I WATCHED BLACK pace, his gold eyes murderous as he tracked back and forth across the terrace, making a dark line against the blue morning sky past the glass balcony wall.

I sat in one of the wicker chairs, on a dark blue cushion, a hot mocha coffee drink on the glass table in front of me.

It would have been a pleasant place to sit, under other circumstances.

As it was, I found myself watching Black warily, wondering if I needed to try and do something to calm him down.

I knew this was his way of working through everything that happened over the past twenty-four hours. I also knew my focusing on him was an avoidance tactic for myself, at least in part. As much as I hated seeing him like this, it was easier to try and think about how to help him than to think about anything I remembered from the night before.

Black told me he’d taken this suite––hell, this whole floor––back from the company he’d leased it to. He’d torn up the contract essentially, as soon as he’d found out Nick used this terrace to get back into his building.

He had his lawyers on it, but he didn’t seem to think it would be an issue, given how he’d written up the contracts. His lawyers were good; they were better than good, in the way most rich people’s lawyers were. They’d already advised him they would be arguing that the leasing company’s security protocols––or lack thereof––put them in breach, by jeopardizing Black’s holdings and the integrity of his building.

I knew it was essentially b.s.

Black wanted the suite back.

Therefore, the company currently leasing it was out.

If that meant Black using lawyers, or seers, to push them the fuck out, they’d be out by the end of the week––if not the end of the day.

Although he hadn’t come out and said it, I strongly suspected Black wanted the whole building back under his control. For the same reason, I expected there would be a bunch of these so-called “security breach” lawsuits starting up in the next few days.

Black had already muttered about turning this whole floor into a restaurant and recreation area for everyone working and living in the building.

When we walked through that morning, he pointed out the café and kitchens, saying how they could expand that, add another kitchen there, pull down that wall, maybe even add a row of saunas and an indoor lap pool.

He’d pointed out a set of suites in the back, saying that whole area could be made into a gym, pointing out another section that could be made into a boxing ring or simply a floor mat area with heavy bags for hand-to-hand training. He talked about getting a few massage therapists to come in for half the week, if not full time.

I knew he was distracting me, as much as himself.

The real issue was security.

He’d have cameras, motion detectors, probably automated drones connected to this part of the building before the sun went down that day.

He was already talking about building a new headquarters building, too––and threw around a few possible locations in the Bay Area or possibly in New Mexico or Vancouver. He wanted something he could build from the ground up, likely as a full-blown military fortress, if I was reading his light accurately, which I suspected I was.

I hadn’t left his side since we got up that morning.

He got me out of bed to take a shower with him, waited for me to get dressed, asked me what I wanted for breakfast, told me his rough itinerary for the day.

He never asked, but then he didn’t really have to.

I didn’t want to be apart from him, either.

If he hadn’t made it clear he wanted me with him every second of that day, I probably would have followed him around anyway, and just tried to bring my work with me.

He didn’t want me working though, at least not on anything separate from what he was doing. He wanted me to help him change whatever was wrong with fucking everything in our world that allowed what happened the night before to happen.

A nagging voice in the back of my mind told me I shouldn’t be encouraging this, probably not in either of us. I knew if I wasn’t careful, I’d be lucky if he let me walk outside the building alone… at least for the next few months.

For now, however, I wasn’t up to fighting that impulse in either of us.

Already, we had press trying to get into the building.

They’d been shouting questions and requests for interviews at our security people in the lobby and outside the building since dawn, asking about the alarms that went off the night before, asking about unauthorized drones and reports of gunfire, wanting to interview Black about rumors of a possible kidnapping and security breach.

They wanted to talk to him about whether and how he was involved in the riots in the Mission, with the groups fighting against the Purists and the federal government. Apparently, now they were saying the so-called “police” shooting at protesters in the Mission hadn’t really been police at all. Reporters on major networks were now saying the anti-riot cops had actually been part of private militia groups, and only masquerading as cops.

Watching the news that morning, I heard all kinds of insane conspiracy theories, even on the major cable networks. Talking heads postulated Black and others might form the military arm of a “shadow state” trying to take down President Regent’s administration. They mentioned other paramilitary groups being involved too, in addition to Black’s company, although I recognized the name of only one of them.

They mentioned Archangel.

Archangel, which, as far as I knew, actually was hooked into some kind of shadowy global network as their military arm.

How any of that connected to my uncle, I could only speculate.

I honestly would have thought my uncle would want Archangel on his side.

Black told me Archangel employed and trained the most ruthless, well-organized, disciplined and smartest mercenaries he’d ever encountered. He said they were some of the most highly-trained killers on the planet… if not the most highly trained killers on the planet.

Uncle Charles more or less admitted to me he’d worked with Archangel in the past, mostly via his contacts with Russian organized crime.

Maybe they’d had a falling out around the “enslaving all humans” issue.

