“Ivy, wait.” What she’d told me scared me, and I didn’t want to be alone. I had to figure this out. Maybe she was right. Oh God, was I really that screwed up?

Her long fingers gripped the handle, ready to pull the door open. “The van stinks of us both,” she said, not looking at me. “I should be good for a few days more, but the stress…I’ve got to get out of here. I’m sorry—damn it.” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, but I can’t comfort you without my blood lust getting in the way.” She looked up at me, her smile faint and carrying old pain. “Not much of a friend, am I?”

Without getting up, I fumbled my fingers past the curtain of the window above me and pushed the bottom out to open it. My heart pounded, and I took in the pine-scented air and hush of the passing traffic. “You’re a good friend. Does that help?” I asked in a small voice.

Ivy shook her head. “Come back to the room. Jenks will drag Nick in soon. We can all watch a movie and pretend nothing happened. It should be tremendously awkward. Tons of fun. I’ll be fine as long as I don’t sit next to you.”

Her expression was calm, but she sounded bitter. My face scrunched up and I curved my fingers around the warmth of the cocoa. I didn’t know what to think, but I was very sure I didn’t want Nick to know he had made me cry. “You go. I’ll come in when my eyes aren’t so red.”

I felt a sense of loss when Ivy stepped out of the van and then turned with her arms about her in the chill. It was obvious she knew the longer I stayed out here, the harder it was going to be for me to find the courage to come in. “Don’t you have a complexion charm?” she asked.

“They don’t work on bloodshot eyes,” I hedged. Damn it, what was wrong with me?

Ivy squinted in the glare and sharp breeze, then her face brightened. “I know…” she said, coming back in and slamming the door shut behind her to seal out the cold. I watched her push aside the front curtain and rummage in the console. Her eyes had returned to normal, the fresh air doing as much as the shift in topics. “Kisten probably has one in here,” she muttered, then turned with a tube of what looked like lipstick. “Ta-da!”

Ta-da, huh? I pulled myself straighter as she maneuvered around the clutter and sat on the cot beside me. “Lipstick?” I said, not used to having her that close.

“No. You put it under your eyes and the vapors keep the pupil constricted. It’ll take the red out too. Kist uses it for hangovers—among other things.”

“Oh!” I abruptly felt twice as unsure, not having known there was such a thing. I had always trusted a vampire’s pupils to give away their mood.