Eddie was undaunted. “I don’t care what they do. If they want to endanger their lives, so be it. But a princess of her people has no business putting herself in danger.”

“A princess of her people has no business sitting off to the side while said people are in danger,” Jill returned.

“Do you have any idea what could have happened if—”

“Oh, shut up,” she said, reaching for him. He flinched in surprise, but once she started kissing him, the tension left his body. I shook my head and looked away.

“Oh, man,” I said to no one in particular. “This night is just full of surprises.”

With the immediate danger gone, I was able to examine Neil more closely. He was weak and groggy from the blood loss and Strigoi endorphins, but he’d survive. “Hey,” I said, gently touching his face. He looked up at me in a daze, not seeming to know me. “You did it. You proved that the tattoo worked. We have a way to keep Strigoi from drinking from us.” Even if Olive’s blood couldn’t technically stop turning, it seemed pretty unlikely a Strigoi could stomach draining anyone in order to complete the process.

Neil gave me an addled smile and closed his eyes. “We need to get him fluids,” said Eddie. Jill was standing a couple feet from him now, but he had a dazed, starstruck quality to him. “Back to the car.”

As he and Trey helped Neil up, I took care of the Strigoi body, destroying it with Alchemist chemicals. As I watched that gruesome face dissolve into smoke, I had a surreal moment of clarity. I remembered those frantic seconds when I’d thought all I loved and knew, all that was Sydney Sage, would be lost from this world. My battered friends and I had just had a brush with death, dancing with this evil. We’d destroyed it, but it was terrifying how touch and go it all had been. At any moment, the Strigoi could have gained the advantage and killed one or all of us. Life and death were inextricably bound together, and we wavered between them. But we’d triumphed over death tonight. We were alive, and the world was beautiful. Life was beautiful, and I refused to waste mine.

As we returned to the cars, Angeline and Trey bragged how they’d been lying in wait to follow us. “I knew,” she said. She was holding Trey’s hand, which I didn’t have the mental energy to ponder right now. “I knew something was going down tonight.”

“You did good,” I told her. “Really good.” The widening of her eyes told me she’d been expecting a lecture. Maybe she deserved one, but I just didn’t feel it. We treated her like a joke, but she was a fighter against evil, every bit as tough as Eddie and Neil. Glancing over at Trey, who was trying to keep his sword obscured under a coat, I realized he was one of us too. Even Jill was.

“I actually didn’t believe it,” Jill said with a small smile. “When Angeline told me she was taking off, I went to your room to let you know. Zoe said you were out for the night, and that’s when I realized something might actually be happening, so I went and caught up.”

Angeline gaped. “You were going to tell on me?”

Jill shrugged. “It all worked out.”

“This time,” I said. I wasn’t up for any lectures, but one would be needed. Eddie was right. It was fine for the rest of us to do foolhardy things, but our sole purpose for being here in the first place was to protect Jill. If that Strigoi had broken loose . . .

At my car, we patched Neil’s wound and plied him with water and orange juice. He gradually shook off the endorphins and grinned as the impact of what we’d accomplished hit him. I don’t think he’d yet realized Jill was along, or he wouldn’t have been so giddy. “It really worked. We did it.” He gave a soft laugh, and I tried to remember if I’d ever heard him do it before. “We’re going to get yelled at when we report this.”

Eddie smiled back, and I saw genuine friendship between them. “I doubt it’ll last for long when they get the results.”

“What’s the plan now?” asked Trey. “We’re out way after curfew.”

“Did you sign out?” asked Eddie. They shook their heads. “Neither did we. The plan was to stay out all night and then slink back tomorrow when things are busy so that they hopefully won’t notice anything. None of our roommates is going to tell on us.”

“We could go to Clarence’s or Adrian’s,” said Angeline.

“I’m hungry,” muttered Neil.

“I know a great twenty-four-hour place,” said Trey. “We’ll have a victory meal of fried food.”

We made plans and headed back to Palm Springs in our respective cars. As soon as I was on the road with Eddie and Jill, I told them, “I need to see Adrian. Drop me off and take my car. He’ll give me a ride back.”

Eddie looked totally surprised by that. “Why do you need to see him?”

“I just do.” I didn’t feel like attempting an excuse, and Eddie wasn’t the type to badger me. The most I got was a curious look when we reached the apartment. His curiosity turned to panic when he realized I’d be leaving him alone with Jill.

“Good luck,” I said as I got out, not entirely sure who needed it the most. “Call me if anything goes wrong with Neil.” He’d ridden back with Trey and Angeline, and I didn’t expect him to have any issues. He’d been on his own two feet when we parted, and dhampirs were fast healers.

Eddie pulled away, and I strode up to Adrian’s building, my heart racing. I still hadn’t shaken that earlier exhilaration from having been so close to having my life snatched away.

I let myself into the apartment, which was dark and quiet. It was still amazing to me how well he slept. I crept to his bedroom and found him lying there in just boxers, the covers tangled up and one arm thrown over his head. A streetlight outside shone faintly on his face, illuminating a rare moment of peace. He was so breathtakingly gorgeous that I could almost buy into his earlier comments about us living in a dream.

But this was real. It was real, and we were alive. We were alive, and I desperately needed to be reminded of that. Without further hesitation, I stripped off my clothes and slid into bed with him.

