“I will tell her you said so the next time I see her,” Tricia offered brightly as she led Allie back to the table. “Maybe that will get you out of trouble.”

Tricia was carrying a large pitcher of ice water, while Allie followed with a tray of glasses. Noting her pallor, Magnus stood quickly to take the tray and set it on the table for her.

“Thank you,” she said a little breathlessly as she sat back down. “We thought the rest of you might want some water too.”

“Water sounds good,” he said, trying to hide his concern behind a smile as he settled back in his seat. The color that anger had painted in her cheeks earlier was gone, and she was pale and shaky after her short sojourn for glasses and it made him wonder when Dani would arrive. Surely, she should have been here by now?

“Water?” Allie asked, and Magnus blinked his thoughts away and managed a smile and nod.

“Yes, please,” he murmured, and then glanced to Lucian. Much to his surprise, the man appeared to be holding on to his patience as he waited for the water to be poured and passed around, but Magnus suspected it took some effort. He’d known Lucian Argeneau more than a millennium and the man had never been known for his patience. Fortunately, Allie wasn’t foolish enough to push it too far with the man and started talking the moment everyone had a glass of the icy liquid.

“So, when Stella finally started talking, she began by telling me about the night her husband died,” she said abruptly. “She said they were walking home from dinner when they were attacked by a large group of men. She’d heard their footsteps for a while before they attacked, but hadn’t thought anything of it. Her husband was a good-sized man and she always felt safe with him. She said hearing those footsteps in the parking lot while returning to the car from dinner . . . She thought it was them, coming to get her again, and just panicked.”

“Not surprising,” Tricia murmured.

“No,” Allie agreed. “Her memory of the attack in Vancouver was a bit blurry, but she remembered being terrified and that she’d been dragged away from her husband, or he from her. She remembered their attackers laughing and taunting them, and then one of them sprouted fangs and began gnawing on her arm and she passed out either from blood loss or fear.”

Allie’s expression was solemn as she admitted, “That business about sprouting fangs made me wonder if she wasn’t really suffering some pregnancy-induced psychosis, but I kept that opinion to myself and let her talk. Stella told me that she woke up in a dark, dank basement somewhere. It was some kind of abandoned building, but she didn’t know that yet. At first she couldn’t see or hear anything and thought she was dead, but then she heard her husband, Stephen, moan. Stella tried to crawl to him, but she didn’t have much strength and she was in terrible pain. Everything seemed to hurt and she was wondering just how many wounds she’d sustained and how bad they were when the door suddenly opened and a light was switched on.