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responded with a mumble of breath that was too faint for even Malcolm to discern.
    “What?”
    “I’ve been letting the girls shop on the credit card, and then their accountant pays out the cash back.”
    Rolling his head from side to side, cracking vertebrae, helped Malcolm focus. Frederick’s credit cards were paid by his office and, outside of a yearly audit, he rarely reviewed what the boy spent his money on. “So you were trading credit card points for straight cash.”
    “Yeah, for a while. I’m a little old to be coming to you or Mom with my hand out.”
    “Well, at least on that point we can agree.” He held up a hand when Frederick opened his mouth. “No, the adult is talking now and you’re going to shut up. First, you stole the jet. You didn’t borrow it. Since there was no report of the jet’s usage, I can only think you persuaded the pilots. Second, you’re embezzling money from the family corporations using bait and switch with your credit card. Third, you violated the laws of the casino by persuading an employee to cheat for you. Am I missing anything?”
    “Well, there might have been a small incident with one of the incubi the first night we were here, but he’ll recover.”
    Staring at the younger vampire across the table, Malcolm counted to one hundred. In Latin. Pampered and spoiled his entire adult life by parents who spent seven centuries longing for a child had done his cousin no good.
    “Mal, if you just pay the fine, I’m sure we can sort it all out. You can take it out of my trust fund. I’ll even agree to banishment from the casino. It’s all good, right?”
    “No, Frederick. It’s not all good.” In fact, it was beyond the pale just how bad this was. Naiveté was no excuse for stupidity. Exhaling slowly, he tapped his index finger against the table. “Start at the beginning, in Montauk. Leave nothing out.”
    His cousin deflated before his eyes and in a cruel, quiet part of his soul, Malcolm smiled. Maybe the danger Frederick found himself in was finally sinking into his empty head. And maybe that was just wishful thinking.
    For a moment, his mind turned to the beautiful woman sitting across the table last night, her emerald eyes beckoning with her haunting request. I need your help . With a sigh, he forced his mind away to listen carefully for anything he could use to defend Frederick’s inexcusable actions.
     
     
    By sunset on the second night, Malcolm still cooled his heels, waiting for an audience with the Overseers. They’d sent two aides to placate him. Aides he’d sent back with firmer requests each time. The Overseers were powerful, of that he possessed no doubt. They carved an entire slice of the prince of Las Vegas’s kingdom out for themselves. They made the rules, they set the tone and they had the final say. They took personally the human slogan of what happened in Vegas, stayed in Vegas.
    One phone call to Richard, the prince of New York, and he cashed in a long-owed favor. The prince would apply pressure to the princes in Monte Carlo, St. Petersburg and Shreveport, as well as send emissaries to the South American princes. The Arcana Royale’s vassal holdings extended around the globe and Malcolm could make their businesses very uncomfortable for them.
    He reconsidered his intentions to return to the Midnight Mystery Lounge. Pandora proved a wild distraction for most of the day. He was better off concentrating on freeing his cousin from the interminable mess, particularly since the terrible twins remained firmly absent from the property. They’d apparently left as soon as casino security took Frederick into custody.
    They also took one of the casino’s coveted incubi and casino hosts with them. One or two discreet phone calls put the Reynolds’s corporate bloodhounds on their trail, but there seemed little chance of locating them swiftly, and returning the incubi would only mitigate one of the lesser offenses.
    The two million his cousin cheated stood