"Oh, that's easy," Roxy answered, counting off her fingers. "First step: the Dark One marks his Beloved. I assume Christian's already done that with you, yes?"

I gnawed on my lip. "Marked how?"

"Have you had any visions recently?" Joy asked. "Any times when you felt as if your mind had merged with Christian's?"

I smiled a grim little smile. "No one gets into my mind without my permission. Guarding my mind from others was the first thing I learned."

"Really?" Joy looked at Roxy. Roxy looked back at Joy. Esme looked at her cat. Mr. Woogums licked his butt. "Well, I don't know what to say in that case. With me, everything Christian felt and saw, I felt and saw. And… er… likewise."

I felt a stab of something that bore a remarkable resemblance to jealousy. I squelched the feeling immediately. I was not jealous of Joy. Christian did not mean anything to me. "I did have a dream about him. Dreams are often the only way to get to someone with a strongly guarded mind. We ward ourselves as best we can before we go to sleep, but there's a certain lack of control when you're sleeping." Which was one of the reasons I seldom slept at night. Nighttime was traditionally the domain of those creatures who sought control over Summoners' minds.

"A dream? An erotic dream, you mean?" Roxy asked.

I laughed. "Hardly. He was covered in blood and had a hundred cuts all over his body. I thought he was a tortured spirit when I first saw him."

"You saw him?" I nodded to Joy. "Oh, well, then, that definitely is a marking, wouldn't you say?"

"Definitely," Esme answered for Roxy, nodding her head vigorously. Her little sausage curls bounced around as she beamed a happy smile at all of us.

"The second step is protection from afar," Joy said.

"And we saw that well enough last night," Roxy added.

I made a noncommittal face. Two out of seven was statistically still a coincidence. I'd seen much stranger things.

"The third step's the good one—exchange of bodily fluids."

"Ew!"

"It sounds gross, but it's not," Roxy reassured me. "Really, it just means kissing. You know." She tipped her head toward Esme. "Enchfray issingkay."

"My third husband was very good with his tongue," Esme told her. "He could tie a cherry stem into a knot."

There just wasn't much any of us could say to that.

"The fourth step," Joy said as she rested a teacup on her belly, "is when the Dark One entrusts the heroine with his life by giving her the means to destroy him."

"Hey, wait a minute, I want to find out if Allie and Christian have been doing the tongue waltz."

"Roxy! That's none of your business!"

"Look, sister, I flew all the way over here just to help you help Christian, leaving my darling husband to fend for himself for seven whole nights. It is too my business. So…" She turned to me. "Have you guys locked lips or not?"

"I… I…"

"She's blushing," Esme said to Roxy. "I would hazard a guess that is a yes. And after what I saw of Christian last night—such a nice boy, even if he is a Dark One—I can't blame her. If I were thirty years younger, I might try taking him away from her."

There's nothing so annoying as a ghost who exudes coyness.

"The fifth step," Joy said firmly, giving her friend a stern look, "is the second exchange."

"Bet you can't guess what that means." Roxy sniggered.

"Stop it, Rox; you're being obnoxious. You don't have to embarrass Allie. The sixth step is where the Dark One seeks his Beloved's assistance to overcome his darker self, and the final step, the one that redeems his soul and ends his torment is the final exchange—a blood exchange—after which the Beloved offers herself as a sacrifice so that he might live."

"Don't worry; Christian won't actually let you sacrifice yourself. You just have to make the effort. That's what Joy did, anyway, and it worked."

I stifled the little voice inside me that said I'd heard just about enough of Joy and Christian's relationship for one day. "It all sounds rather… oh, I don't know, epic somehow."

"It is in a way, isn't it?" Joy agreed. "There is a strong element of selflessness and absolute love to the whole thing that makes it seem like one of those lengthy medieval romantic poems, but I can assure you that it is a very serious matter to Christian. He is, for lack of a better word, wounded, and can't be healed until his Beloved agrees to save him."

"Ah. Well, that's fascinating, but I have to say, all this drives home the point that Christian is absolutely right. I'm not the epic story type. I'm not Beloved material. I'm a Summoner, pure and simple, and any… er… feelings of a warmer nature—which I don't have—are purely coincidental."

"Uh-huh. No warm feelings, eh? Is that why you blushed so hard over the kissing question?"

"Roxy, stop teasing her." Joy looked at me with a puzzled frown. "Perhaps we're wrong. Perhaps you really aren't Christian's Beloved, although I could have sworn… Well, it doesn't matter. If you are, you'll find a way to work things out, and if you aren't, we'll simply keep looking for the woman who'll save him."

Something twinged deep within me. I ignored it just as I ignored all of the rest of the strange things my mind was trying to tell me. "Would you mind if I asked why you're so involved in finding this Beloved person? I mean, isn't Christian really the best person to do that?"

"Yes," came a familiar, deep, beautifully resonant voice from the door behind me. I didn't bother turning around to look at him; I was too busy telling my body it was not going to leap up out of the chair and throw itself into his arms.

"Christian," Joy cried in delight. She peered over her shoulder at the window. "Is it dark so soon?"

"Not quite; there are another twelve minutes until sunset," he answered, setting a black fedora, black silk scarf, and ankle-length black coat on a table before advancing into the room. "Good evening, ladies. Joy, you look glowing as ever. Roxy, I see the fine hand of your husband in that lovely gown. Please tell him again what exquisite fashion taste he has. Esme, what an unexpected delight. You are charm personified."

He turned to look at me. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited. He took his time letting his gaze travel down from my hair—pulled back in a scrunchy—to my rose-trellis sweater with the yarn bobbles, and farther down to my jeans, which I suddenly realized had a big old mud splash on the ankle. I tried to cross the clean leg in front of it before he saw, but I could tell by the sweep of his eyebrow as it swooped up his forehead that he'd seen anyway, drat it all.

"Allegra, that is a very pretty, very feminine sweater. Dare I hope you wore it on my account?"

"No, you dare not. I wore it because it had bobbles that it turned out I needed today. You had nothing to do with it."

"Put in my place, and very handily, too," he said with a smile that melted every single one of my traitorous internal organs.

"Christian, I don't understand. How can you be out if the sun hasn't set?" Joy was back to looking worried again.

He glanced at me, then seated himself in the chair next to hers. "I awoke early. After I dined—"

"He keeps a whole ton of servants in his London house just so he can feed off them," Roxy leaned forward to whisper to me. She must have seen the horrified look on my face, because she quickly added, "Oh, he wipes their memories clean, so they don't remember a thing about it. They don't suffer at all."

"—I decided I would accept your kind invitation as Allegra and I have plans for the evening. I assure you I was well protected against the elements for those few seconds I was exposed to sunlight." His gaze dropped to my jeans. Unwittingly I brushed at my legs, then stopped when I realized what I was doing.

"If you keep cocking your eyebrow like that, one day it's going to freeze in that position," I snapped. "You needn't look at me as if I'm a reject from the ragpicking farm. I don't have any girl clothes with me, so if jeans and a bobble rose-trellis sweater don't meet your exacting standards, I'll be happy to go sit in St. Paul's Cathedral and see if I can't Summon Sir Christopher Wren."