“Ah,” Naomi said. “And may I bring Eve?”

Theo should not have said yes to that, of course; no way. But he just nodded as if it was the Best Idea Ever. He turned to the guards and said, in a warm and perfectly self-assured voice, “Yes, I think they should both come with me. My responsibility, gentlemen.”

The guards looked doubtful, and they must have known something weird was up, but they didn’t stop us. I guess Naomi really did outrank most vampires. We walked with Theo down the hall.

He opened the locked door to a room there, and we went inside, and my hand instinctively flew to cover my nose and mouth, because this place smelled. It looked fine, but … it was a horrible, wet, nasty stench.

Theo didn’t seem at all surprised.

“She’s in the other room?” Naomi asked.

Theo turned to face her. “Naomi, perhaps now would be a good time to mention to you that I am quite immune to your powers of persuasion. You’d do well to not try that on someone less … forgiving. Oliver would have crushed you if you’d tried it.”

“Oh.” Naomi was, I thought, honestly taken aback. “But you—”

“Allowed you to come with me? Yes. Because I want to talk to you without prying ears. That’s why I didn’t crush you myself. I can, you know. One doesn’t survive as long as I have without knowing how to do these things, even if they don’t come naturally.” For a moment Theo actually looked dangerous. “What do you really intend here, Naomi?”

“I intend to save our lives,” she said. “As I expect you secretly want, Theo. My sister cannot be saved, can she?” At a slow shake of his head, she sighed. “Then there’s nothing for it. Oliver’s a fool if he lets the transformation become complete. I know my sister. I know her powers. If she transforms into a master draug, as Magnus intends, she will be able to force any of us to her will; it’s a power that only a few have, as you know, but my sister has it in full strength. Combined with the will and hunger of a draug … she would end us all.”

Theo, I realized, wasn’t surprised. Just wary. “And you propose?”

“You know what I propose. You’re no fool.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then he said, “No. I don’t accept defeat so easily, and you shouldn’t either. We are vampire, whether we ever wanted it or not, and vampires survive. It is the core of what we are. We fought for life when life wasn’t ours to keep. And she is still fighting. She has not lost the battle yet.”

“We can’t wait until she does!” Naomi hissed, and shoved herself away from him. She wrapped her arms around herself and paced like an agitated tiger. “What remains is not my sister. That thing is a virus grown inside her body, stealing her soul—”