Page 116 of Tin God

“I know.” Carwyn knew she had to be. Any immortal not strong enough to hold that leash would be consumed by it. Carwyn whispered, “But you’re also at the average age.”

Brigid blinked. “What’s that?”

“You’re at the average age of a fire vampire,” he repeated softly. “You’ve been a vampire for roughly fourteen years.”

“And?”

“That’s about average,” he said. “It’s not like there’ve been studies, my love. But after a thousand years, you notice things. And one of them is that if a fire vampire makes it past fifteen, chances are” —he nodded— “they’ll survive.”

Her expression was bleak. “Because most of us die young.”

Carwyn nodded. “Your element isn’t a kind mother, Brigid. It’s a lion.”

“It’ll serve me, but only if it doesn’t have to protect me,” she murmured. “So how do I let my lion know that I don’t need to be protected?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe a better question is: Does that man at the circus ever really tame the lion?” The corner of her mouth turned up. “Or is it all an elaborate trick?”

Summer Mackenzie tappedthe tablet to end her call with her sire before she turned to the vampire sitting on her right. “Well, that’s interesting.”

“What is it?” Her best friend, Raven, was flipping through files across the room, fingering the short twists she’d just had braided into her normally short-cropped hair.

“Leave your hair alone. It’s cute.”

Raven huffed out a breath. “It feels weird. What did the boss want?”

“Do you recognize the name Henri Paulson?”

Katya’s office in Vancouver was a concrete apartment building in the Beach District. Perched on the seawall and overlooking the harbor, the building housed most of the vampire’s support staff in the city. It sat right on the water, which made water vampires like Summer happy, but it also had wraparound balconies, which made air vampires like Raven content.

Raven shrugged. “Paulson’s a tech billionaire of the fanged persuasion. Water type. He’s in and out of the port in the summer, but he doesn’t cause trouble.”

“Does he have day people around here that you know of?”

Raven narrowed dark brown eyes and looked at the glowing lights of Vancouver out the window. “I can think of two or three people who would probably work with him, but I don’t know that they’re exclusive.”

Summer had discovered that around any vampire community, there were contract employees who were hired to do daylight jobs but not permanently attached to any particular vampire. They were kind of like immortal gig workers, and Summer had even used a few in her time for… personal errands.

“Katya wants us to go to the gold exchange tomorrow night.”

Raven’s eyebrows went up. “Why?”

“Sounds like Paulson’s up to something,” Summer said. “Someone told the boss that he’s moving a ton of gold into Vancouver, getting a lot of Canadian dollars. Enough to be noticeable.”

“Okay,” Raven said. “He might be buying a new boat or something. I think that guy is obsessed with boats. Mostly lives on one.” She cocked her head. “Would you do that?”

“Live on a boat?” Summer considered it. “I might, but I like fresh water more than salt. I’d live in a houseboat in a hot minute though. Or one of those canal boats in Europe.”

“Yeah, those are cool.” Raven shook her head. “But I would not be your roommate.”

“Fair enough.” Summer looked at the notes she’d taken while she was on the phone with her sire. “Katya wants to find out what Paulson’s doing with all the cash he’s pulling out.”

Raven put down her files. “Wait, he’s taking all this gold out of the exchange incash?”

“Yeah. Twenty million worth of green Canadian dollars, my friend.”

Raven’s mouth dropped open. “That’s… a lot of cash. And Canadian currency isn’t green.”

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