Shaking inside, I stretched over her and turned off the water. The cotton towel was rough on my fingertips as I grabbed it and hesitated. "Ivy?" I said, frightened. "I don't want to touch you. Please get up."

Tears silently mixing with the water, she rose and took the towel. After she promised she would get herself dried off and dressed, I took her blood-soaked clothes along with my slippers and robe through the church to drop them on the back porch. The smell of burning blood turned my stomach like bad incense. I'd bury them in the cemetery later.

I found her huddled in her bed when I came back, her damp hair soaking her pillow and her untouched cocoa on the nightstand. Her face was to the wall and she wasn't moving. I pulled the afghan from the foot of the bed over her, and she trembled. "Ivy?" I said, then hesitated, not knowing what to do.

"I told him no," she said, her voice a whisper, torn gray silk drifting to rest atop snow.

I sat down on the cloth-draped trunk against the wall. Piscary. But I wouldn't say his name for fear of triggering something.

"Kist took me to him," she said, her words having the cadence of repeated memory. She had crossed her arms over her chest, only her fingers showing as they clutched her shoulders. I blanched as I saw what must be flesh under her nails, and I tugged the afghan up to hide it.

"Kisten took me to see him," she repeated, her words slow and deliberate. "He was angry. He said you were causing trouble. I told him you weren't going to hurt him, but he was angry. He was so angry with me."

I leaned closer, not liking this.

"He said," Ivy whispered, her voice almost unheard, "that if I couldn't curb you, that he would. I told him I'd make you my scion, that you would behave and he wouldn't have to kill you, but I couldn't do it." Her voice got higher, almost frantic. "You didn't want it, and it's supposed to be a gift. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I tried to tell you," she said to the wall. "I tried to keep you alive, but he wants to see you now. He wants to talk to you. Unless…"Her trembling ceased. "Rachel? Yesterday… when you said you were sorry, was it because you thought you'd pushed me too far, or that you said no?"

I took a breath to answer, shocked when my words got stuck in my throat.

"Do you want to be my scion?" she breathed, softer than a guilty prayer.

"No," I whispered, frightened out of my mind.

She started shaking, and I realized she was crying again. "I said no, too," she said around her gulps for air. "I said no, but he did anyway. I think I'm dead, Rachel. Am I dead?" she questioned, her tears cutting off in her sudden fear.

My mouth was dry and I clutched my arms around myself. "What happened?"

Her breath came in a quick sound, and she held it for a moment. "He was angry. He said I had failed him. But he said it was all right. That I was the child of his heart, and that he loved me, that he forgave me. He told me he understood about pets. That he once kept them himself but that they always turned on him and he had to kill them. It hurt him, when they betrayed him time and again. He said if I couldn't bring myself to make you safe, that he'd do it for me. I said I'd do it, but he knew I was lying." A frightening moan came from her. "He knew I was lying."

I was a pet. I was a dangerous pet to be tamed. That's what Piscary thought I was.

"He said he understood my want for a friend instead of a pet, but that it wasn't safe to let you stay as you were. He said I had lost control and people were talking. I started to cry then, because he was so kind and I had disappointed him." Her words came in short bursts as she struggled to get the words out. "And he made me sit beside him, holding me as he whispered how proud he was of me and that he loved my great-grandmother almost as much as he loved me. That was all I ever wanted," she said. "Him to be proud of me."

She made a short gasp of pained laugher. "He said he understood about wanting a friend," she said to the wall, her face hidden behind her hair. "He told me he had been looking for centuries for someone strong enough to survive with him, that my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were all too weak but that I had the will to survive. I told him I didn't want to live forever, and he shushed me, telling me I was his chosen, that I would stay with him forever."

Her shoulders shook under the coverlet. "He held me, soothing my fears of the future. He said he loved me and was proud of me. And then he took my finger and drew blood from himself."

Stomach acid bubbled up, and I swallowed it down.

Her voice had gone wispy, her hunger and need a hidden ribbon of steel. "Oh God, Rachel. He's so old. It was like liquid electricity, welling up from him. I tried to leave. I wanted it, and I tried to leave, but he wouldn't let me. I said no, and then I ran. But he caught me. I tried to fight, but it didn't matter. Then I begged him no, but he held me and forced me to taste him."

Her voice was husky and her body shook. I moved to sit on the edge of the bed, horrified. Ivy went still, and I waited, unable to see her face, afraid to.

"And then I didn't have to think anymore," she said, the flat sound of her voice shocking. "I think I passed out for a moment. I wanted it. The power, the passion. He's so old. I pulled him to the floor and straddled him. I took everything he had as he clutched me to him, urging me to go deeper, to draw more. And I took it, Rachel. I took more than I should have. He should have stopped me, but he let me take it all."

I couldn't move, riveted by the terror of it.

"Kist tried to stop us. He tried to get between us, to stop Piscary from letting me take too much, but with every swallow, I lost more of myself. I think I—hurt Kist. I think I broke him. All I know is he went away, and Piscary…" A soft, pleasure-filled sound escaped her as she said his name again. "…Piscary drew me back." She moved languorously beneath the black sheets, suggestively. "He gentled my head against him and pressed me closer until I was sure he wanted me and I found he had more to give."

A harsh breath shook her, and she clenched into a huddled knot, the sated lover flashing into a beaten child. "I took everything. He let me take everything. I knew why he let me, and I did it anyway."

She was silent, but I knew she wasn't done yet. I didn't want to hear anymore, but she had to say it or she would drive herself slowly insane.

"With every pull, I could feel his hunger growing," she said, whispering. "With my every swallow his need swelled. I knew what would happen if I didn't stop, but he said it was all right, and it had been so long," she almost moaned. "I didn't want to stop. I knew what would happen, and I didn't want to stop. It was my fault. My fault."

I recognized the phrase from rape victims. "It wasn't your fault," I said, resting my hand upon her covered shoulder.

"It was," she said, and I pulled away as her voice became low and sultry. "I knew what would happen. And when I had everything he was, he asked for his blood back—like I knew he would. And I gave it to him. I wanted to, and I did. And it was fantastic."

I forced myself to breathe.

"God help me," she whispered. "I was alive. I hadn't been alive for three years. I was a goddess. I could give life. I could take it away. I saw him for what he was, and I wanted to be like him. And with his blood burning in me as if it was mine, his strength wholly mine, and his power wholly mine, burning into me the ugly, beautiful truth of his existence, he asked me to be his scion. He asked me to take Kisten's place, that he had been waiting for me to understand what it meant before he offered it to me. And that when I died, I would be his equal."

I kept my hand moving over her head in a soothing motion as her eyes closed and her shaking stopped. She was getting drowsy, her face going slack as her mind unwound her nightmare, finding a way to deal with it. I wondered if it had anything to do with the sky past her curtains brightening with the coming dawn.