Still, I studied him, stretched out in his chair, ankles crossed, hands sitting loosely on his thick thighs, neck supported by the back of the chair, but head up, eyes on me.

There was something that wasn’t right about that, a casualness that seemed false, and I didn’t like it.

“Why are you not okay?” I asked.

“I lied yesterday.”

Great.

I did not like this.

Lying sucked. I didn’t do it. Dad taught me not to, and the lesson I’d had meant I’d only done it once, mostly because when he’d caught me in the lie I told (a lie I didn’t remember, just his reaction to it), he was disappointed in me and that killed.

I could count on three fingers the times he’d been disappointed in me.

The first was when I’d dated a preppy who drove his parents’ hand-me-down Mercedes. His family had a stable of thoroughbred horses, a huge house, and he wore pastel-colored sweaters draped over his shoulders (we’d only gone out five times, but that was five times too many for Dad).

The second was when I’d told him in a moment of weakness that I thought maybe Mom was right and I was whacked in the head.

And last, when I’d lied.

I’d never done it again. As far as I knew, Dad never did it with me either. He might not tell me everything, but that wasn’t the same as lying to someone’s face.

And if I made a list of what I’d want in a man, that would be in the necessary column.

Well, at least Abel was owning up to it. That was something.

“What did you lie about?” I asked, pushing up to sit cross-legged in the bed, the covers over my lap.

But when I did this, his body visibly tensed, his eyes dropped to my lap, and his jaw went hard.

I stared.

What was that?

“Abel?”

He sliced his eyes to mine and I saw a muscle jump in his cheek before he said, “That card the vampires gave me, it said something.”

“I reckoned that,” I replied.

He nodded once and continued, “It said they mean you and me no harm and invited me to The Biltmore.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered, not taking this as a good thing.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“Are you going?” I asked.

“I’m considering it.”

My eyes got huge and my voice was two octaves higher when I cried, “Why?”

I did this because I knew one good supernatural being: Abel. The rest left a lot to be desired, considering they wanted us both dead. Therefore, I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.