The new assignment actually ended up being moderately entertaining and more than a bit enlightening. It is remarkable what a body can learn when keeping their eyes open.

I have only three rules when doing these bodyguard gigs for Corey. I'm not going to do a murder for the client—I already was leaving far too many bodies lying about—absolutely no pictures or videos, and the mask stays on the whole time. This chap, some Russian moneyman named Sergei, was down with all of that, and he didn't even ask for any bona fides. Apparently, Corey's reputation was spreading.

At first, the whole thing seemed like a typical night out. We went to a few clubs, had a few drinks, and the boss's entourage acted like typical drunken Russians in the city. I stayed out of sight as much as possible—a skill that I'd developed over the ages—and only had to assert myself once, when one of Sergei's regular bodyguards felt the need to test my credentials and my patience and got three broken fingers for his troubles.

Idiot.

At about 2:00 in the morning, things took a very interesting turn. The club at which the boss was drinking began to close about that time, and a group of Asian men arrived not long after the last of the customers departed. The transaction that followed was in English, but bits and pieces that I heard between the newcomers indicated that they were Korean. Not that I spoke that language beyond a few dozen words, but the few words I knew I heard then.

An enormous amount of diamonds changed hands that morning, many thousands of carats in all variety of cuts and all types of sizes. I'd seldom seen so many stones in one place, and the crown of the set was what looked to be an emerald-cut diamond of 35 or more carats. It was that stone the buyers dwelt over the longest. I instantly fell in love.

It was a mammoth transaction. From what I could see of the computer screen around which the bosses and their accountants hovered, a great deal of money changed hands. That one transaction was worth more than many small countries, and it then was obvious why my boss for the night, Sergei, had needed solid protection. He was passing a veritable emperor's ransom in stones to a group of men who he didn't appear to have known previously and wanted nothing to go wrong. I couldn't say I blamed him.

If you have any doubts about the depth of my friendship for Corey, now you know. My impulse to kill all involved and to swagger out of that cheap Russian dive with enough precious stones to sink a boat was so great that I wanted to weep.

But I didn't, at least not then and there. It would take some time for anyone to transport that many stones out of the country. So I might yet have an opportunity to visit my new Korean acquaintances and relieve them of the burden of lugging the things around. I knew plenty of people who bartered in such items on the gray and black markets, and if push came to shove, I could always sell the things back to Sergei at a discount.

No, that would come later, when my chicanery wouldn't roll back on Corey in any way, and when I had a plan that involved fewer homicides. Bodies were a constant nuisance.

I did make it a point to follow the diamond buyers out of the nightclub, just to be sure they left okay. At least, that's what I told Sergei I was doing. I actually wanted to get a good look at the vehicles they came in. I even snapped a few discreet photos. I needed to be able to find my new friends when the time was right.

After that, Sergei bought me a drink and asked a few subtle questions about me and my kind. I declined the drink; a whiskey sour it was. I really think the Russian scoundrel just wanted to get a peek under my mask. I fobbed him off about blood drinkers by quoting a few stories I'd read years back, providing what was essentially a line of bullshit about us.

Soon afterward, I departed. Sergei had my services for a few hours more, but I do believe I made him and his entourage nervous. I had that effect on people when I so chose.

The hour was still early, so I thought it might be nice if the Bruja made an appearance. Before I headed that way, I sent some text messages with the pictures I had taken of the autos and license plates of the diamond buyers. There were a few people of my acquaintance who traded in such information, and I wanted to know how to find these Korean gentlemen.

My next stop was a rooftop near the Hudson where I had stashed some clothing, and I changed into my street attire. I went through a great deal of clothes, all designed to alter my appearance in some way. The hoody with a few layers of garments underneath and the baggy dungarees were intended to make me look more like a man than a woman, but I'm fairly confident that effort had failed, given the moniker with which I'd been tagged in the area, the Bruja.

Soon I was dashing across the rooftops on my way to the intersection where the worst of the neighborhood gangsters had been in the habit of gathering. Events at that spot usually were at their peak after midnight, and I needed to see what was happening there.

I have to confess; I enjoyed the rooftops. I always had. It was impossible to avoid people up there completely, it's true. In the city, there often were people out on the roofs at night breathing the air, smoking a joint, or diddling the neighbor's wife. But my senses were keen enough that it was easy to avoid such folk, and in the dark I thrived.

And you would never imagine how I could run and jump at night. Hopping from building to building was nothing, and even leaps of 70 or 80 feet across roads and alleys were child's play to me. So high and far could folk like me jump that talk of it in ages past had led many to believe that blood drinkers could fly, so perfectly did such leaping about imitate flying.

Sadly, I could not fly or turn into a bat. But who would want to be a bat?

I reached my destination in no time, as best as I could deduce without having been detected by anyone, and found a discrete place to leap to the ground.