Either way, news commentators were now talking about Black Industries and Archangel in the same breath. Two different program segments I watched on my phone while Black was talking to his tech team interviewed experts who speculated that Black’s company and Archangel had something to do with the riots in the Mission.

I’d seen blurry smart phone footage of all of us down there, too.

CCTV cameras caught us running down Valencia, carrying assault rifles and swords, dressed all in black kevlar. I saw images of us at Mission and 16th, as well, but there we’d been wearing gas masks, so you couldn’t really make out our faces.

Black’s phones had been ringing off the hook all morning, pretty much since that footage hit the networks.

He’d been hit with requests for interviews from about a dozen news networks and talk show hosts. Lawrence “Larry” Farraday, Black’s criminal lawyer and advisor, had also been calling all morning. I’d overheard Black talking to him a few times, as well, mostly arguing with him about the kind of damage control he should be doing with the public, and whether he should take any of those interview requests, and if so, which ones.

Apparently, Farraday was getting requests for interviews as well.

A few networks even called trying to negotiate interviews with me.

Charles tried calling that morning, too.

I didn’t think Black had talked to him yet, and I sure as hell hadn’t. I wasn’t ready to deal with Charles, although I knew I could only put that off for so long.

In any case, Black definitely wasn’t talking to Charles now.

He also wasn’t talking to Farraday––or any of the news networks.

His gold eyes flashed in the morning sun as he listened, jaw hard, and it struck me again how early it was still, despite how much ground Black had already covered. It couldn’t be much past nine a.m., even though we’d been up for hours.

I watched his angular face, and fought a shiver of separation pain, in spite of myself.

I knew it didn’t make a ton of sense that I’d be lusting after my husband, especially given the night before, but somehow, all of that only made it worse. I knew Black was fighting his own conflicting impulses there, so I didn’t push it, but my separation pain seemed to be getting worse, not better, the longer I was awake.

I knew some of that might be a safety issue, too, and a more organic impulse to draw closer to him when I felt like both of us were still actively in danger. Black told me seers did that––that when our lives are in danger, our instinct was to share light with partners and friends, people we trusted. Husbands and wives pretty much topped that list.

I also knew sex right then wouldn’t exactly be uncomplicated.

Just having Black see me naked, given the state of my body, wasn’t going to be easy for either of us. That didn’t even get into the other complications of my memories and light from the night before, and the things Black would probably feel on me.

I wasn’t ready to deal with that yet, regardless of what my light wanted.

Instead, we drew together in every other sense of the word.

I don’t think Black moved more than three yards away from me that whole morning. Even now, he paced in front of me, not leaving my immediate orbit. When Kiessa and Zairei, the two seers helping Black with the security assessment of this floor, brought me around the corners of the terrace, Black followed on his phone, moving around me in a rough perimeter that both comforted me and slightly embarrassed me when I felt the two seers notice.

They acted like it was perfectly normal though, essentially ignoring Black’s hovering while they showed me the bloody hand and footprints Nick left behind as he made his way inside the building. They told me their thoughts on how to make the terrace secure, presumably so I could share those thoughts with Black once he was off the phone.

Black’s team, seer and human, had more or less mapped out Nick’s entire course through the building before he broke into one of the elevators, jumping on top of it and riding it down to the basement to steal one of Black’s cars.

He stole the GTO, which pissed Black off too.

It was one of his favorites.

From camera footage in the garage, Nick had also taken someone with him.

While we couldn’t see the hostage’s face in any of the camera angles, or even much of his body, we were only missing one person when the sun rose on the building.

Dalejem.

Nick had taken Jem with him when he left.

None of us could believe it when we heard.

In the end, though, it was the only thing that made sense. The timelines were consistent between Nick’s route through the building and when anyone had last seen Jem. More to the point, the ex-Adhipan seer was the only one of our people missing.

Process of elimination told us it had to be Jem.

Still, Black wasn’t the only one who’d been baffled when he heard who it was.

The why part of it didn’t surprise any of us. That Nick felt he might need a hostage made sense, given what he’d done. We more couldn’t figure out how Nick managed to get the jump on the older seer in the first place, given who and what he was.

Still, anyone could be surprised at the wrong moment.

Even Jem.

As the morning wore on and no one could get in touch with him via his headset or his mobile phone, that possibility turned into a full-blown probability. Black now had most of his infiltration team under Yarli working on tracking him.

However Nick managed to get his hands on the Adhipan seer, he hadn’t used Jem to get out of the building. The handful of humans and seers Black had posted in the garage were taken out either by vampire venom or automatic rifle fire.

The only camera angle we had on the two of them together was after Nick had already taken out the security team. Nick had returned to the area of the elevators at that point, and carried his hostage to the GTO. The angle wasn’t great, being mostly from overhead, and Nick had his hostage in a fireman’s carry, so his face wasn’t visible. Nick also had something wrapped around the seer’s head, likely to keep us from identifying him easily.

Still, it was clear from the footage that Nick’s hostage was a man… as in male… and taller than most human males. He also had broad shoulders and wore a Black Securities and Investigations uniform.

