Twice Dead by Kalayna Price

his face. As another sob sliced the air, he fell to his knees.
    Then he lowered himself completely prostrate before the Collector.
    “I didn’t know. I swear to you. I thought she was Selene. Luna was alive when I left her.”
    “Silence!” The Collector’s voice boomed through the room, and for the first time her composure cracked. The look she gave her prostrate guard verged on homicidal, but then she cleared her throat and smoothed the front of her skirt. When she looked back up, her eyes were once again calm, her mouth unemotive. She nodded to Tatius. “Your companion was correct. Can her inhuman nose tell us anything else?”
    Tatius smiled at her, and it was an oily, smug tilting of his lips. “It is a shame about the disobedience in your bloodstock, Collector. You might need to question them further. My companion,” he looked at me, lifting an eyebrow. I tilted my head back, searching the scents in the room, but a yawn caught me unexpectedly and cracked across my face. “Is quite exhausted, as you can see. Dawn draws near. We should conclude this discussion before we retire for the day.”
    The Collector nodded, but her eyes were on me. Watching.
    Analyzing. I pressed three fingers over my mouth, covering my yawn as I stared back at her, knowing that, at least at the moment, my face betrayed nothing, particularly not interest.
    Returning her stare probably wasn’t exactly respectful, but I’d spent a good deal of my life as a cat, and every cat, everywhere, has mastered the disinterested stare. Her bottom lip twitched, like she’d suppressed a frown or some other disapproving expression, then her gaze slid away, dismissing me.
    “This has been a most unenlightening investigation. Should I assume you will compensate me for the loss of one of my collectables?” she asked, her voice deceptively bored, as if she could barely be troubled to look into Luna’s death any longer.
    “Of course,” Tatius said, flashing teeth without smiling.
    “That is, if fault is found in my people.”
    I blinked, trying to push back the exhaustion suddenly pressing down on me. Tatius hadn’t been lying about dawn approaching.
    Time for good kittens to be in bed, I suppose. Tatius’s voice said inside my head.
    “Excuse us,” he said aloud. He crooked a finger, and a female vampire pushed off the wall. “Take Kita to our chambers,” he told her when she was only half across the room.
    I stiffened at the words. Our chambers?
    “I—” I didn’t get a chance to finish, or even start. My jaw snapped closed, blocking off my words. I felt an alien smile crawl over my lips as my body moved on its own. Great, one kitten-puppet, made to order.
    Tatius leaned down, pressing a kiss against my mouth. A surprisingly chaste kiss. Maybe it just wasn’t fun to control his partner in a kiss—kind of like a teenager making out with a mirror.
    Go with Samantha. I’ll be there as soon as I finish here.
    And use that nose of yours as you pass the Collector’s vampires. With that, he dismissed me and turned back to the Collector.
    I glanced at Nathanial. He was staring at me, his mask perfect everywhere but his eyes. And when those lost eyes met mine, he squeezed them shut, looked away. I wished I could have closed my eyes too. Made the vampires all disappear. But I’d made my choice, given my word. Nathanial and I were alive. And I guess I was now going to learn where exactly Tatius and my ‘chambers’ were.
    * * * *
    I paced across the main room in Tatius’s underground suite. I had no idea if I was still somewhere under Death’s Angel or if these underground hallways had taken me halfway across the city. Samantha had shown me to my new ‘chambers’ which, like most other rooms in this place, were mostly cloth draped stone.
    Dawn pressed against me, making each step I took heavier, but I had to keep moving. If I stopped, I’d fall asleep. I will fall down if I do not lie down soon, I thought, but the thought sounded like