“No. If I tell you, you die.” Raphael had made that very clear before he’d let her leave Central Park.

Tell anyone—man, woman, or child—and we’ll eliminate them. No exceptions.

Sara snorted. “Don’t be melodramatic. I’m—”

“He knew you’d ask,” she said, remembering what else the Archangel of New York had said to her in that deceptively easy tone. A naked blade sheathed in velvet, that was Raphael’s voice.

“Oh?”

“If I tell you, he won’t only take you and Deacon out, he’ll do the same to Zoe.”

The fury that crackled through the line was pure maternal protectiveness. “Bastard.”

“Totally agree.”

Sara seemed to be fuming too hard to speak for several long seconds. “The fact that he made that threat means this is big.”

“You saw the deposit?”

“Hell, did I see the deposit! I thought the accountant had screwed up and deposited the whole thing into our account instead of just the Guild percentage.” She blew out a breath. “Baby girl, that’s some kind of cash.”

“I don’t want it.” She was choking on the need to share the sheer incomprehensibility of the task with Sara, with that idiot Ransom, but she couldn’t. “He’s already cut me off from my best friends.” Her hand fisted.

“Let him try,” Sara said. “So you can’t tell me the details. Big deal. I’ll figure it out soon enough. I have some idea.”

Excitement danced up Elena’s spine. “You do?”

“Killer vampire?” She paused. “Okay, you can’t answer but seriously, what else could it be?”

Elena slumped again.

“Remember that one that went rogue?”

“There’s been more than one,” she said lightly, even as her blood ran cold.

“About twenty years ago. We studied him in our Guild classes.”

Not twenty, Elena thought, eighteen. “Slater Patalis.” The name fell from her lips like a piece of nightmare, one she’d never shared with anyone, not even the best friend she trusted with everything else. “How many did he end up killing?” she asked—forced herself to ask—before Sara’s antennae could start to twang.