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and I gotta square off.” He showed me some big white teeth. “See who’s best.”
    “I know who’s best.”
    “That’s the spirit,” he said approvingly. “There’s no sport in it when they just give up and die.”
    I ignored that in favor of nodding at the building behind him. “So what’s going on?”
    I hadn’t really expected an answer, although I got one—sort of. “Lord Cheung’s trying to clean up his image. He’s jonesing for a senate seat bad and thinks some of his activities might not look too good if they’re brought up in the voting process.”
    “I thought combat decided the new senators.”
    “Combat narrows the field,” he corrected. “But once we’re through, we got to be confirmed. And your senators are going to be looking for any possible reason to turn us down.”
    “They’re not my senators,” I said flatly.
    The senate employed me to clean up its messes from time to time, but the fact that I occasionally proved useful hadn’t made me any more popular. The only one who might not hate me was Mircea, second in command to the consul, the senate’s leader. Most vamps treated him like he was scary with a little scary on top, which I’d always found puzzling. He sparked a confusing tangle of emotions in me, but fear had never been one of them.
    Of course, that might be because he was also my father.
    “Look, I don’t care who does or does not get on the senate,” I told Scarface. “I just want to know why your master sent a hit man after me.”
    “You’d have to ask him about that.”
    “Is he in there?” A brief nod. “Then get out of the way and I will.”
    He blew smoke at me.
    “I’m going in there,” I informed him.
    He dropped his cigarette to the stained concrete and ground it in with his toe. “I was hoping to wait until you recovered to beat you up,” he said regretfully. “It won’t be nearly as much fun this—” He broke off as I turned on my heel and headed down the sidewalk. “Hey! Where you going?”
    “The side exit.”
    His booming laughter followed me around the building.
    The short alleyway stopped after half a dozen yards, ending at another brick wall. Three steps went up to a door, steps that were occupied by another bored-looking vamp. He didn’t seem surprised to see me, having heard my conversation with his buddy out front, and he didn’t even stand up. I decided that was rude and started rooting around in my big black duffel bag.
    “What are you going to do?” he asked, amused. “Mace me?”
    “Good idea.”
    The heavy iron-headed mace caught him upside the head and sent him crashing through the rusted railing and into the river of slime flowing down the center of the alley. I didn’t wait around to see what mood he’d be in when he picked himself up. I threw open the door and sprinted inside, pausing only long enough to see that the sole source of light was on the balcony, one level up.
    I heard a faint foot-scrape behind me and slammed the heavy old door in the vamp’s face. He cursed and staggered backward, and I took off across the dark dance floor. I reached the curving iron stairs to the balcony and took them two at a time.
    I was halfway up when the guard’s foot hit the bottom step—and then abruptly fell away. He was soon joined by the rest of Cheung’s men, but they bunched at the bottom, making no effort to follow me up. That didn’t make sense until I burst out onto the catwalk and realized two things: there was already a vamp up here and he didn’t need any help.
    He was standing in front of the manager’s office, halfway down the balcony. What he really looked like was anyone’s guess, of course, most of the older masters found it useful to present an attractive appearance. In this case, that meant bronze skin, high cheekbones, dark, almond-shaped eyes, and a hawklike nose with a proud tilt.
    I didn’t know Cheung’s background, but he looked like the kind of guy who should be wearing heavily embroidered silk