But he didn’t think he could go to Adam, not any more than he could face Brianna.

Death Valley was probably unrealistic.

So what did that leave?

“Yo, Joe!”

He came up short at the unfamiliar greeting. Only belatedly did he realize someone, the same female voice, had called his name moments before the one that had gotten his attention. He turned to face her as he finally put a name, and a face, to the voice. “Kendall?” A quick glance around told him they were in another hallway, and it occurred to Joe he should be grateful for the intervention—he didn’t know the mansion well enough not to get lost in the winding halls.

The human woman stepped in front of him, barely outside of his personal space, as she had a habit of doing. “Daydreaming or sleepwalking?”

The question made him want to grin. “Not really sure,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

Kendall shrugged. “It’s on you if you get lost.” The partial smirk that had flashed across her face quickly faded. “I heard Bri’s in the throne room, and you’ve probably noticed, but no one’s allowed in that room unless they’ve been summoned. Or unless they’re, you know, actual royalty.”

“I haven’t seen anything to the contrary,” Joe said after a heartbeat’s reflection. His own initial presence arguably counted, but since that ‘actual royalty’ had literally brought him with her, it was likely an exception. Perhaps a pseudo-summons. He arched a brow. “Did you need to talk to her again?” Brianna was the one who’d discovered Garvin’s treachery, so he’d assumed that meant her conversation with Kendall had ended beforehand. But maybe it’d just been interrupted.

He hadn’t exactly been in the vicinity.

Kendall heaved a sigh and tugged her cell phone from her back pocket. “I swear, vampires immediately forget about the modern conveniences of technology the second they Turn. You really need to keep up with the times.”

That seemed a little uncalled for. He opened his mouth to say so, despite that she was now focused on the screen, but she didn’t pause long enough.

“Or, in this case, the news.” She held out her phone for him to see. She’d pulled up a news article from the local station with the glaring banner of Breaking News streaming across the top. He barely paid that any attention once his stare zeroed in on the part he suspected had her the most distressed.

The Mauler had dropped another body. A middle-aged woman, identity withheld. But this time he’d delivered her body to the sidewalk in front of the police station—and he’d sent her with a note. The note was pictured in the article, already bagged for evidence, its ominous message practically taunting them.

LAST ONE.

Joe rolled the words around in his head as he skimmed the article. Nothing new, of course, other than the body and its note. Last one? There was no way the Wilsons were giving up killing. They were obviously addicted to it. What did concern him was the possibility that they’d heard Brianna had survived and were fleeing the area to avoid the obvious repercussions. It would be smart, for them, but problematic for the rest of the vampire community.

Kendall reclaimed her phone and tucked it away. “I think it means they’re running.”