Blinking fast, I tried to clear my sight. The pain in my chest wouldn’t go away and let me think. Someone had been here besides me. Someone else knew what had happened. Someone had forced me to forget? Why?

A new fear pulled my attention to Ivy, still standing apart and miserable as Kisten lay cold and dead between us. She hadn’t wanted Ford to help me to remember. Had she…had she killed him because he’d bitten me?

“I don’t remember,” Ivy whispered as if knowing my thoughts, her head bowed and arms wrapped around herself to keep from falling apart. “I could have. I don’t remember.”

Edden put his weapon back in the holster, snapping it shut. Arms crossed aggressively, he took a firm stance. I stood, torn between anger at him and fear for Ivy.

“She wouldn’t do it,” I said, frightened, and I went to give her a shake. “You wouldn’t do that, Ivy. Look at me! You loved him!”

She shook her head, her black hair hiding her face.

“She was Piscary’s scion,” Edden said. “She would if he told her to.”

“She loved Kisten!” I exclaimed, appalled and scared. “She wouldn’t do it!”

Edden took a harder line. “Word on the street is she’d kill him if he touched your blood. Did he?”

Guilt seemed to stop my heart, and I looked frantically for a way out. Jenks stood on the dresser, miserable. We were in the same room where I’d bitten Kisten in a blood passion I scarcely knew how to comprehend. He hadn’t bitten me, but it didn’t seem to matter now.

Ivy brought her head up at my silence. Her beautiful face was twisted in pain. “I might have done it,” she whispered. “I don’t remember. Everything up to Piscary attacking you is a…a jumbled nightmare. I think someone told me you tasted Kisten. I can’t remember if someone told me or if I made it up.” Tear-wet eyes rose to mine, framed by black hair iced in gold. A terrible fear lay in her gaze. “I might have. I might have done it, Rachel!”

My stomach was in knots, but the terror was gone, and in a sudden surge I understood. She hadn’t wanted to come out here, afraid she might find she’d killed him. She hadn’t wanted Ford to help me remember for the same reason. Someone had killed Kisten, but I knew to the bottom of my soul that it hadn’t been Ivy, though centuries of evolution and conditioning made her want to.

“You didn’t kill him,” I said, putting my arms around her to help her believe. Her muscles tensed, and she started to silently tremble. “You didn’t. I know it, Ivy. You wouldn’t.”