"Oh, yeah?"

"You don't like blondes."

Not anymore he didn't. "Maybe I just wasn't into her."

"I know what you want."

As Butch's newest Scotch arrived, he gave it a quick vertical workout. "Do you now?"

"It's my job. Trust me."

"No offense, but I'd rather not about this."

"Tell you what, cop." The Reverend leaned in close and he smelled fantastic. Then again, Cool Water by Davidoff was an oldie but goodie. "I'll help you anyway."

Butch clapped a hand on the male's heavy shoulder. "Only interested in bartenders, buddy. Good Samaritans give me the scratch."

"Sometimes only the opposite will do."

"Then we're SOL." Butch nodded out at the half-naked crowd writhing on hits of X and coke. "Everyone looks the same around here."

Funny, during his years in the Caldwell Police Department, ZeroSum had been an enigma to him. Everyone knew the place was a drug hole and a sex pool. But no one at the CPD had been able to pin down enough probable cause to get a search warrant—even though you could walk in any night of the week and see dozens of legal infractions, most of them happening in tandem.

But now that Butch was hanging with the Brotherhood, he knew why. The Reverend had lots of little tricks in his bag when it came to changing people's perceptions of events and circumstances. As a vampire, he could scrub clean the memories of any human, manipulate security cameras, dematerialize at will. The guy and his biz were a moving target that never moved.

"Tell me something," Butch said, "how have you managed to keep your aristocratic family from knowing about this little night job you got going on?"

The Reverend smiled so that only the tips of his fangs showed. "Tell me something, how did a human get so tight with the Brotherhood?"