He exhaled, and my eyes closed when a wash of bliss rose from my new wound, melting my fear like spun sugar. He was bespelling me. I knew it. I couldn’t fight it. And God help me, I wanted to. All I could manage was a small sound in protest when his fingers moved the collar of my leather jacket aside.

“No,” Ivy whispered, fear in her voice. My eyes opened, only to be caught by DeLavine’s. He was before me now, a hand raised against Ivy behind me. Rex twined about my feet, purring. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This is not what was supposed to happen!

Jenks’s face was drawn tight. He had been told not to interfere, knew it would make matters worse. Beyond him, Nick was stiff with horror. I didn’t think it stemmed from DeLavine. I think it was from the new stitches on my neck and what they meant. Ivy had bitten me, and my face warmed at his unvoiced accusation. He thought I had failed, that I had let my passions rule me and let Ivy take advantage of it.

My jaw clenched and my chin rose. It was none of Nick’s business what I did with whom. And I hadn’t given in because of passion; I had tried to understand her, or maybe myself.

But DeLavine took it as defiance and gently caressed the sore edges of my bite.

Adrenaline jerked through me. My weakened pulse tried to absorb it, and failed. I gasped when feeling raced from his soft brush against the healing wound, streaming through me, both familiar and alien since it came from an unfamiliar vampire. The difference struck a chord in me I hadn’t known was there, and my vision darkened when my blood loss couldn’t cope with the new demand.

Jenks moved. From the edge of my sight I saw Ivy crash into him. “Sorry,” she grunted, making a mallet of her hands by covering her fist with another and slamming it into his head.

Mouth open, Nick stood in the kitchen, watching the pixy’s eyes roll up and him drop like a stone, unconscious. The human backed up until he could back up no more. He thought Ivy had given me to DeLavine. What she had done was save Jenks’s life, and probably everyone else’s, since a pitched fight would set DeLavine off. This way, only I would die.

“Let me…” DeLavine whispered for me alone, and he circled with Rex trailing happily behind him, the vampire scenting everything, weighing, calculating.

My breath came in a heave, and I held it. My knees were locked to keep me upright. Ivy couldn’t do a thing, and I could hear her frustration in her breathing as she forced herself to not interfere. She couldn’t best DeLavine. Not without leaning on Piscary’s strength, and she was out of his influence. DeLavine knew it. That we had invited him here to help Peter meant little.

“Bitten and unbound,” the undead vampire said, and a shudder rippled through me. “Free for the taking. I sense two demon marks on you. I feel two bites, but only one reached your soul, and so carefully—so careful she was, a kiss so soft, but a whisper. And someone…someone has put their mark in your very…cells. Claimed by many, belonging to none. Who would look to me to get you back?”