My stomach quivered as a surge of his vamp-induced desire flashed through me and was gone. Its potency took my breath away, and I found myself reaching out to catch it. “Bastard,” I said, wide-eyed as my blood pounded in me.

“Flatterer,” he said back, his eyebrows high.

“She changed her mind,” I said, as the last of his need died in me. “She doesn’t want to be your scion. Leave her alone.”

“It’s too late. And she does want it. I put no compulsion on her when she made her decision. I didn’t need to. She had been bred and raised for the position, and when she dies, she will have the complexity to be a suitable companion, varied and sophisticated enough in her thoughts so that I don’t become bored with her and she with me. You see, Rachel, it’s not honest to say that the lack of blood is what causes a vampire to go insane and walk out into the sun. It’s the boredom that brings upon a lack of appetite that leads to insanity. Working to bring Ivy about has helped me stave that off. Now that she is poised upon her potential, she’s going to keep me from going insane.” He inclined his head graciously. “And I’ll do the same for her.”

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.