MlRA Books

ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2494-2

ISBN-10: 0-7783-2494-X

Copyright © 2007 by Jennifer Armintrout.

Contents

Also by Jennifer Armintrout

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter One Inevitability

Chapter Two Reconnected

Chapter Three Possessed

Chapter Four Oracle

Chapter Five Defenses

Chapter Six Conversations with Live People

Chapter Seven Homecoming

Chapter Eight A Bad Case of Nerves

Chapter Nine In the Flesh

Chapter Ten Sire

Chapter Eleven Fools Rush In

Chapter Twelve Back to Not Normal

Chapter Thirteen Triangle

Chapter Fourteen Clarence

Chapter Fifteen The Cause

Chapter Sixteen Vitality

Chapter Seventeen Mother

Chapter Eighteen Crash

Chapter Nineteen Hocus Pocus

Chapter Twenty Origins

Chapter Twenty-One From Bad…

Chapter Twenty-Two To Worse

Chapter Twenty-Three Back from the Dead

Chapter Twenty-Four Ashes to Ashes

Chapter Twenty-Five Bite

Chapter Twenty-Six Grave

Also by Jennifer Armintrout

Blood Ties Book One: The Turning

Blood Ties Book Two: Possession

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Jill, Warnament, The Wallses, Katy and Scott. Because without you all, my head might no longer fit through standard-sized doors.

Acknowledgments

These people had something to do with this book getting finished:

My critique group, Chel, Chris, Cheryl, Marti, Mary and Martha by proxy

My husband and son, who whine, complain, beg for attention and generally harass me. Until a check comes.

My agent, Kelly, and my editor, Linda. Everyone who bought books one and two.

And, oddly enough, Dr. Carrie Ames. She might not be real, but she does the hard part of this job.

Prologue

"Hey, Baker! You give her the seven o'clock meds yet?"

Don swung his legs from where they'd been propped on his desk, knocking the tower of empty soda cans from the corner. "Yes. I did. At seven o'clock. Check the sheet."

Leave it to Sanjay to ask a stupid question. Don shook his head and watched the new guy retrieve the clipboard from the hook beside the door and frown at the words. How he'd managed to live a hundred years was a mystery. Hell, Don had had close scrapes in his own twenty years as a vampire, more in his thirty years previous. How someone with double the lifespan could wander around in a state of constant confusion—

"Then this doesn't make any sense." Sanjay flipped the pages on the clipboard, but it was clear from the rapidity of his movements that he couldn't possibly be reading the charts. "It doesn't make any sense!"

"What doesn't make sense?" Always with the drama, these Movement scientists. "I gave her the meds."

Sanjay's worried brown eyes flicked up to meet Don's gaze." I know you did. I see it on the chart .But her brain activity is… too active. It's like she hasn't been sedated at all."