The weapon Nick used against the security team raised a few eyebrows among the seers. There was footage of Nick firing it––so they were able to ID the model, which was a Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-12.

A few people on Black’s team carried that gun, or a version of it, so that didn’t elicit more than a shrug. Rather, it was the sheer amount of organic material infused into the stock and working parts of the gun that had everyone perplexed. The rifle Nick had been firing had so much of the non-standard material it shimmered pale green under the garage lights, looking like some kind of alien artifact as it expelled bullets in rapid bursts.

Black pointed the different organic components out to me while we looked at the surveillance footage together, muttering about how all of that material was “high-grade organic” and therefore “fully alive,” versus being some kind of metal-hybrid. He said the organics my uncle was making were clearly evolving, and of a higher quality than we’d seen up until now.

He speculated that a gun like that might even be partly sentient.

Apparently, Uncle Charles had been upgrading.

Black speculated the ammunition might even have an organic component, just from the way it fired. He told me about “smart” bullets from his home world that could be programmed to find targets––and how the human militaries had to stop using them once they figured out seers could hack those bullets, sometimes mid-flight, turning them back around on their owners.

No one could explain how Nick got ahold of a gun like that.

Everyone agreed he hadn’t gotten it from Jem.

It was possible he’d gotten it off one of Charles’ people in the Mission, then hidden it in the building before he went up on the roof. Theoretically, Nick could have then retrieved the gun later, once he was on the run from Black’s security team and needed it to shoot his way out of the lower-level garage.

Whatever the truth of it, Nick got out clean.

He also apparently had Jem.

And Black’s second-favorite car.

Taking a sip of my mocha, I fought not to think about that, or about what Jem might be going through right now.

I was still staring off into space when Black broke out in a laugh in front of me.

That laugh held zero actual amusement.

It was pretty much pure rage.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said, his voice harsh. “Please tell me you’re joking. Because honestly, I’m not sure if the fact that you’re even saying this to me right now means you’re fucking insane, or you simply think I’m the stupidest goddamned person on the planet––”

The person on the other end cut him off.

After a few beats, Black clicked at them, loud.

When the person on the other end kept talking, he darted a furious look at me, more to share his anger and frustration with me than to aim any of it in my direction.

In the end, he cut him off.

“Brick,” he growled. “…and I do mean this from the bottom of my heart… go fuck yourself. Either you hand him over to me… now… or we kill whichever one of you we find first. You have to know I’m already hunting both of you.”

Clenching his jaw at something the other said, he snapped,

“I don’t give a fuck about that! I’m talking to you right now, Brick. Not Charles. You did this. You turned him into a goddamned animal! You realize it would have hurt her less at this point if you’d just killed him? Her oldest friend, and he nearly killed her…”

Trailing briefly as he listened, he burst out angrily a few seconds later.

“Bullshit!” he snapped.

He said it loud enough that time, I jumped, even as I’d been taking another sip of the mocha. I didn’t spill any of it, but I pulled it away from my mouth.

“…You have to know he’s my next call,” Black growled. “You have to know that. At this point, I need to decide what I’m willing to give up in order to secure the bastard’s help. Weirdly, I think dear old Uncle Charles is going to be really fucking generous about giving me a helping hand with this one, though. What do you think, Brick? You think you have problems with his seers and his fucking Red Masks now? Just wait until––”

The vampire on the other end cut him off.

There was a pause while Black listened, scowling into the phone.

“I don’t believe you,” Black growled.

Again, I felt Brick talking to him earnestly.

“I. DON’T. FUCKING. BELIEVE. YOU,” Black growled, stopping his pacing long enough to grip the balcony railing. “You have twelve hours. Twelve. Call me with a meeting place, if you’ve decided to cooperate. If you don’t have him with you… if you don’t have him ready for me to take custody… there’s nothing more for us to talk about.”

I took another sip of the mocha as I watched him hang up the phone.

Frowning faintly as I looked at him, I nudged him gently with my light.

“You know he won’t do that, Black,” I said, my voice low. “Not if he told the truth about Nick dying if he dies. He won’t trust anyone with Nick, if that’s the case.”

Black exhaled, gripping the balcony in both hands.

After a pause, he nodded, clenching his jaw.

I studied his profile as he gazed out over the city.

“So? What are we going to do?” My voice remained cautious. “You don’t really want to ally with Uncle Charles, do you?”

Clicking angrily under his breath, Black pushed off from the balcony railing, releasing it with his hands. Turning on me, he continued to frown, his eyes showing him to be thinking.

“No,” he said after a pause.

I felt something in my chest relax. “Okay,” I said. “Good. So… what?”

He gave me a direct look, his sculpted lips hard.

“I have a few thoughts,” he said. “You might not like all of those either, Miri.”

“I know you want to kill Nick,” I said.

