The back courtyard was luxuriantly overgrown the way I loved it, the bright magenta bougainvillea heaped over the high brick walls. The little common flowers of Louisiana, the yellow and the purple lantana, were huge and fragrant and softly beautiful with their dusty dark little leaves, and the oleander magnificent with its pink blooms. The giant banana trees were rustling and swaying in the cool breeze off the nearby river, and the new fountain, the splendid new fountain with its moss-covered cherubs, was filled with water singing in the lights of the lanterns along the back porch.

Did I feel an immediate sense of well-being? Well, no. This was as painful as it was sweet; this was honey with a bitter taste. I’d had my heart broken here more than once, almost died upstairs in this flat, hadn’t I, and I’d come out of a deep sleep once not so long ago to find Louis in this very courtyard, in an open coffin, nearly burnt to death by the sun. I’d brought him back with my blood then. And my beloved fledgling David Talbot had helped me. Louis had been more powerful since then—thanks to that new infusion of my blood—and though at first he’d been happy, happy for a while with the love of David and a strange unearthly blood drinker named Merrick, he had come to hate me for the increased strength that took him even further away from the human he could never be again.

I knew what I was up against with Louis. I had to convince him that this time was different from the earlier times when we’d tried to come together—different from the brief coven of the old Night Island, different from the brief connection after he’d tried to destroy himself, different even from his time at Trinity Gate which was forever changed now by recent events—different because we were all different now and I, in my heart and soul, was different. And I needed him to help me write a new page in the history of our entire tribe.

But what was the point of pondering it further? Words wouldn’t carry the motion. One way or other, he’d make a decision of the heart.

I hurried up the iron stairs to the door of the flat, ready to kick in a wall if the place was truly empty, ground the doorknob nearly to rusted powder as I turned it, and went inside.