Things at the intersection were as I hoped. On what ordinarily would have been a bustling street corner, I found barely a soul. The place was not quite totally empty, but it was the next best impersonation of it. After a slight bit of looking around, I found Pemberton, standing with a stalwart set to his shoulders despite the faint look of worry in his eyes. The moment he saw my approaching form in the shadows, he froze.

"Hello, Pemberton," I said.

He hesitated before saying with more brio than I'd expected, "What you doing witching around here?" He clearly was frightened of me, as well he should be.

"Now is that any way to greet a friend?" I spoke in the faux masculine voice that I had cultivated over the years for just such encounters. It didn't matter that everyone already knew, or at least suspected, that I was a woman. Doubt was always an ally.

"How am I your friend?" He took a slight step backward before catching himself and squaring his shoulders toward me. "Was that you that killed Bogdan?"

When working this block, I mostly kept to the shadows, of which there were many, but I had come into the streetlights a few times when Pemberton was present, just long enough to drag one or two of his comrades into the darkness where they were never seen again.

I didn't need to frighten this young man any more than I had already. I stepped into the shabby illumination of a streetlight, but only barely, just enough to where he could get a better look at me.

"Pemberton, I'm your friend because I could have killed you but didn't. Bogdan was a leach. He and the others were sucking money and life out of you. Do better for yourself."

The young man had the nerve to snort. It was brilliant. "Oh, you're a social worker?"

"Nope. Just a concerned citizen. Do whatever you want with your life, but do it north of the park. Anybody working the streets south of there from now on will get what Bogdan got."

"Yeah, you've said that before."

"And yet, Pemberton, you keep coming down this way."

"Free country, ain't it?"

"No."

The young man hesitated. I reached into my pocket and took out a thick roll of hundreds that I'd pocketed for this circumstance. I gently extended the bankroll toward the young man as a peace gesture.

He almost reached for it, before saying, "What's that?"

"Exactly what it looks like," I said. "This ain't a free country. This little patch you're standing on belongs to me, and to me only. I'm compensating you for moving elsewhere."

"And if I don't wanna?"

I said nothing but gestured again with the money. The young man reached toward me as if I might bite him—smart lad—and accepted my offer.

"What now?" he asked.

"You have a pleasant evening. And spread the word. Everybody stays north of the park."

"And if they don't?"

"Ask Bogdan."

I slipped back into the shadows, and soon was off the streets, up the side of a building, and on the rooftops again, where I spent some time watching the series of streets and corners that until recently had been the site of a lively criminal trade.

Pemberton stood for a time where I'd left him. No doubt he'd worked that street for a long while, years perhaps. None knew better than me how habit could be hard to break. And moving his criminal enterprise to another neighborhood almost certainly carried risks of its own. That's why I gave him the money.

Even more, he seemed to be a person the other street workers looked to for guidance in the absence of their bosses. If Pemberton left, so too would the others—or so I anticipated.

I watched the young man below for some minutes as he paced back and forth, as if deep in thought. After about 20 minutes, he turned on his heel and headed up the street. He soon was gone from my sight.

I dallied about for a time more, until about an hour before sunrise to be precise. There really wasn't much to see there. It did give me a little time to think, though.

I had enjoyed my trip to Chicago because my time with Rohan and Isolde had been a vacation from the many cares that I'd adopted in recent months. Don't get me wrong, I'd had more than enough freedom in my life, and the obligations I recently had taken were not unbearable. I simply wasn't used to them. On the contrary, the life I'd built with Fallon was perfect.

True, there were responsibilities, but I'd eliminated two of them in rapid succession, or so I'd expected. I was completely finished cannibalizing Gregory Whitefarrow's business empire. That had been an onerous amount of work that now was done. And I believed that my work cleaning up the local criminal element was complete.

I still had errands to run for Fallon in her absence, but those were no trouble. She was deeply involved with a series of support groups for domestic abuse survivors. Over the next days, it was my job to make sure everything was ready for a few meetings and to do a little handholding. I also needed to meet with a few lawyers who did pro bono work for the support group. That was a trifle.

Somewhat less trifling was the fallout of Fallon's belief that I was a superhero. From time to time in recent months, she'd found herself trying to help someone in the midst of a personal crises that involved an abusive boyfriend, spouse, or parent. It simply was the nature of running a support network of that type. It was on those rare occasions that I felt a gentle pressure to step in, behind the scenes, lest my sweet young friend place herself in the line of danger. That's what love does to us.

No, even late-night visits to the occasional abusive spouse was no great tedium, so I had no real right to complain about my two new responsibilities.

The first of those was important. I needed to figure out what to do about Officer McConnell and whoever might be behind him, if such a person truly existed. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the man would plague Fallon more in the future. There was something queer and deliberate in the way he had focused on her. That wasn't going to end well for him or for anyone else involved.

And, of course, there was the matter of a gym bag full of diamonds that I had no intention of allowing to go abegging. They needed to be in my hands, where they would be safe. But I guess that really wasn't an errand or a responsibility; it was more of a joy.