Black’s jaw hardened.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” I pressed. “I get it. I really do. But what happens to the vampires if another of their leaders dies? Brick is hardly a saint, but he’s not Dorian. He’s not even Konstantin. We have no idea who else is waiting in the wings.”

Black nodded to that, too, but I could see from his eyes that his mind was somewhere else. I knew I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. The truth was, we had no good options. We didn’t even really have a model for what kind of world we were fighting to create at this point––especially given all the players involved, not to mention the dangers of exposing seers to the human population.

Humans hadn’t even fully accepted the existence of vampires.

At this point, they were still debating what they were, if it was some kind of a hoax or a genetic experiment gone wrong, or foreigners trying to manipulate the American public.

I knew Charles would be hitting that harder soon.

I knew it was only a matter of time before he presented the world with some kind of incontrovertible “proof” that vampires existed. He was likely only waiting until he had more control over public and private institutions, especially the media, so the vampires couldn’t just turn around and expose seers to the humans somewhere else.

I didn’t have much faith my uncle would be able to prevent that from happening eventually, however, no matter what he did. History had a way of uncovering the truth, given enough time. Sooner or later, seers would be exposed.

When that happened, what kind of world would it be?

Would my uncle be able to control how that world developed? If not, would this Earth end up like one Black grew up in? Would it end up something worse? Rather than seers, would humans be the slaves in this world, like my uncle seemed to want? Or would he only manage to convince the human race just how dangerous seers really were?

After all, humans still outnumbered seers by what had to be thousands to one.

Black grunted and I looked up, meeting his gold irises.

“All good questions, doc,” he said.

Walking towards me, he dropped his weight into the chair next to me, leaning his arms on his thighs. Without thinking, I set down my coffee cup and leaned towards him, curling my fingers into his hair and kissing his face. Once I was that far into his light, I found it difficult to stop, and pressed my cheek against his, caressing his face with mine until he let out a low rumbling sound, what might have been a purr on a different kind of animal.

His arm curled around me when I didn’t draw back, still more cautious and gentle than normal, but strong enough to take my breath when he tightened it around me. A bare hint of asking permission stayed in his light as he tugged me closer to him.

“What do you want me to do, ilya?” he murmured, resting his forehead on my shoulder.

I stroked his hair, thinking about his question as he merged his light into mine.

After a few seconds of doing that, I found myself frowning.

My gaze slid out of focus as I stared out over the balcony, thinking about how few options we really had.

The truth was, we needed Brick.

We needed him almost as badly as I couldn’t yet bring myself to contemplate killing Nick. Even after the night before, even after what he’d done, Brick’s and Jem’s words kept echoing in my mind, leaving me some bare sliver of hope.

He would change. He would go back to being more like himself.

Of course, if that was true, I had no idea how he’d feel about what he’d done to me on the roof the night before, or even on that fire escape. I had no idea how well Nick would manage to forgive himself, or if he would find some other way to cope with it psychologically.

I had no idea how I would cope with it, either.

In a strange way, I was almost glad Jem was the one Nick took with him.

Well… providing Nick didn’t kill him.

Jem might be the only one left who still had enough empathy for Nick that he might actually be able to reach him. I couldn’t see myself being that person. I couldn’t see Angel being that person, either, not until some time had passed.

When I’d seen her that morning, she looked wrecked.

Cowboy didn’t look much better, or Dex.

Of course, right now, none of that really mattered.

Black would never be able to forgive Nick.

That mattered a lot more.

Given that Black more or less still dictated the direction of our entire operation, that mattered a fuck of a lot more. There was no way Black would be able to let go of what Nick had done. I had my doubts he’d be able to let go of it even if Nick did go back to being more or less himself. At the very least, it would take time, probably a lot of time.

Time in which Nick the vampire would have to be acting more or less like a regular human being… and I had no idea how realistic that was.

Right now, I didn’t see Nick surviving long enough for us to conduct that particular experiment. I didn’t see him surviving much more than a few days, given what I felt on Black’s light, and the likelihood that Black would eventually approach my uncle for help.

I didn’t blame Black for that.

It wasn’t his fault.

It was what it was.

Which meant I had to find some other way to reach him.

I DON’T THINK I’d ever felt as bad––for anything I’d done––as I did for what I did that night.

I knew it was wrong.

I knew a million different ways in which it was wrong.

I just couldn’t think of any way around it.

I had no allies on Black’s team… not for this.

I knew they’d all think I was out of my damned mind for even considering what I was about to do. Worse, they’d think––with more than a small amount of justification––that I was in shock, that I couldn’t possibly be thinking clearly, given what happened to me.

But I couldn’t let Black give himself to my uncle.

I couldn’t do it, not without finding out for myself if there was another possibility.

Right now, the only other possibility I saw was one.

There was only one truly motivated buyer in the alliance-with-us department, even if Black managed to somehow work out agreements with Archangel, rival factions in the Russian mafia, white hats still clinging to the halls of American government, or whoever else.

Anyway, the last thing we needed was another enemy.

