The rest happened too fast. He looked up, saw the face of the Oracle, pale and inquisitive, touching the glass. Her eyes were open. He staggered back, screaming, tripped over his own feet and landed at those of the sleeping lab assistant. Blood pooled around the guy's sneakers. He wasn't just sleeping.

Don opened his mouth to scream, but the sound never made it out.

Chapter One
Inevitability

"Carrie, I think it's time you call Nathan."

I knew that statement would come, sooner or later. I'd just been hoping it would be much, much later.

We were lounging in Max's bedroom, the only room in his spacious, opulently furnished condo that had a television. For the past three weeks, all we'd done was lie around during the days and prowl various blues clubs at night. It wasn't as though I hadn't had time to talk to Nathan. I just hadn't wanted to.

When I didn't answer, Max sighed heavily. He folded his arms and leaned against the carved headboard of his antique bed, the only piece of furniture in the room that wasn't modern. He seemed strange and anachronistic on it. Having been turned in the late seventies, Max was the youngest vampire I knew. Besides myself, of course. He'd adapted to the changing times much more easily than some vampires did. Max kept his sandy-blond hair cut short and spiky, and his uniform of T-shirts and jeans helped him blend so perfectly with the twenty-something population of Chicago, I forgot at times that he was really old enough to be my biological father.

Clearly, he was about to pull chronological rank. "It's been almost a month now. I don't mind you crashing here. Hell, most nights you've been one mojito away from a rebound fling, and being the only male here, I'm digging the odds. But Nathan is my friend. If you're splitting up permanently, he deserves to know."

I refused to argue that the only thing my sire and I had between us was the blood tie, our weird psychological link that made us privy to each other's thoughts and emotions. Even that didn't connect us so much, lately. Nathan seemed to be blocking me from his mind. The few times I'd tried to communicate with him, I'd gotten only terse, vague answers. I supposed it was better than begging me to come back, but it stung nonetheless.

Still, Max wouldn't take simple logic for an answer. The many, many times I'd tried to explain my nonrelationship with Nathan, Max had refused to see reason. "He wouldn't have asked you to stay if he didn't love you," he'd insisted. "Just because he doesn't admit it doesn't mean it's not true."