But the woman hesitated only briefly. “Not from the I.S., are you?” she asked warily.

“Not anymore,” Ivy muttered, and flustered, I turned my back on them. Ivy saw nothing wrong with an illegal drug that had kept vampire society healthy and intact for untold years, but buying in front of me made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

“Ivy,” I protested when the woman disappeared into the back room again. “Trent’s?”

Ivy gave me a sidelong glance, eyebrows high. “It’s the only brand I’ll buy. And I need to restock my cache. You used it all.”

“I’m not taking any more,” I hissed, then straightened when the woman returned, holding a palm-sized package wrapped in masking tape.

“Medicinal?” she said, glancing at the aphrodisiac bottle. “You store it in that, lucky duck, and you’ll be the one that’s going to need medical attention.”

Ivy’s face blanked in surprise, and I dragged my bag from the counter, ready to flee. “It’s an aphrodisiac bottle,” I said. “Don’t pick things up unless you know what they are—Alexia.”

Ivy looked as guiltless as a puppy as she dropped the package into her open purse.

The woman smiled at us, and Ivy counted out thirteen hundred-dollar bills and coolly handed them over.

I blinked. Holy shit. Kalamack’s medicinal stuff was five times as expensive as the street variety.

“Keep the change,” Ivy said, taking my elbow and moving me to the door.

Twelve hundred dollars? I had sucked down Twelve hundred dollars of drugs in less than twenty-four hours? And that wasn’t counting Jenks’s contribution. “I don’t feel well,” I said, putting a hand to my stomach.

“You just need some air.”

Ivy guided me across the store and took my bag from me. There was the jingle of the door, and a flush of cool air. It was dark and cold on the street, matching my mood. Behind us came the sliding sound of an oiled lock, and the CLOSED sign flickered on. The store’s posted hours were from noon to midnight, but after a sale like that, you deserved to go home early.

Fumbling, I put a hand on the bench under a blue and white trolley-stop sign and sat down. I didn’t want to chance spewing in Kisten’s Corvette. It was the only thing we could drive around town in now that the truck had been seen fleeing a crash and neither Ivy nor I wanted to get in the van.

Shit. My roommates were turning me into a Brimstone addict.

Ivy gracefully folded herself to sit beside me, all the while scanning the street. “Medicinal grade is processed six times,” she said, “to pull out the endorphin stimulants, hallucinogenic compounds, and most of the neuron stimulators, to leave only the metabolism upper. Technically speaking, the chemical structure is so different, it’s not Brimstone.”

“That’s not helping,” I said, putting my head between my knees. There was gum stuck to the sidewalk, and I nudged it with my toe, finding it hardened to an immovable lump from the cold. Breathe: one, two, three. Exhale: one, two, three, four.