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a third-rank member of Bruja who would take a job where there’s no risk, no glory, not even a body left behind—nothing but panicked, unarmed SingleEarth members.”
    There was anger in her voice as well, though Christian suspected she was upset for different reasons than her cohort.
    “Whoever attacked us used these bolts to send a message they didn’t have the courage to present directly. The coward isn’t going to get away with it. Understand?”
    Alysia kept the words vague, but Christian took the meaning: she didn’t know what it was yet, but she was sure that this message had been intended for her.
    Us
. She had used the word “us.” Whoever attacked
us
—her and SingleEarth.
    If the message is meant for her, then let her deal with it
, Christian thought.
    “If someone has a contract out against SingleEarth, I haven’t heard about it,” he said, “so you might as well be on your way.”
    “Christian—”
    “You might want to leave quickly,” he suggested. He pocketed the packet of bolts, noting the way Alysia’s gaze followed the movement. “Before someone here decides your intentions might not be in our best interest.”
    If Alysia really wanted to talk to him, she was going to have to do it at a time and place of
his
choosing, and it wasn’t going to include an audience.
    For now, Alysia looked from him to the sunlit doorway and then at him again. She started to speak, but then she shook her head and left with her SingleEarth friend. Given the glare of the morning sunlight, it was impossible for him to know whether she looked back.

C HAPTER 6
    T HERE WERE PLENTY of ways to find anonymous, willing blood donors in SingleEarth, and that was what Jason preferred. He didn’t have “regulars,” he never accepted blood from friends, and he
never
bled Sarik no matter how many times she offered. He knew his refusals bothered her, but there was no way he could make her understand.
    After he fed, there was work to do. Lynzi was still resting, so it was up to Jason to greet the hunters who were arriving from less peaceful Havens. Thankfully, the weather had subsided to a fine drizzle as he showed their new security force around the campus.
    “Is this the only video surveillance?” one of the huntersasked, examining the camera in the lobby of the administration building.
    “Yes. It’s there mostly to give the secretary a heads-up,” Jason explained, aware that the angle was ill designed for security.
    The door opened to admit another hunter, who shook drops of water from her hair before she announced, “I cannot imagine anyone making the shots you’ve described.” Though she seemed to be speaking to Jason, she walked past him without looking at him and then spoke to the first hunter. “There are trees close to the recreation building. The weather would have made it hard to climb them, but not impossible.”
    One problem with SingleEarth hunters was that they tended to start out as vampire hunters, so no matter how long they spent in SingleEarth, they rarely regarded one of Jason’s kind as a serious ally.
    So no one objected when he left to work on his own investigation.
    Of the three victims, only one had a good, predictable reason to have been outside at the time of the attack. Jason was normally sleeping at that hour, and given the weather and the vampiric ability to travel place to place instantly, no one would have expected him to be outside. Israel would usually have left hours earlier, and while it was possible that someone had waited on the icy roof of the recreation building for that long—a vampire or Triste could have managed it—it seemed like an unnecessary, uncomfortable risk for someone to take.
    That left Ben, the tech support guy who had showed up in response to a service request generated by a cyber attack. Ben
had
asked Jason where he could get some sleep, but he couldn’t have known that Jason would show up in the first place, so it was more likely that Ben was a target than