Allie fell silent briefly then, stealing herself against what she had to recall next. But finally, she said, “It was the fourteenth of February. I had finished one of the projects, which removed a lot of pressure, and I was nearly done the second, so I decided to give myself a break and stop early that night and finish up the next. Well, early for me,” she added wryly. “It was around eleven thirty when I shut down the computer and went downstairs to grab something for dinner. It was maybe midnight when Stella showed up at the door. She’d obviously just returned from town. She said they’d found her, removed Liam’s receiving blanket, passed him off to me, and pulled out a doll that she wrapped the blanket around instead. She also gave me her necklace—” Allie touched her chest where the locket was now hidden under her blouse “—and reminded me of my promise to look after Liam if anything happened to her, and then she was gone.

“I peeked through the blinds and watched her walk across the street to her town house pushing Liam’s carriage, and then she went in, and before the door was quite closed, the town house exploded and burst into flames.” Allie paused to clear her throat and blinked a couple times to try to shift the liquid gathering in her eyes. “At first I thought maybe it was a trick to make the vampires think she was dead. That she’d somehow caused the explosion that quickly. I mean, she could move so fast when she wanted to. Scary fast,” she recalled with a disbelieving shake of the head.

Stella had hidden that speed from her at first, but once Allie knew about her, she hadn’t bothered to hide it anymore and she was always stunned at the speed she could manage. Sighing, Allie continued. “I thought, or at least hoped, that she’d rushed out the back door to escape it. But the door hadn’t quite closed, and swung back open after the explosion. Stella stumbled to the entrance in flames, the doll still clutched to her chest. She stood there for maybe two or three seconds and then turned and just collapsed into the flames.”

“The rogues blew up her house?” Sam gasped with horror. “But I thought the sire wanted the baby if it was a boy? Why would he kill both of them that way?”

“Liam was not killed,” Tricia reminded her. “The baby Stella carried was a doll.”

“But they couldn’t know Stella would leave Liam with Allie,” Tybo pointed out. “They could have killed both of them with that explosion.”

“Which is why I don’t think the vampires caused the explosion,” Allie said now.

Everyone at the table turned to her and everyone but Magnus’s expression became concentrated on her forehead. She wasn’t surprised when Tricia exclaimed, “You think Stella set up the house to explode when she walked in. You think she sacrificed herself in the hopes of saving Liam.”