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voice.
    He stood at the edge of the bandstand,
looking down at us. He wore a modern business suit, but no one
could mistake he’d come from an earlier time. In fact Tristan might
have walked the floors of the King George in its heyday. He might
have danced with flappers in this very ballroom for all I knew.
    Gerald stood nearby. His gaze on Tristan said
he was less than pleased with his boss. Our resident psychic Lana
looked kind of angry too. That’s saying something, because Lana is
as bubbly as they come. She almost never gets mad.
    Gerald and Lana were my friends. Maybe
Tristan treating me like a pariah got on their nerves. At the
moment, that was neither here nor there. I had come for answers to
other questions, and I was by thunder going to get them.
    I gave Tristan the most pleasant look I could
dredge up. Look at me, being polite and reasonable. “Why yes,
Tristan. I do need to see you, right away.”
    Without sparing the hapless Wendy another
glance, I mounted the steps to the stage and stood looking at
Tristan. Had there not been so much angst between us, the view
would have been delightful. Black onyx eyes. Even blacker hair, cut
in the fashion of the 1920’s when he’d last drawn a human breath.
Classically cut features gave him a beauty that his pale skin
rendered an enthralling starkness to. He was not
outdoorsy-masculine like Dan, but more like dapper Errol Flynn
masculine. He could have worn (and has worn) a tuxedo as
effortlessly as most men wore jeans.
    I swallowed hard. It sucked to still find
Tristan compelling. When I looked at him, even when he was vampire
hard and smelled like the dried husk of something long withered, I
somehow couldn’t believe we were over. My being cried out against
it.
    I didn’t dare speak of it with those hard
black eyes on me. Instead I channeled what I’d begun to call my
inner Patricia. It helped to play her in situations like this. Not
to hurt Tristan, but to cope with what we’d become to each
other.
    My voice was impersonal, with that tiny lilt
of sarcasm she used to wield so well against everyone but her
brother. “Shifters disappearing without a trace in the last few
months. Know something about that?”
    Was it my imagination or did Tristan’s eyes
widen a little bit? If so, the impression was fleeting. He answered
in a flat voice. “I do. Gerald has kept me informed with what he
knows. Well-connected weres with families, not the types that
aren’t missed when they disappear. I’m assured the police are
looking into those missing persons cases. It sounds to me like the
situation is well in hand.”
    I was not going to be dismissed like one of
his other lackeys. “If it was, do you think Levi Ward would be
trying to talk to you? You’re not exactly his number one boy, so it
must be bad.”
    I saw a twitch in his face that time. “The
dislike is mutual.” Tristan drew himself up and unexpectedly
softened. “You make a good point. Ward would not come to me with
the problem unless he felt he had no other choice. What did he tell
you?”
    Holy cats, we were actually speaking like
civilized beings. I eased the snark out of my tone and spoke
naturally. “Essentially that the cops have nothing. Not one speck
of a clue. A couple of the missing are from Levi’s staff. He’s
worried for them and all the other shifters.”
    Tristan had brought up an interesting point
that I wanted to jump on right away. I looked at Gerald looming
over Tristan’s shoulder. His musky animal smell was alive and
mouthwatering. Knowing I wasn’t about to chew on that tastiness
made a touch of crankiness creep into my voice. “Why haven’t I
heard anything about this from you?”
    The werepanther snorted. “Yeah, like you need
that kind of stress while you’re trying to get your vampire legs
under you.”
    “I am not a vampire.” Jeez, when was he going
to get that through his head?
    Tristan considered me. He seemed to come to a
quick decision. “Is Dan with you?”
    “In