Not until she'd made a full circle around him did she come to a halt, hands in the pockets of her black leather pants. "Why fight it? Your Margrit's in it up to her neck no matter what you do. She made her own promises to the dragonlord Janx, without part or parcel of you, so there's no escaping the Old Races, not for that one. If you want her, gargoyle, pursue her."

"It is not so simple as that."

"You've said the vampire gave her blood for health. Another sip brings long life, and he's hungry to have a hook in her. You can get what you want, Alban, but not by sulking belowground. I offered you shelter in return for helping to watch over my children. I didn't mean for you to pull the streets over your head and pretend the world wasn't there. Go live. You might find it suits you."

"How do you know what you know, Grace?"

"What?" She launched herself into motion and had her hand on the doorknob before he spoke again.

"How do you know these things about the Old Races?" He had no illusions that the power of his voice might stop her, but he asked regardless. "That two sips of a vampire's blood brings long life, or that I chose Margrit over one of my own. I've told no one that. You're not one of us, just a human wo -"

"Just." Grace turned her profile to him, pale and sharp. "Now there you might have a problem with your lawyer lass, my friend. Humans don't take kindly to being just anything."

Alban gritted his teeth with a sound of stone grinding on stone. "I meant no offense. You are a human woman beneath the streets of New York. Such people aren't expected to be conversant with the Old Races at all, much less possessed of intimate details about us. How do you know so much?"