“Why do I hear Casablanca music playing in my head?” Vlad asked in an ironic voice.

I looked away from the runway. “You’re a regular movie encyclopedia, aren’t you?”

“And you’re the boy who cried wolf. If you say it’s over, then let it be over, or quit spouting out false absolutes that you don’t believe yourself.”

Goddamn merciless Romanian usurper. Why was I on a plane with him, anyway? Why didn’t I just go off by myself, trek to a rain forest, and hide there alone until Gregor, the ghouls, and everyone else forgot about me as completely as Bones had?

I gave one more last look out the window. We were up high enough now that I couldn’t be sure if he was still staring after us—or if he’d turned his head away, like I had to.

“You’re right,” I said to Vlad.

His hand reached out. The scars that covered it were mute testament to the decades of battles he’d fought, and those were just when he’d been human.

I took it, glad mine weren’t empty anymore and hating myself for feeling that way. How weak I was.

Vlad squeezed once. “I don’t want to be alone now either,” he said, making it sound very reasonable and not at all like something to be ashamed of.

I sighed. Right again, buddy. That’s two for two.

TWENTY-THREE

WATER SWIRLED ALL AROUND ME. EVERYTHING was dark and foggy. Where was I? How did I get here? The air had a terrible smell, and the liquid I was struggling in became black and too thick to swim in. Some of it got into my mouth, making me retch. It wasn’t water after all. It was tar.

“Help!”

My cry went unanswered. The tar seemed to be pulling me under. I gasped, choking, and felt burning as some of the tar went into my lungs. I was being sucked deeper into it. Drowning. A hazy thought flitted through my mind. So this is how I’m going to die. Funny, I always thought it would be during a fight…

“Take my hand,” an urgent voice said.

Blindly I reached out, unable to see past the inky fluid in my eyes—and then the tar was gone, and I was standing in front of the man I’d been running from.

“Gregor,” I spat, trying to will myself awake. A dream, you’re just trapped in a dream. “Goddammit, leave me alone!”

Gregor loomed over me. An invisible wind blew his ash-blond hair, and those smoky green eyes were glowing emerald.

“You may have swept your lover beyond my reach this time, but I will have him soon enough. How does it feel, my wife, to be cast aside? Ah, chérie. You deserve your pain.”

Gregor had a tight grip on my arms. I could feel him try to pull me outside my own skin, and I fought a moment of panic. I’d just arranged for Bones to get away, why hadn’t I expected Gregor to be waiting for me to shut my eyes? His power seemed to be seeping into me, slowly filling me up. I wanted to distract him, fast, from coiling that dangerous aura around me.

“You made a mistake sending Cannelle. In case you haven’t heard, I killed her. Ian’s shipping her body to you with a big red bow. You’ll have a harder time getting recruits to do your dirty work when people hear about that.”

Gregor nodded, not looking particularly upset. “Oui, that was unexpected, and it will cost you, ma femme. Return to me, and perhaps I will not make the price too steep.”

“Why are you so obsessed with me coming back?” I asked in frustration. “We’re clearly not compatible. You don’t act like you love me. Half the time, I don’t even think you like me.”

Something flashed across Gregor’s face, too quick for me to determine what it was. “You’re mine,” he said at last. “Soon you will see you belong with me.”

There was more to it, I just knew, but I had bigger concerns at the moment. Gregor’s power flexed around me. I tried to pry his hands off, but it was as if they were welded onto me.

“I’ve got bad news for you then, because going back to walking on eggshells around your every mood swing? Sorry, Gregor. You lost your chance with me when I grew up and developed self-esteem. I’m never coming back to you.”

“Why do you do this!” he shouted, giving up his false exterior of calm. “I offer you everything, and you scorn me as though I were lower than that whore of a lover who left you!”

His anger was drawing his power back into himself and away from me. I pressed my advantage.

“Because I’m happier being the castoff of a whore than I’d ever be as your wife.”

Gregor shoved me away from him. I landed back in the tar pit, up to my shoulders in that sticky black goo. He stood over me and shook his fist.

“You are mine whether you prefer it or not, and you can think about this as you continue to hide from me. I will find Bones again when he doesn’t have his people surrounding him. It’s only a matter of time. And then, chérie, he will die.”

I didn’t have a chance to scream out my hatred of him, because the tar closed over my head in the next instant. I was moving downward very fast, like I was being flushed, and then—

I sat bolt upright in bed. The sheets around me were damp, but not from tar. I was covered in a cold sweat. And I was madder than hell.

“I’m going to kill you, Gregor,” I growled to the empty room. Whatever leftover positive emotion I’d had for him as a teenager was gone. If I had another chance with a silver knife stuck in Gregor’s back, I’d twist it with a smile. You should have before, my mind mocked. No good deed goes unpunished.

Vlad walked in my room without knocking. “Your rage has been seething in my mind for the past five minutes.”

“I hate him,” I said, getting up from the bed to pace.

Vlad stared at me without blinking. “I have no cause to war with Gregor, Cat, but it does pain me to see you like this.”

“It’s so maddening,” I went on. “Bones might be able to kill Gregor, if he got him alone in a fair fight, but Gregor won’t go for that. And I’m not strong enough to take Gregor down. I breathe, bleed, I don’t heal instantly—I’m not tough enough for him. Being half-human was great for my old job. All those things I mentioned lured my targets and made me a more effective hunter. But with really old vampires, like Gregor, it just makes me…weak.”

Vlad didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. We both knew it was true.

“What are you going to do about that?” he asked at last.

I stopped pacing. That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it?

The next night, Vlad, Maximus, Shrapnel, and I were upstairs playing poker. Vlad had been winning all night, a feat I attested to his mind-reading skills—though he swore he wasn’t using them on me—and the fact that Shrapnel and Maximus were probably afraid to beat Vlad even if they could. It was almost midnight when there was a loud knock downstairs. The three vampires leapt to their feet in a blur of motion. Flames were already shooting out of Vlad’s hands.

Vlad hadn’t been expecting anyone; that much was clear from his reaction, so I understood the cause for their alarm. Whoever it was had managed to get past Vlad’s formidable guards without notice, chosen to knock to show us they didn’t need the element of surprise, and had done all this without the very powerful vampire striding out of the room realizing they were even here.

In short, we were in deep shit.

I started after Vlad, but he whirled around with a snarl.

“Stay here.”

I responded with a mental roar of how he could go straight to hell if he expected me just to wring my hands and wait, when something moving outside the window caught my attention.

I pointed. “Look.”

About three dozen of Vlad’s guards were elevated in stark relief against the clear night sky, all twirling in lazy circles about twenty feet off the ground. They were opening and closing their mouths, unable to speak, but apparently trying.