She emerged on the rooftop.
There was a sort of roof garden here-anyway, a lot of scraggly plants in large wooden tubs. There was
also some dirty patio furniture and other odds and ends. But the main feature was a small structure that
sat on the roof the way a house sits on a street.
Morgead's home. The penthouse. It was as stark and unlovely as the rest of the building, but it had a
great view and it was completely private. There were no other tall buildings nearby to look down on it.
Jez moved stealthily toward the door. Her feet made no noise on the pitted asphalt of the roof, and she
was in a state of almost painfully heightened awareness. In the old days sneaking up on
another gang member had been a game. You got to laugh at them if you could startle them, and they got
to be furious and humiliated.
Today it wasn't a game.
Jez started toward the warped wooden door-then stopped. Doors were trouble. Morgead would have
been an idiot not to have rigged it to alert him to intruders.
Cat-quiet, she headed instead for a narrow metal ladder that led to the roof of the wooden structure.
Now she was on the real top of the building. The only thing higher was a metal flagpole without a
She moved noiselessly across the new roof. At the far edge she found herself looking four stories straight
down. And directly below her there was a window.
An open window.
Jez smiled tightly.
Then she hooked her toes over the four-inch lip at the edge of the roof and dropped gracefully forward.
She grabbed the top of the window in mid-dive and hung suspended, defying gravity like a bat attached
upside down. She looked inside.
And there he was. Lying on a futon, asleep. He was sprawled on his back, fully clothed in jeans, high
boots, and a leather jacket. He looked good.
Just like the old days, Jez thought. When the gang would stay out all night riding their bikes and hunting
or fighting or partying, and then come home in the morning to scramble into clothes for school. Except
Morgead, who would smirk at them
and then collapse. He didn't have parents or relatives to keep him from skipping.
I'm surprised he's not wearing his helmet, too, she thought, pulling herself back up to the roof. She
picked up the fighting stick, maneuvered it into the window, then let herself down again, this time hanging
by her hands. She slid in without making a noise.
Then she went to stand over him.
He hadn't changed. He looked exactly as she remembered, except younger and more vulnerable
because he was asleep. His face was pale, making his dark hair seem even darker. His lashes were black
crescents on his cheeks.
Evil and dangerous, Jez reminded herself. It annoyed her that she had to remind herself of what
Morgead was. For some reason her mind was throwing pictures at her, scenes from her childhood while
she was living here in San Francisco with her Uncle Bracken.
A five-year-old Jez, with shorter red hair that looked as if it had never been combed, walking with a little
grimy-faced Morgead, hand in hand. An eight-year-old Jez with two skinned knees, scowling as a
businesslike Morgead pulled wood splinters out of her legs with rusty tweezers. A seven-year-old
Morgead with his face lit up in astonishment as Jez persuaded him to try the human thing called ice
cream....
Stop it, Jez told her brain flatly. You might as well give up, because it's no good. We were friends
then-well, some of the time-but we're enemies
now. He's changed. I've changed. He'd kill me in a second now if it would suit his purpose. And I'm
going to do what has to be done.
She backed up and poked him lightly with the stick. "Morgead."
His eyes flew open and he sat up. He was awake instantly, like any vampire, and he focused on her
without a trace of confusion. Jez had changed her grip on the stick and was standing ready in case he
went straight into an attack.
But instead, a strange expression crossed his face. It went from startled recognition into something Jez
didn't understand. For a moment he was simply staring at her, eyes big, chest heaving, looking as if he
were caught in between pain and happiness.
Then he said quietly, "Jez."
"Hi, Morgead."
"You came back."
Jez shifted the stick again. "Apparently."
He got up in one motion. "Where the hell have you been?"
Now he just looked furious, Jez noted. Which was easier to deal with, because that was how she
remembered him.
"I can't tell you," she said, which was perfectly true, and would also annoy the life out of him.
It did. He shook his head to get dark hair out of his eyes-it was always disheveled in the morning, Jez
remembered-and glared at her. He was standing easily: not in any attack posture, but with the relaxed
readiness that meant he could go flying in
any direction at any moment. Jez kept half her mind on watching his leg muscles.
"You can't tell me? You disappear one day without any kind of warning, without even leaving a note...
you leave the gang and me and just completely vanish and nobody knows where to find you, not even
your uncle .. . and now you reappear again and you can't tell me where you were?" He was working
himself into one of his Extremely Excited States, Jez realized. She was surprised; she'd expected him to
stay cooler and attack hard.
"What did you think you were doing, just cutting out on everybody? Did it ever occur to you that people
would be worried about you? That people would think you were dead?"
It didn't occur to me that anyone would care, Jez thought, startled. Especially not you. But she couldn't
say that. "Look, I didn't mean to hurt anybody. And I can't talk about why I went. But I'm back now-"
"You can't just come back!"
Jez was losing her calm. Nothing was going the way she'd expected; the things she'd scripted out to say
weren't getting said. "I know I can't just come back-"
"Because it doesn't work that way!" Morgead was pacing now, tossing hair out of his eyes again as he
turned to glare at her. "Blood in, blood out. Since you're apparently not dead, you abandoned us. You're
not allowed to do that! And you certainly can't expect to just walk back in and become my second
again-"
"I don't!" Jez yelled. She had to shut him up. "I have no intention of becoming your
second-in-command!" she said when he finally paused. "I came to challenge you as leader."
Morgead's jaw dropped.
Jez let her breath out. That wasn't exactly how she'd planned to say it. But now, seeing his shock, she
felt more in control. She leaned casually against the wall, smiled at him, and said smoothly, 'I was leader
when I left, remember."
"You... have got to be ... joking." Morgead stared at her. "You expect to waltz back in here as
leader?"
"If I can beat you. I think I can. I did it once."
He stared for another minute, seeming beyond words. Then he threw back his head and laughed.
It was a scary sound.
When he looked at her again, his eyes were bright and hard. "Yeah, you did. I've gotten better since
then."
Jez said three words. "So have I."
And with that, everything changed. Morgead shifted position-only slightly, but he was now in a fighting
stance. Jez felt adrenaline flow through her own body. The challenge had been issued and accepted;
there was nothing more to say. They were now facing each other ready to fight.
And this she could deal with. She was much better at fighting than at playing with words. She knew
Morgead in this mood; his pride and his skill had been questioned and he was now absolutely determined
to win. This was very familiar.
Without taking his eyes from her, he reached out and picked a fighting stick from the rack behind him.
Japanese oak, Jez noted. Heavy, well-seasoned, resilient. Good choice.
The fire-hardened end was very pointy.
He wouldn't try to use that first, though. First, he would go for disarming her. The simplest way to do this
was to break the wrist of her dominant hand. After that he'd go for critical points and nerve centers. He
didn't play around at this.
A minute change in Morgead's posture alerted her, and then they were both moving.
He swung his stick up and down in a perfect arc, aiming for her right wrist. Jez blocked easily with her
own stick and felt the shock as wood clashed with wood. She instantly changed her grip and tried for a