"Aphrodisiacs, love potions, all things she apparently used on you." Nathan snorted and read aloud, " 'Tried this and he couldn't get it up.'"

"I was probably very tired!" Cyrus snapped.

"I'm sure you were." I patted his head condescendingly. "What do you know about 'the cause'?"

Cyrus ducked my hand and smoothed his hair with an annoyed glare. "What cause?"

I shrugged. "Dahlia said it. It's why she had sex with Max."

Nathan looked up sharply. "She had sex with Max?"

"Believe me, I was as surprised as you are." I suppressed a shudder of revulsion. "I thought he had better taste."

Cyrus reached for the book. "Did she tell you anything else?"

As I tried to remember, pain ripped through my head, either from the blood or the poison. "She was making something… a potion. It smelled like burned cloves… "

From somewhere faraway, I heard Nathan say, "Grab her, she's going to fall." When I opened my eyes I was on the couch, and it felt as if someone had hurled an ax into my head. Nathan leaned over me, his face full of concern.

And anger.

"How did you get this information from Dahlia?" His stare seemed to cut through me and blanket me in his worry all at once.

"She… told me?" I wasn't a good liar on my best day. Nathan saw through my words easily.

He laughed, a tight, humorless sound, and I got the distinct feeling he was close to losing it. "She told you? You walked into the mansion, sat down over tea and she said, 'By the way, I had sex with your friend and I'm working on a shadowy purpose I'll only call 'the cause' ? Now, please leave my home unhindered so you can tell all your friends?"

"Of course not," I snapped, trying to sit up. I caught sight of Cyrus through the kitchen doorway, his fair head bent over the spell book. His lips moved silently as he read, making him look more boyish than I'd ever seen him, and my heart swelled at the sight.

"Carrie, focus." Nathan sounded tired and irritable, and I realized I hadn't shielded him from my feelings for Cyrus.

I wanted to reach out to Nathan and assure him I still loved him best, but something in his stiff, annoyed demeanor suggested that would be a bad idea.

"You knew Clarence was helping me," I hedged. Then I sighed, my brain too fuzzy to keep up a convincing lie. "He drugged her, and I drank her blood."

Nathan recoiled in horror. "Why would you do something like that?"

"Nostalgia?" Cyrus suggested blandly from the kitchen.

Nathan ignored him. "Carrie?"

"I drank your blood, mixed with Cyrus's, and I saw your… history. I thought if I drank her blood… " How could I have been so stupid? If I drank her blood, and she had been drugged, I'd ingested the drug myself. "It's hard to believe I ever passed the MCATs."