So I did what I did.

I don’t know if it made me feel better or worse that it went off without a hitch.

I knew that was a combination of luck and timing––that it would never happen like that again, and probably wouldn’t have happened that easily even before Black put the whole building on lockdown. As it was, no one on our team in a million years would have expected me to do it, given what happened the night before.

For the same reasons, I knew this was likely the only chance I would have, at least if I wanted to try something like this without my husband knowing about it.

By the time I got to the end of the wooden wharf adjacent to Pier 39, it was so quiet I began to wonder what in the hell I thought I was doing.

I wasn’t unarmed.

Far from it.

I wore seven guns––two at my ribs, two at my hips, one at the small of my back, two in holsters on each of my ankles. I also carried four knives, including a long Bowie knife strapped to my right thigh, and an even longer one that nestled in the groove of my spine.

I knew there was a good chance none of it would do me any good.

Even so, as I stood there in the dark, my back to the moon-splashed ocean, my hands resting on one gun and the hilt of the Bowie knife, I was glad I’d brought the weapons anyway.

It hadn’t been easy to get enough time alone to even set this up.

I’d been forced to push a number of Black’s employees to help me.

A.J. and Javier switched out the security tapes, in case Black might see them.

Michelle brought me the weapons, including the two long knives in vinyl scabbards, one of which I was pretty sure belonged to Cowboy.

Dex––and I felt really, really badly about this, for multiple reasons––brought me the syringes filled with enough liquid tranquilizer to down a good-sized seer or human.

I knew Dex might not forgive me for that, if he ever found out what I’d done.

For that particular task, my options were limited, though. Only a handful of Black’s inner circle had access to the full weapons’ cache, much less the labs where they stored things that weren’t in standard rotation. It was pretty much down to Dex or Cowboy… or Angel… and I’d been warned against trying to push Cowboy, since there was something different about the way his mind worked.

There was no way in hell I could do that to Angel.

Anyway, as bad as I felt about using Dex, it was nowhere near as bad as I felt later that night, when I stuck my own husband in the neck with one of those needles, pressing down on the syringe’s plunger after he’d dozed off next to me.

I used one more on Zairei, who stood guard with Luce outside our suite’s door.

Well, more specifically, I pushed Luce to use it on him.

I wasn’t proud of any of it.

Thinking about that now, shivering in the cold breeze coming over from the bay, I hoped like hell I wouldn’t just end up with my throat torn out for my trouble.

I didn’t see them approach.

I certainly didn’t feel them.

I had to assume he’d brought more of his people with him. He would have been foolish not to, despite what he’d said on the phone when I’d managed to get away long enough to call him. Whoever Brick had watching his back, however, they were invisible.

His was the only dark form that crossed the salt and water-warped wooden planks out to where I stood, waiting for him.

He glanced around when he was only about five yards away.

I saw a puzzled frown touch his well-formed mouth, right before he tilted his head, assessing me directly.

“You are here alone.” His voice did not hide his wonder. “You really are alone.”

Exhaling the breath I hadn’t known I held, I pushed my weight off the wooden railing, nodding. My hands still rested on the gun and the knife as I walked towards him, closing the last of the gap between us.

“I really am,” I said, my voice holding a similar dim surprise.

I couldn’t tell if that surprise was humor, honestly, or if it really had finally sunk in for me how incredibly stupid it was, for me to come out here alone.

“Your husband knows where you are?” the vampire said, wary.

I exhaled a humorless laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

The vampire king’s frown grew more pronounced, even as he took another step towards me, meeting me roughly in the middle of that last gap he’d placed between us.

His crystal eyes caught the orange streetlight at the end of the pier, and I saw him study my face, his expression almost guileless.

“You are a brave woman, Mrs. Black,” he said finally.

Exhaling, I clicked under my breath, but didn’t bother to answer.

“Do you want to talk here?” I said. “Out in the open?”

Brick looked around, then out over the water. After a brief pause, he shook his head, shoving his hands into the pockets of his long, black coat.

“I had another thought, actually,” he said. His voice turned overtly polite. “Would you mind accompanying me for a short drive, Mrs. Black?”

I tensed. I couldn’t help it.

Every warning I’d ever heard since I was a kid about climbing into cars with serial killers flooded back into my awareness. An image flashed in my mind of the night before, of Nick darting at me, those first few seconds when his fangs sank into my neck––

I didn’t notice when my hand left the hilt of the Bowie knife, touching the bandage at my throat. It was an unconscious move, but one Brick followed with his eyes.

He stepped forward before I could move away, touching my arm lightly with his fingers.

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Black… truly.”

Stepping back, I shook my head. “That’s not going to help anything, Brick.”

Watching my face a beat longer, he nodded.

“I understand. The sentiment is sincere, however. It is unconscionable that we allowed him to get away from us twice. That chaos in the Mission…”

At my look, he let his words trail, shaking his head again.

