“Byron.” I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed it would be the right answer. When the pressure on my chest abated, I felt a little hope.

March stood and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. She held it out to me, balancing the stake in her other hand. I thought briefly about grabbing it and using it against her, but chances were I was still locked in the room, and she probably had a great security system. I wouldn’t make it out of the building.

“No, I’ve quit.” I couldn’t remember when. It hadn’t exactly been a conscious decision. Funny, the thoughts that come to you when you’re about to die.

“Evan was there when you collapsed. He said you were babbling about a simultaneous bloodtie.” She paused to suck in a lungful of smoke, and continued to speak on the exhale. “Wanna tell me about that?”

I sat up, rubbing my chest. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re so afraid of?”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you tell me who your old sire was?”

“Oh, this is fun. I think I would have preferred to be staked rather than argue like thirteen year olds.” I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. If she attacked me again, I wanted to meet her on level ground.

“Fine.” March held up a hand as if to stop me coming any closer. “I know, anyway.”

“You do?” I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice. “How?”

“A lot of forged art. The first person I thought of was Cyrus Seymour.” She cracked a shark’s grin. “That, and you apparently yelled his named when you collapsed. I put two and two together.”

“Very good.” I eyed the stake with new terror. I’d been persecuted before for simply being Cyrus’s fledgling. I’d thought those days were behind me. “How do you know him?”

In a flash, March was on her feet. Way faster than I would have anticipated. She lunged at me with the stake.

I dodged her easily—one very important thing Nathan had taught me was that being calm in a fight gave you the advantage over an opponent who had completely flipped out—and spun around, ready for her next attack. My bag still rested on the floor beside the armchair. I backed slowly toward it. “March, I’m not working for anyone. I was just on a road trip and Byron told me to look you up.”

I was two steps from the bag, but March pursued me slowly, stake raised high over her head like the psycho mom at the end of Carrie. “And do you think I don’t know what he’s up to? Following the Fangs all over the desert, doing whatever they ask of him?”