I went into the other room and sat in the rocking chair by the window, Baby B in my arms.

“Is everything okay?” Raphael asked quietly in the other room.

“Things are kind of fucked up right now,” Andrea said. “I’ll tell you later.”

I rocked Baby B. It was just me, the baby, and the slowly dying evening.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed.

Someone walked in. I listened to the steps. Julie.

“Hi,” she said behind my back.

“Hi.”

She came over and sat on the floor by me.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Derek talked to me.” Julie sighed and hugged her knees. “Derek is a dummy. Why is it that guys can’t keep a secret?”

“It was a pretty big secret.”

“Well, it wasn’t his to tell.”

“When did you find out?” I asked.

“Roland told me when you went to the Black Sea.”

“Is that how long you’ve been talking to him?”

She nodded.

“He’s poison.”

“I know.”

I looked at her. “Why, Julie? Is it power? Is it knowledge?”

“It’s because I love you,” she said in a small voice.

“What?”

“You’re twenty-eight,” she said. “Voron left Roland’s service almost thirty years ago. The last up-to-date information you have on him is thirty years old. When Voron died thirteen years ago, you lost even that. Roland has done a lot in thirty years.”

“I don’t need you to spy on Roland for me. It’s too dangerous. You’re sixteen years old. He is over five thousand years old, possibly older. You can’t trust anything he says. You can’t even trust anything you see there. He’s manipulating you and grooming you.”

“Yes,” she said. “He is. He would be manipulating me and grooming me anyway. He wasn’t going to leave me alone, Kate, so at first I wanted to learn as much as I could to shut him out. Then . . .”

“Then?”

“You’re right. I’m sixteen years old. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to be sixteen. He doesn’t understand it. To him everyone is a child. His own childhood was long and happy. He was a pampered prince. But I starved on the street. I learned how to read people and manipulate adults when I was ten.” She bit her lip. “I kind of thought he would be more subtle about it. Maybe if I didn’t have you and Curran, or if he had gotten me really young like he did Hugh . . .”

“You keep thinking that you’ve got this, but you don’t, Julie.”