“I am very, very sorry, Miriam. More sorry than I can adequately convey.”

I felt my jaw harden. Before I could decide how and whether I should answer him, a sound pulled my eyes over his shoulder, to the street in front of the wharf.

Behind him, a car pulled up to the curb.

It was a limousine. Black. With tinted windows.

He turned, following my eyes.

Those eyes returned to mine a beat later.

“It is a short trip, Mrs. Black,” he assured me.

“But why is it necessary?” I said.

Clenching my jaw briefly, I looked around at the empty pier. I could feel people walking on the street a few blocks away, and more sitting on the grass, but I’d pushed any homeless and others I’d felt heading this way to give this particular segment of pier a wide berth.

Most of the humans I felt were asleep in the nearby houses and flats.

“We won’t be bothered here,” I told him, returning my eyes to his.

He nodded, his expression unmoving.

“I understand your reluctance. But I am not toying with you, or trying to abduct you, Miriam. You must realize you are my only hope in this. I have no delusions that taking you would do anything but make your mate even more murderous.”

He paused, shoving his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “There is someone I would like you to meet. It might help you to understand a few things.”

I tensed. Keeping my expression still with an effort, I bit my lip.

“I thought we were going to talk about Nick,” I said.

“We can do that too, of course.”

“Did you lie to Black? Do you know where he is?”

Brick shook his head, his expression holding regret.

“No. I’m afraid I was telling your husband the truth about that.” Frowning delicately, he met my gaze, his expression disarmingly sincere. “We have been unable to find Naoko, Miriam. I have people out looking for him, of course, even now. Dorian is leading that operation, as the need to find him is quite desperate for us… particularly for me, as you might imagine. I know your husband will kill him the first chance he gets.”

Brick studied my eyes, frowning faintly.

“You may not believe me, Miriam, but I am concerned for him, too. My concern goes far beyond any worry I may have for my own wellbeing. As I told your husband, Naoko is family to me. I am quite ashamed of him right now, of what he did to you… but I love him. I would protect him with my life. I would protect him regardless of what he did, or whatever mistakes he made. He is still a child, from my perspective. Children often do stupid and cruel things.”

I didn’t bother to answer that.

I didn’t even try and decipher which parts of it might be true.

“Shall we?” he said, inclining his head towards the curb.

I didn’t answer that, either. When he turned and began walking towards the limousine, however, I followed him silently.

I’d come this far.

If they wanted me dead, I was already dead.

HE TOOK ME to Golden Gate Park.

I don’t know where or what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

We sat in the back of the limousine, just the two of us, despite my fears.

He didn’t try to talk to me while we drove. I saw a figure in the front of the car, driving the limousine, but it wasn’t who I expected. Rather than the tall blond vampire I normally associated with Brick, this one had auburn hair, tied back in a messy ponytail. He wore a dark suit, and a number of silver rings. He never once looked back at us as he drove, so I only saw his face and eyes in glimpses in the rearview mirror.

I remembered that Brick said Dorian was out looking for Nick.

I wouldn’t see him at all tonight.

When the driver turned us onto John F. Kennedy Drive, entering the park, and then off onto a smaller, winding drive, I frowned, looking through the tinted windows at the silent lawns and flower gardens surrounded by shadowed trees.

I could see lights in the distance now.

It wasn’t until the limousine drew closer to those lights, winding around another wide curve, that I realized what I was looking at.

The Conservatory of Flowers was lit up from within.

The tall, white, Victorian glass structure glowed like a beacon in the otherwise pitch-black park, its tall glass walls shining with white light. The limousine made its way around behind it in the dark, following the curve of road around it until it was on our other side, the opposite side from where I sat, and perched on a slight hill.

I bent down, looking at it through the window on Brick’s side of the car.

“What are we doing here, Brick?” I said, staring at those lit glass walls.

“It seemed a neutral place.”

I turned, frowning at him.

It might be “neutral” from the perspective of the seer and vampire conflicts, but it hardly lacked for drama. Moreover, it had emotional connections for me, personally, although there was no way the vampire could know that.

It had been my sister Zoe’s favorite place in the park, maybe in the whole city.

She would drag me here on the weekends sometimes.

I had shoeboxes full of photos of Zoe in various costumes taken inside the different rooms and segments of the Victorian-style greenhouse, and on the steps leading up to it, and in the glass vestibule that formed its entrance.

Since she was six years old, she’d said she would be married here.

Even after I was in junior high and high school, we would ride our bikes out here when the weather was good, and eat sandwiches on the lawn. The conservatory perched on one of the only hills in this part of the park, overlooked a sloping view of JFK Road and a section of the nearby gardens, so it was perfect for people watching.

We would sit here and talk about psychic stuff.

We weren’t really allowed to talk about that openly at home, so we’d do it in the park, or at Ocean Beach, where we thought we wouldn’t be overheard.