Chapter 21

ADRIAN

“SYDNEY—”

The word came groggily to my lips as I felt her get into bed. My sleepy brain didn’t have a chance to come up with anything more because my voice was lost as she leaned over and kissed me. I wrapped my arms around her and had the extremely pleasant surprise of finding her naked.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Not that I’m complaining. It’s more of an intellectual curiosity.”

“I did something potentially dangerous,” she said nervously. “No, there’s no ‘potentially’ about it. It was dangerous and actually pretty stupid.”

She then proceeded to tell me an unbelievable story about how she and Eddie had thrust Neil into the path of a Strigoi. It was all I could do not to leap up and rage at her for risking herself like that. A terrible memory flashed through my mind of the time she and I had been trapped by two Strigoi, and one had bitten her. I couldn’t even comprehend a repeat of that.

“Hold on.” I sat straight up as I did a mental enumeration of the cast she’d described. “Everyone was there? Jill was there?”

“That wasn’t part of the plan,” she said quickly, sitting up beside me. “That was improvisation from her and Angeline. And Trey too, I suppose.”

Imagining Sydney dying was beyond terrible. And in some ways, imagining Jill dying was even worse because I’d already seen it happen.

“Jill could’ve been killed,” I said. “We’re supposed to be keeping her safe!”

“I know, I know.” Sydney leaned against my shoulder. “I really didn’t want her to be there. Eddie was pretty upset too, though I’m not sure how he’s feeling now after she kissed him.”

“After she—what? Okay, we’ll come back to that. God, Sydney. Why didn’t you tell me any of this was going down?”

“Because you would’ve tried to stop me. Or tried to go yourself. Believe me . . . I’m sorry. I don’t want to keep things from you. Ever. I want complete honesty between us. I just want . . . well, I wanted you to be safe even more.” She snuggled closer. “Don’t tell me you don’t understand that logic.”

“Of course I understand it! And yes, I would’ve tried to stop you. Damn it, Sydney!” I caught hold of her hands and was surprised to find I was shaking. Again, terrible, bloody images of her flashed through my mind. “This isn’t the same as you running off to a witch’s tea party! This is life and death. If you’d been killed—if you’d left me—”

“I know,” she breathed. “I know.”

And suddenly, her arms were around me, her mouth crushing mine in a demanding kiss that chased away all other thoughts as she pushed me down on the bed. There was an urgency and intensity burning between us that I’d never felt before, and that was saying something, in light of our recent active sex life. Maybe it was this brush with death that was driving us to furiously prove we were alive. All I really knew for sure was that I needed her, that I needed to lose myself in passion and get as close to her as possible . . . so that I’d never lose her again.

She continued kissing me with that ferocity, so much so that her lips lightly scraped my teeth. It was only a few drops, but as the sweet, metallic taste of her blood touched my tongue, a blinding ecstasy flooded my body. She pulled back with a small gasp, and looking up at her in the fickle light, I could see an answering rapture on her features as the barest flush of Moroi endorphins seized hold of her. Her lips parted; her eyes were wide with desire. I knew then, without a doubt, that I could’ve brought her throat back to my fangs and that she would’ve let me sink them into her. I could have her blood and her body tonight, if I wanted. And I did want it. The tease of her blood had me high and hungry, not just because it was blood—but because it was hers. Her essence. I yearned for that type of all-consuming union with her, to have no boundaries left between us, to see her lost in the pleasures of an endorphin wave. She would’ve let me do it all. She might even want me to—or at least, the Sydney who’d accidentally gotten a brief rush of endorphins might want me to. The thing was, I couldn’t be sure that normal Sydney, no matter how much she loved me, wanted that. And until I was, it was a line we wouldn’t cross, despite how frenzied the thought made me.

She hovered over me for several more tense seconds, as we each fought our own inner battles. Then, the moment of temptation passed, and we were suddenly back on each other as though nothing had happened, with a fierceness that shattered the memory of her blood. I was awash on a sea of desire, drowning in everything about her. Her passion answered mine as she murmured my name and clung to me so tightly that her nails dug into my skin, as though she feared she might lose me if she let go.

Afterward, she collapsed at my side, still clinging to me as her ragged breathing slowed to normal. I draped an arm over her, my own heart beating frantically from what had just passed. I was no longer angry. Mostly I still felt scared at how close she’d come to death. But she was alive. I told myself that over and over as I tightened my arms around her. She was alive and safe. She wasn’t going anywhere.

And, to be honest, I had to admit I understood her reasoning for keeping me in the dark. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. If our roles were reversed, I would’ve done the same thing to protect her. It was also hard to judge when I’d done my own share of withholding secrets upon starting the mood stabilizer.

The last critical piece in all this was that their risk had paid off. I couldn’t deny the results. Olive’s blood had worked. Somehow, through our fumbling and guesswork, we’d actually created a magical vaccine against Strigoi. If only there were a way to replicate it.

“You know,” I mused, mulling over the story in my mind, “Angeline and Neil really put it all on the line tonight. I’ll never make fun of them again.”

“Never?” Sydney teased.

“Well, maybe not as much.”

“Eddie ‘put it all on the line’ too,” she reminded me.

“Yeah, I know, but that’s normal for him.” I then recalled her earlier words. “Wait. Did you say Jill kissed him?”

“Yup. It was actually very romantic, in a why-did-you-just-risk-yourself-you-fool kind of way.” She paused. “Actually, it was kind of like what just happened with you and me.”

“It better not’ve been,” I growled.

“Okay. Let’s just say the motivations were sort of the same,” she corrected.