“I gave him what he wanted as well as what he asked for, even though he’d done that last because he knew I’d refuse. That I’d give him an excuse to walk off. If I’d known him then as well as I do now, I’d have known there was no way he’d have left me. I’m not sure Thomas knows that.” She gave me an incredulous look. “Talking. Who would have thought talking to someone would be so useful. I bet he, too, needs to know that he would not have left me there.”

Oh, I knew that battle. “Good luck,” I said. “When your man is responsible for the world, heaven forbid they aren’t guilty of every little thing.”

She giggled. Looked at me and broke down in whoops of amusement. “Isn’t that the truth, now,” she said when she quieted, wiping her eyes.

She laughed again and shook her head. “Anyway. We struck a bargain that night, but it was more than either of us expected. There is magic in bargaining with one of my kind that has nothing to do with what I had the power to do or not do. There, that’s some repayment for you. That’s why so many of the fae are willing to strike odd bargains—they can gain power from it. And mine wasn’t the only bargain present that night. Thomas’s father had bargained with the master vampire who made him. Two bargains in the Heart of the Hill—there is power in the deep places of the earth, Mercy. There was also my fire magic, tempered to a stronger force by my royal birth and his . . .” She hesitated. “Some things are his secrets to give. But there is magic in Thomas’s heritage, too. I gave him three gifts. His freedom from the vampire who had bound him—that was Thomas’s own power made manifest. From my magic, I—” She sucked in a breath. “You are easy to talk to. I think that is something else that belongs to Thomas.”

I nodded. “I can live with that.” It was the truth, but I was very curious anyway.

She laughed. “That was almost a lie.” She looked at me. “I tell you what. I’ll tell Thomas what we talked about, and he can tell you if he chooses.”

“I can live with that better,” I said. “Or at least, it isn’t any worse.” But then I got an inkling. A terrible horrible very, very scary inkling.

No normal vampire would have chosen a hotel like the Marriott. There were too many windows—and the ones in their room all faced the east, where the sun would rise.

And Margaret said that her power, like her father’s, came from the sun.