The man had never gone to trial. Instead, shortly after his arrest, he'd been found spread in grisly detail across the Rikers Island prison courtyard. Rumor said the inmates were told he'd been arrested for child molestation, and had meted out their own justice. Margrit had no intention of asking whether Daisani had taken matters into his own inhuman hands.

"Don't be silly, Margrit. Of course I kill people." Janx sounded downright cheerful, enough that she pulled the phone away to eye it. Uncomfortable as she was with the thought of the Old Races facing the human justice system, Janx's bald-faced admission was beyond the pale.

"I am a lawyer, Janx. You shouldn't go around telling me you kill people."

"You're not recording this conversation, are you?" Thin tension came back into Janx's voice at the question, lifting hairs on Margrit's arms. The dragonlord had rarely been anything but ruthlessly chipper in her experiences with him. She was certain she didn't want to know what was making him cautious, and equally certain she would find out. "I don't usually record my home phone calls, but if you're going to be calling up regularly to make blanket confessions, I might start. What's going on?"

"We'll discuss it this evening. I'll send a car for you."

"Just as long as Malik's not driving." The djinn, Janx's second in command, had none of the dragonlord's peculiar sense of honor. That Malik coveted power had been obvious in Margrit's first meeting with him, but he was no match in personality or intellect for Janx. A nasty, cruel man, he exercised what power he had over those he considered inferior, and Margrit numbered among them. Janx might play with her, cat and mouse, more interested in the game than domination, but Malik would simply hurt her until she broke or died. She had stood her ground against dragons and vampires, but it was the djinn who frightened her.