Gazing up the glowing glass walls of the antique building, I fought to push the memories of Zoe out of my mind. I hadn’t been here in years. I hadn’t avoided it consciously, but looking up at the domed roof and the two, L-shaped wings coming off the central structure, I found myself understanding why I hadn’t been back.

There was no possible way I could come here without remembering my sister.

My jaw hardened at the thought, my anger aimed at myself that time.

I also found myself wondering if Black would want to get married here.

Maybe that was something I could do for Zoe. At least one of the Fox girls could still get married here, even if it wasn’t the right one.

I shoved that out of my mind too.

It was probably better if I waited to see how this meeting went––and whether Black found out it took place––before I started planning weddings here.

Someone opened the limousine door, right next to where I sat.

It wasn’t the driver.

Looking up, I met the crystal eyes of another vampire I didn’t recognize, this one female. She had black and red dyed hair, her lipstick matching the red streaks in her long, half-curled hair. She smiled at me, and the smile almost looked real, disconcerting only because it was paired with those clear, soulless-looking eyes.

I took her offered hand without thought, and let her help me out of the back of the car.

Walking past her, I waited a few steps from the open door, watching Brick help himself out, then pause to lean to the female’s ear, murmuring something to her, too low for me to hear. Brick tugged the dark coat around him then, giving me a faint smile as he walked up to join me at the base of the Conservatory steps.

Without a word, we climbed the steps together, aiming our feet to the lit vestibule that led into the exotic plants greenhouse.

We were approaching the doors, when I found my steps slowing.

I stopped, looking at him.

He made it a few more steps before he stopped as well, looking back at me.

I could see his face clearly now, under the glow of the lights inside the Conservatory.

“What is this, Brick?” I said.

At his quirked eyebrow, I bit the inside of my cheek.

“Aren’t we going to talk about Nick?” I said. “About how to fix things between our two camps? Assuming they can be fixed?”

Brick looked at me for a minute, his smile fading.

As I watched, that smile transformed into a thoughtful, more conflicted frown.

Then, moving slowly, deceptively slow, almost in a glide, he approached where I stood. Before I’d decided how to react, he took my arm gently in his, looping his hand and forearm through my elbow without pulling my fingers off the hilt of the gun I wore.

It struck me in the same few fractions of a second that he hadn’t attempted to disarm me.

He hadn’t even had one of his people frisk me.

“Come inside, Miri,” he said, his voice gentle. “All of this will make more sense once you do.”

Watching his face, not hiding my skepticism, I stepped forward when he did.

That misgiving remained in my chest, pulling at my light, tightening in my throat. It wasn’t about Brick, per se. For some reason, I didn’t think he brought me here to hurt me. Whatever he wanted from me in bringing me here, it wasn’t that.

He was still holding my arm as he led me through the glass doors. Two of his people held open those doors, smiling at me as I walked past. Another female vampire and a male, both of them with black hair. The male looked Middle Eastern and wore a short, trimmed beard. The female had dark skin with tightly-cropped, black curly hair. She watched me with crystal eyes, and I saw an open curiosity there, almost like she knew me.

Maybe she just knew who I was.

Still, something about the familiarity in her eyes brought back that shiver of misgiving.

“I know you have your doubts about what your friend Nick will become,” Brick said. “I know it isn’t only your husband who is skeptical about this, Miriam.”

His voice was low, almost paternal in that soothing, melodic tone.

When I glanced over at him, he smiled, studying my face with slightly sharper eyes than his facial expression would suggest.

“…I know you have no way to judge that, by looking at me,” he continued, still watching my face. “I know you have no way to judge that by looking at or speaking with any of my people. Like human beings, vampires vary in temperament, in violence, in compassion, in wisdom, in foolishness, in experience, in character.”

He led me into the octagonal pavilion and my eyes scaled up, taking in the arched roof, as well as the glass clerestory and dome. Around us, tropical plants surrounding the central segment of the conservatory, with passageways going to the left and the right.

Brick steered me towards the right.

We entered an exhibit I remembered vaguely, and he took me to the right again, so that we followed a path along the south wall, towards the eastern arm of the building.

Tropical plants surrounded and loomed over us, giving the feel of a jungle.

I found myself looking at the colorful flowers and dark palm leaves as Brick continued to talk, guiding me gently deeper into the conservatory.

“…To truly understand the differences and similarities, you would need to interact with a vampire you knew before their transformation,” Brick continued, glancing at me. “With things as they are now between your husband and myself, I worry now that Naoko may not live long enough for you to see that transformation through him…”

Feeling me wince, he glanced at me, squeezing my arm briefly in his.

“That is not an outcome I relish either, Miriam,” he said, his voice lower. “Even if I somehow managed to survive it. And while I have misgivings about what I am about to show you, I feel it is the only way to prevent that from occurring. I hesitated to go this route with you previously for a number of reasons… not the least of which being I frankly had no idea how you might react.”

Pausing, he glanced at me again, leading me through the glass and plant-lined corridor.

I saw vampires here and there as we passed, all of them staring at me.

