His attention went over my shoulder, and the hair on the back of my neck pricked. It was Kisten. The whisper of his passage brushed against me, and I stifled a shudder. The bruised and beaten vamp silently set a cup of coffee on a saucer before me and left. He never met my eyes, his manner holding a subdued pain. The steam from the porcelain rose three inches before the artificial wind caught it and blew it away. I didn’t reach for the cup. Fatigue pulled at me and adrenaline made me feel ill. I thought of the charms in my bag. Why was Piscary waiting?

“Kist?” the undead vampire said softly, and Kisten turned. “Give it to me.”

Piscary held out his hand, and Kisten dropped a crumpled paper in his palm. My face went slack in panic. It was my note to Nick.

“Did she call anyone?” Piscary asked Kist, and the young vampire ducked his head.

“She called the FIB. They hung up on her.”

Shocked, I looked at Kisten. He had watched the entire thing. He had hidden in the shadows while I held Ivy’s hair as she vomited, watched as I made her cocoa, and listened as I sat beside Ivy while she relived her nightmare. While I had been taking forever on the bus, Kisten had ripped my salvation from the door. No one was coming. No one at all.

Not meeting my eyes, he walked away. There was the distant sound of a door closing. My gaze flicked to Piscary’s and my breath froze. His eyes were entirely black. Shit.

The unblinking obsidian orbs made my palms sweat. With the coiled tension of a predator, he reclined before me in his midnight-blue robe with that fake wind moving the wisps of hair on his bare arms, tan and healthy looking. The hem of his robe shifted with his subtle movements. His chest moved as he breathed in an effort to ease my subconscious. And as I sat before him, the enormity of what was going to happen fell on me.

My breath came and went, and I held it. Seeing me recognize my death, he blinked slowly and smiled with a knowing glint. Not yet, but soon. When he could wait no longer.

“It’s amusing you care for her so deeply,” he said, the power seeping from his voice to clench about my heart. “She betrayed you so utterly. My beautiful, dangerous filiola custos. I sent her to watch you four years ago, and she joined the I.S. I bought a church and told her to move into it; she did. I asked her to put in a witch’s kitchen and stock it with appropriate books; she went beyond to arrange for a garden that would be irresistible.”