“Maybe not to you,” I said shaking from the spent adrenaline. “But if Ivy knows, she might give up on Nina.”

“That’s fine with me.” Nina’s eyes narrowed, making the woman look dead already in the last of the light.

“Me too,” I said, heartsick for Ivy even as I hated Felix. “But if she does, Nina is going to find the balls to kick you out for good.”

Beside me, Trent made a sound of understanding. Nina’s expression twisted up in a snarl, hearing the truth of it.

“Love is funny like that,” I added.

Nina’s expression darkened, anger bubbling up until she was as ugly as the monster seeing the world through her eyes, wallowing in Ivy’s love as if it was his to have. My chin lifted, and seeing my determination, he suddenly left her.

Nina staggered, collapsing like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Sobbing, she huddled on the ground, exhausted and hyped up on the hormones Felix had pulled into her blood system. She touched her face, shocked at the blood, and my heart just about broke for Ivy. God, I hated the master vampires.

He might be gone, but the flash of evil intent that had crossed her left me shaking.

He’d be back.

Chapter 4

The coffee smell coming from the wax-coated cup was nauseatingly familiar, and I held it listlessly as I sat in the chair I’d pulled into the carpeted hallway. The oil-like sheen on the surface caught the fluorescent lights, showing the shake in my hand. I’d managed a few fitful hours of sleep after Ivy had come out of surgery, and though the beds in Trent’s surgical suites were comfortable, I’d been too worried to do more than doze. Besides, the smell of antiseptic and stainless steel kept waking me up.

Nina had crashed right in Ivy’s room. She was in there still, the guilt that I’d found out her secret making her noticeably passive and pliant. It pissed me off that she’d been lying to Ivy all this time, but I think Ivy had known it, her belief that she didn’t deserve anything good or lasting keeping her mouth shut and her eyes blind. I hoped that Bis and Jenks were doing better, the two of them having returned to the church to try to get the squatters out.

My breath came in with a harsh sound, and I listened to the voices echoing down from the third floor where Trent had his living quarters. I’d always wondered what took up Trent’s second floor. Now I knew. Two well-outfitted hospital suites were tucked between the ground floor and the third story, but the surgery itself was downstairs, closer to his labs.

Hand trembling, I sipped the coffee. It had no taste. I’d just been in to check on Ivy. She’d been sleeping: clean and sanitized between ivory sheets. The angry red suture lines and orange antiseptic stains had been hidden behind a cotton nightgown, but I’d seen them before I’d lost it and cried from relief. Now I just felt numb.