I saw that familiarity in some of their faces, too.

Brick continued speaking to me in that low, melodious voice.

“…But now I have no choice,” he said, his words firm. “I can only hope you forgive me for not telling you sooner. Be aware that wasn’t my decision, either, dear heart… trust me when I say, it was no small feat to convince the affected parties to agree to this meeting tonight.”

I bit my lip, trying to make sense of his vague words, even as I followed his graceful steps. Distracted by two more vampires standing on either side of the next glass doorway, I focused on the pond covered with flat, round water lilies just beyond that opening.

He’d taken me to the aquatic plants section.

I’d spent way too much time in here as a kid.

Maybe that was confusing me, too.

“What are you telling me?” I said. “I’m confused.”

Something in my mind clicked then, and I turned, giving him a harder glare.

My jaw tightened as I continued to turn over everything he’d said.

“Are you going to try and turn me into a vampire, Brick?” I said, blunt. “Because you have no idea how fast Black would kill you if that happened.”

Pausing, I added,

“If you somehow tied your life to mine, the way you did with Nick, he’d kill every single vampire around you… and probably throw you in a cage in his basement and experiment on you when he was bored.”

I stared at him, knowing every word I’d just said was true.

Even so, fear shot adrenaline through my blood and light, making it hard to breathe, hard to think clearly, despite my own words.

“Trust me, Brick,” I said, my voice harder. “You don’t want to do that.”

Brick raised his fingers, waving off my concern with a patient, dismissive gesture.

“Do not concern yourself, Miriam. I was in no way leading up to anything like that. I have absolutely no intention of turning you into a vampire.”

It took a second for my mind and body to react to his words.

Then I exhaled silently, feeling a relief that was nearly physical.

“However,” Brick said, raising his hand a second time. He motioned gracefully, indicating across the pond to the other side of the aquatic plants exhibit. “…I can perhaps clear up one mystery for you tonight. In relation to what you just said.”

He turned, meeting my frown with a smile.

“You and your husband have asked me, on more than one occasion, why I was so sure I would be able to turn you, if I so chose.” Noting my puzzlement, he smiled a touch wider, flashing a starker white of fang. “Perhaps I can offer the answer to that question finally.”

Frowning, I just stared at him.

When he nodded across the pond, however, still indicating for me to look towards the other side of the L-shaped glass room, I turned my head.

For a few seconds, I didn’t see anything.

The water was utterly still, a mirrored surface covered in dark green lilies, surrounded by ferns and dark vines, making it look like something from a prehistoric pond. I stared across the dense green undergrowth, remembering being in here as a kid––

When a form appeared on the other side of the pond.

It glided silently, softly, moving like liquid, appearing from behind a giant fern.

My eyes took in the body in a confused glance, logging details without comprehension. Long, lean, muscular legs encased in black leather. Tall red boots, also leather. A form-fitting white lace top over a generous chest, accented with a pale green teardrop stone hanging on a silver necklace. Red leather belt. Lean, muscular arms. Long-fingered hands covered in silver rings, resting on curvy hips below a narrow waist.

My eyes rose to her face.

I froze.

For a long-feeling few seconds, I thought my memories had superimposed over the scene in front of me.

I was dreaming… hallucinating, anyway.

I had to be.

Then she smiled.

“Hey,” she said, raising a hand.

It was the same, goofy, half-assed wave she would have given me when she was seventeen.

I stared.

I couldn’t blink.

I couldn’t look away.

I couldn’t fully see her, either.

“Miri.” Her voice rose, growing a touch sharper. “Hey… big sis. Take a breath. Breathe, okay? You’re not seeing things. It’s me.”

She turned, her eyes shifting to the space next to me.

Some part of my mind knew she was looking at Brick, but I didn’t look away from her to follow her gaze, to confirm what I knew.

I also didn’t breathe.

I couldn’t breathe.

“Miri.” Her eyes shifted back to mine. Her lower lip jutted in a worried pout. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do it like this. I told them we shouldn’t do it like this.”

Again, her eyes flickered sideways, then back to me.

“Don’t blame Brick. It’s not his fault.” She frowned at the other vampire. “Although I told him you’d probably have a damned coronary… and then you’d probably beat him to death with your bare hands.”

Glancing again at Brick, she smiled.

Her smile faded when she returned her stare to me.

Her brow furrowed in worry.

“Hey! Miri… I mean it. Breathe!”

I didn’t breathe, though.

I didn’t move.

My eyes found hers, somewhere in that wash of familiarity and memory and all of the million and one things that told me none of this was real, that it couldn’t be real, that I was hallucinating, or drugged, or losing my mind.

My eyes found hers and somehow fixed there.

I stared at those clear, cracked-crystal irises.

I watched her look at me.

I saw the caution there, the nervousness, the excitement to see me.

I saw everything that was right there… everything I remembered.

I saw everything that was wrong.

Something in my chest just gave out.

Then everything went dark.