But the carpet felt nice on my arches as I followed Kisten, forcing myself to not feel the outside of my bag for the vial he had promised was there. He was tense again, his jaw tight and his manner sullen, far from the domineering vampire that had driven me to the brink of capitulation. He looked jealous and wronged. Just what I would expect from a betrayed lover.

Give me this…. echoed in my memory, pulling an un-stoppable shudder through me. I wondered if he begged Piscary like that, knowing that he had been asking for blood. And I wondered if, to Kisten, the taking of blood was a casual commitment or something more.

The sound of muted traffic drew my attention from the picture of what looked like Piscary and Lindburgh sharing a pint in a British pub. Steps slow to hid his limp, Kisten led me into a sunken living room. At the end of it was a tiled breakfast nook before what looked like, for all the world, a window overlooking the river from the second story. Piscary was lounging at a small metal-weave table dead center of the circular tiled space, surrounded by carpet. I knew I was underground and that it was only a live video feed, but it sure looked like a window to me.

The sky was brightening with the coming dawn, giving the gray river a soft sheen. Cincinnati's taller buildings were dark silhouettes against the lighter sky. Smoke came from the paddleboats as they stoked their boilers, readying themselves for the first wave of tourists. Sunday traffic was light, and the individual whooshes of cars were lost behind the thousands of clatters, clanks, and unseen calls that make up the background of a city. I watched the water ripple under the breeze, and my hair lifted in a gust in time with a soft hush of wind. Taken aback at the detail, I searched the ceiling and floor until I found a vent. A horn blew in the distance.

"Enjoy yourself, Kist?" Piscary said, pulling my attention away from the jogger and his dog running the footpath beside the river.

Kist's neck went red and he ducked his head. "I wanted to know what Ivy was talking about," he mumbled, looking like a child caught kissing the neighbor girl.

Piscary smiled. "Exciting, isn't it? Leaving her unbound like that is loads of fun until she tries to kill you. But then, that's where the thrill comes from, yes?"

My tension flowed back. Piscary looked relaxed, sitting at one of the table's two wireweave chairs in a lightweight, midnight-blue silk robe. The morning paper sat folded by his hand. The deep color of his robe went nicely with his amber skin. His bare feet were visible through the table. They were long and skinny, the same honey hue as his bare scalp. My anxiety strengthened at his bedroom-casual appearance. Great. This is just what I needed.

"Nice window," I said, thinking it was better than Trent's, the toad. He could have taken care of all of this had he acted when I told him Piscary was the murderer. Men were all alike: take what they can get without paying for it, lie about the rest.

Piscary shifted in his chair, and his robe parted to show his knee. I quickly looked away. "Thank you," he said. "I hated sunrises when I was alive. Now it's my favorite part of the day." I sneered, and he gestured to the table. "Would you like a cup of coffee?"

"Coffee?" I said. "I would have thought it was against the gangster code to have coffee with someone before killing them."

His thin black eyebrows rose. I realized he must want something from me, otherwise he would have just sent Algaliarept to kill me on the bus.

"Black," I said. "No sugar."

Piscary gave Kisten a directive nod, and he slipped soundlessly away. I pulled out the second chair across from Piscary, flopping down with my bag on my lap. I glanced out the fake window in the silence. "I like your lair," I said sarcastically.

Piscary raised one eyebrow. I wished I could do that. Too late to learn how now. "It was originally part of the underground railroad," he said. "A foul hole in the ground under someone's shipping dock. Ironic, isn't it?" I said nothing, and he added, "This used to be the gateway to the free world. It still is, occasionally. There's nothing like death to free a person."

A small sigh slipped from me, and I turned to the window, wondering how much wise-old-man-crap he was going to make me listen to before killing me. Piscary cleared his throat, and I looked back. A wisp of black hair showed behind the V of his robe, and his calves visible through the wire mesh of the table were hard with muscle. I recalled my lust rising hot and fast in the elevator with Kisten, knowing it had mostly been vamp pheromones. Liar. That Piscary could to that to me and more with nothing more than a sound turned my stomach.

Unable to stop myself, I sent my hand over my neck as if to brush my hair from my eyes. I wanted to hide my scar, though Piscary was probably more aware of it than the nose on my face. "You didn't have to rape her to get me to come see you," I said, deciding to be angry instead of afraid. "A dead horse head in my bed would have done it."

"I wanted to," he said, his low voice carrying the strength of the wind. "Much as you'd like to think otherwise, this isn't all about you, Rachel. Some of it, but not all."

"My name is Ms. Morgan."

He acknowledged this with a three-second, mocking silence. "I have been spoiling Ivy. People are beginning to talk. It was time to bring her back into the fold. And it was a pleasure—for both of us." A smile of remembrance came over him, a glint of fang and a soft, almost subliminal, guttural sigh. "She surprised me, going far past my intended purpose. I haven't lost control like that for at least three hundred years."

My stomach quivered as a surge of his vamp-induced desire flashed through me and was gone. Its potency took my breath away, and I found myself reaching out to catch it. "Bastard," I said, wide-eyed as my blood pounded in me.

"Flatterer," he said back, his eyebrows high.

"She changed her mind," I said, as the last of his need died in me. "She doesn't want to be your scion. Leave her alone."

"It's too late. And she does want it. I put no compulsion on her when she made her decision. I didn't need to. She had been bred and raised for the position, and when she dies, she will have the complexity to be a suitable companion, varied and sophisticated enough in her thoughts so that I don't become bored with her and she with me. You see, Rachel, it's not honest to say that the lack of blood is what causes a vampire to go insane and walk out into the sun. It's the boredom that brings upon a lack of appetite that leads to insanity. Working to bring Ivy about has helped me stave that off. Now that she is poised upon her potential, she's going to keep me from going insane." He inclined his head graciously. "And I'll do the same for her."

His attention went over my shoulder, and the hair on the back of my neck pricked. It was Kisten. The whisper of his passage brushed against me, and I stifled a shudder. The bruised and beaten vamp silently set a cup of coffee on a saucer before me and left. He never met my eyes, his manner holding a subdued pain. The steam from the porcelain rose three inches before the artificial wind caught it and blew it away. I didn't reach for the cup. Fatigue pulled at me and adrenaline made me feel ill. I thought of the charms in my bag. Why was Piscary waiting?

"Kist?" the undead vampire said softly, and Kisten turned. "Give it to me."

Piscary held out his hand, and Kisten dropped a crumpled paper in his palm. My face went slack in panic. It was my note to Nick.

"Did she call anyone?" Piscary asked Kist, and the young vampire ducked his head.

"She called the FIB. They hung up on her."

Shocked, I looked at Kisten. He had watched the entire thing. He had hidden in the shadows while I held Ivy's hair as she vomited, watched as I made her cocoa, and listened as I sat beside Ivy while she relived her nightmare. While I had been taking forever on the bus, Kisten had ripped my salvation from the door. No one was coming. No one at all.