A slender arm draped in white cloth appeared before him.

In slow tugs, the sleeve of the robing was gradually lifted higher and higher.

The wrist that was exposed was fragile, the skin white and fine.

The veins beneath the surface were light blue.

Tohr’s fangs slammed down from the roof of his mouth and a snarl came out of his lips. The bastard angel was right. Suddenly there was nothing on his mind; everything was his body and what he’d deprived it of for so long.

Tohr clamped a hard hand on her shoulder, hissed like a cobra, and bit the Chosen’s wrist down to the bone, locking his fangs in place. There was a cry of alarm and a scramble, but he was gone as he drank, his swallows like fists on a rope, pulling that blood down into his gut so fast he didn’t have time to taste it.

He nearly killed the Chosen.

And he knew this only later, after Lassiter finally peeled him free and knocked him out with a punch to the head-because the instant he’d been separated from the source of those nutrients, he’d tried to go for the female again.

The fallen angel had been right.

Horrible biology was the ultimate driver, winning over even the stoutest of heart.

And the most reverent of widowers.

THIRTY-FOUR

When Ehlena got home, she put on a fake face, sent Lusie off, and checked with her father, who was “making incredible strides” in his work. The second she could get free, though, she went into her room to hop online. She had to figure out how much money they had, down to the penny, and didn’t think she was going to like what she came up with. After signing onto her bank account, she scrolled through the checks that had yet to clear and tallied up what was due the first week of the month. The good news was that she was still going to get her pay for November.

Their savings account had just under eleven grand in it.

There was nothing left to sell. And no fat on the monthly budget.

Lusie would have to stop coming. Which would suck, because she’d take on another client to fill the spot, so when Ehlena found a new job there’d be a nursing care hole to plug.

Although that was assuming she could get another position. Sure as hell it wasn’t going to be in nursing. Getting fired for cause was not what any employer wanted to see on a résumé.

Why had she lifted those fucking pills?

Ehlena sat staring at the screen adding and readding all the little numbers until they blurred together, not even the sum of them registering anymore.

“Daughter mine?”

She quickly shut down the laptop, because her father didn’t do well with electronics, and composed her face. “Yes? I mean, yes?”

“I wonder if you would care to read a passage or two of my work? You seem anxious, and I find such pursuits calm my mind.” He shuffled to the side and gallantly extended his arm.

Ehlena stood up because sometimes all a person could do was accept the direction of others. She didn’t want to read any of the gibberish he had committed to the page. Couldn’t bear to pretend that everything was okay. Wished that, even if just for an hour, she could have her parent back so she could talk through the bad position she had landed them both in.

“That would be lovely,” she said in a dead, elegant voice.

Following him into his study, she helped settle him into his chair and looked around at the sloppy stacks of paper. What a mess. There were black leather binders crammed to the point of breaking. File folders stuffed wide. Spiral-bound notebooks with pages lolling out of their confines like the tongues of dogs. White loose-leaf paper sprinkled here and there, as if the pages had tried to fly away and gotten only so far.

It was all his diary, or so he maintained. In reality, it was just pile after pile of nonsense, the physical manifestation of his mental chaos.

“Here. Sit, sit.” Her father cleared off the seat next to his desk, moving over steno pads that were held together with tan rubber bands.

After she sat down, she put her hands on her knees and squeezed hard, trying not to lose it. It was as if the debris in the room were a spinning magnet that made her own thoughts and machinations rotate even faster, and that was absolutely not the help she needed.

Her father glanced around the office and smiled as if in apology. “Such industry for a comparatively small yield. Rather like harvesting pearls. The hours I have spent herein, the many hours to fulfill my purpose…”

Ehlena barely heard him. If she couldn’t afford the rent here, where would they go? Was there anything even cheaper that didn’t have rats and hissing cockroaches in it? How would her father fare in an unfamiliar environment? Dearest Virgin Scribe, she’d assumed they’d hit bottom the night he’d burned down the proper house they’d been renting. What was lower than this?

She knew she was in trouble when everything got blurry.

Her father’s voice continued on, marching across her panicked silence. “I have endeavored to record with faithfulness all that I saw…”

Ehlena didn’t hear much more.

She cracked in half. Sitting in the little side chair, swamped by her father’s mindless, useless prattle, confronted by her actions and where a bad call had landed both of them, she wept.

It was about so much more than losing the job. It was Stephan. It was what had happened with Rehvenge. It was the fact that her father was an adult who couldn’t comprehend the realities of their situation.

It was that she was so alone.

Ehlena held herself and wept, hoarse breaths barking out of her lips until she was too exhausted to do anything but sag into her own lap.

Eventually, she heaved a great sigh and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the uniform she no longer needed anymore.

When she looked up, her father was sitting stock-still in his chair, his expression one of utter shock. “Verily…my daughter.”

See, this was the thing. They might have lost all the monetary trappings of their previous station, but old habits died hard. The reserve of the glymera still defined their discourse-so a great wailing session was tantamount to her flipping onto her back at the breakfast table and having an alien bust out of her stomach.

“Forgive me, Father,” she said, feeling like an utter fool. “I believe I shall excuse myself.”

“No…wait. You were going to read.”

She closed her eyes, her skin tightening up all over her body. On some level, her whole life was defined by his mental pathology, and though for the most part she saw her sacrifices as his due, tonight she was too raw to be able to pretend the crucial importance of something as worthless as his “work.”

“Father, I…”

One of the desk drawers opened and shut. “Here, daughter. Take into thy hands more than just a passage.”

She dragged her lids open…

And had to lean forward to make sure she was seeing things right. Between her father’s two palms was a perfectly aligned stack of white pages about an inch thick.

“This is my work,” he said simply. “A book for you, mine daughter.”

Downstairs in the Tudor safe house, Rehv waited by the windows in the living room, staring out over the rolling lawn. The clouds had cleared, and a half-assed moon hung winter-bright in the sky. In his numb hand, he held his new cell phone, which he had just clipped shut with a curse.

He couldn’t believe that above him his mother was on her deathbed and that at this very moment his sister and her hellren were speeding to beat the sunrise to get here…and yet work was raising its ugly horned head.

Another dead drug dealer. Which made three in the last twenty-four hours.

Xhex had been short and to the point, which was her way. Unlike Ricky Martinez and Isaac Rush, whose bodies had been found down by the river, this guy had turned up in his car in a strip mall parking lot with a bullet through the back of the skull. Which meant that the car had to have been driven there with the body in it: No way anyone would be stupid enough to pop a motherfucker in a place that undoubtedly had security-camera coverage. As the police scanner hadn’t reported anything further, though, they were going to have to wait for the newspapers and the morning news on TV tomorrow for more details.