She frowned at him. “Are you insane? I’m not dead. I only slept as you said I would. What madness are you trying to convince me of?”

“No madness,” he said, his eyes burning into her. “When we wed, I bound our souls together with my mother’s sorcery. I told you that night that I didn’t want to exist without you and I meant it. When your father killed you, I swore vengeance against him, and after he killed me, a goddess came and offered me a bargain. I sold my soul to her so that I could avenge you by killing him. For you. I didn’t understand when I made the bargain with Artemis that it would involve you, too. Because I live, you live. We are joined together. Forever.” Then he did the most unbelievable thing of all. He opened his mouth to show her a set of long, sharp fangs.

He was an upyri!

Her heart pounded in terror. It couldn’t be! This wasn’t her beloved husband, he was an unholy demon. “You’re in league with Lucifer. My father was right. All of the Danestis are an evil who must be purged from this earth.”

“Not evil, Esperetta. My love for you is pure and good. I swear it.”

She curled her lip at him as she pried his grip from her arm. “And my love for you is as dead as my father,” she spat before she ran through the fog once more.

Velkan forced himself to stand still and not follow her again. His bride was young and she’d been through a shock tonight.

She would return to him. He was certain of it. In all the violence and horror of his life, she’d been the only thing he’d ever had that was good and gentle. She alone had touched his long dead heart and caused it to live again. Surely, she wouldn’t stay angry at him. Not when all he’d done was protect her.

She would see the truth and she would return to him.

“Come back to me soon, my Esperetta.” And then he uttered the one word that had never left his lips before. “Please.”

1

Chicago, 2006

“Just out of curiosity, can an immortal choke to death on a baby?”

Retta Danesti cut a vicious glare to her best friend as she tried to swallow the bite that was lodged painfully in her throat. As a shape-shifter who’d befriended her over five hundred years ago, Francesca was well aware of the fact that Retta’s husband had sold their souls to the goddess Artemis and by default made Retta immortal.

And Francesca’s latest news had stunned her so badly, she’d sucked a piece of bagel down her windpipe, where it burned like fire.