Snorting, I dumped the stew into the pot and set the dial to warm. “I’m guessing he hasn’t been here since the solstice, but he’s paid up to August and I had a key, so here we are. No one knows but Jenks. You’re safe,” I said hesitantly. For the moment.

Exhaling, Kisten sat and put an elbow on the table. “Thank you,” he said fervently. “I have to get out of Cincinnati.”

I had my back to him as I stirred the stew, and a shiver rose through me. “Maybe not.” The soft hush of the cotton towel as he straightened brought me around, and, seeing his wonder, I said, “I’m going to give Piscary the focus to put into hiding, if he will leave me alone and keep anyone else from knocking me or you off.”

Kisten’s lips parted, and I wished his towel would slip a little more. God! What was wrong with me? We were both teetering on death, and I was looking at his legs?

“You want to buy protection from Piscary?” Kisten said in disbelief. “After what he did to me? He gave my last blood to someone outside the camarilla! Do you know what that means? He’s abandoning me, Rachel! It’s not so much the dying I’m worried about, but being shunned. No one will risk his anger to keep me undead now except maybe Ivy, and if she’s his scion, that’s not going to happen.”

He was scared. I didn’t like seeing him like that. Taking a miserable breath, I leaned against the stove and crossed my arms. “It’s going to be okay. No one is going to kill you, so you’ll be fine. Besides, I’ve been getting protection from him by way of Ivy,” I said, thinking I would cheerfully be a hypocrite if it meant we both would survive. “This is just making it more official. I’m going to ask that he leave you alone, too. Take you back. It will be okay.”

Hope lit his blue eyes, then died. “He won’t,” he said in a flat tone.

“Sure he will,” I coaxed, coming to sit beside him.

“No he won’t.” Kisten looked worse for having seen hope for an instant. “He can’t. It’s done. You’d have to make arrangements with whoever he gave me to, and I don’t know who that is. I won’t until they show up. It’s part of the mind game.”

His eyes darted nervously, and I drew back. It wasn’t that cut-and-dried. I knew how vamps worked. Until the coffin was nailed shut, there were options. “Then I’ll find out who he gave you to,” I said.

Kisten took my hands, his eyebrows furrowing over lost chances. “Rachel…it’s too late.”

“I can’t believe you’re giving up!” I said, angry as I pulled from him.