“What are you doing?” I pulled the sheets up to my chest and groped through the bedclothes for my nightgown.

Dahlia’s face was emotionless, and she didn’t make eye contact with me. “Do you love him?”

I had no idea what to say that wouldn’t set her into a flying rage. I hoped the truth was good enough. “No.”

“Then why are you still here?” She kicked the door with a slow, deliberate rhythm.

“I can’t leave.”

“I wish you could.” She laughed, not in the crazy way I’d heard before, but in a dry, bitter laugh of weariness. “I wish I could.”

“You can.” I felt a little guilty for lying to her. In less than twenty-four hours, I planned to have her fed to the Soul Eater. I bolstered my resolve by remembering the time she’d stabbed me in the gut, burned down my apartment, attacked Nathan, and the fact she was pretty much the reason I was stuck here.

She looked me straight in the eye. “Are you familiar with the Stockholm Syndrome?”

Am I ever. I nodded. “It’s when the victim of a hostage situation forms an attachment to her captor.”

“You probably think that’s what’s going on here, right?” She ran a hand over her mussed curls.

“Maybe,” I said quietly, reaching for Cyrus’s robe at the end of the bed.

Her eyes dropped to the black silk in my hands, and narrowed when I pulled the robe over my shoulders. But she didn’t move from the door, or cease her cadenced kicking. “You don’t know shit about why I’m here.”

“Dahlia,” I began, wetting my parched lips. I needed to feed, and soon. Her plump neck was beginning to look far too good for my liking. “Are you in love with Cyrus?”

“I didn’t know he was a vampire. Not before.” She pressed her palm to her forehead as tears slid down her face. “He told me he loved me.”

I tied the robe and hurried from the bed over to her. I didn’t know what else I could do but stand beside her and offer a shoulder to cry on in her misery. “He probably did—does—love you.”

She sniffled. “He was fascinated with me, with my power. And now I’m trapped here.”

“He’s afraid of you,” I blurted. Her face was the picture of hopelessness, and it broke my heart. As much as I disliked Dahlia, I sympathized with her. “He’s afraid of your power. That’s why he won’t turn you.”

“I know,” she snapped. “But that doesn’t help me, does it.”

“It could. There are going to be a hundred vampires here tomorrow night. If you could find just one of them to turn you, you could get away from Cyrus.” The thought of Dahlia with unlimited power smacked me in the cerebral cortex about a half a second too late. But the words were already out there and I couldn’t take them back.

To my relief, she shook her head and her old venom returned. “Right. Because it’s so easy to just get a vampire to make a fledgling.”