And if she told him, he’d only deliver a big-brotherly lecture about her leaving the apartment late at night, something she knew she ought not to have done. In their gender-unequal society, it still wasn’t totally safe for American women to wander the streets of New York City unescorted late at night. (Although to be fair, it wasn’t safe for anyone to do this, really. There were rampaging colonies of bats lurking everywhere.)

“Well, the guy we’re meeting tonight is supposed to be a prince,” Jon said. “Where else are you going to meet one of those?”

“Nowhere,” Meena admitted, realizing Jon had actually been looking forward to this dinner party. He didn’t get a chance to go out very often, since he was…well, broke and unemployed. And most of his friends were as well. Entertainment was the last thing on which any of them could afford to splurge. She ought to have known that to her brother, any chance to leave the apartment was a welcome one…even if it was just to go to the neighbors’ place across the hall.

She glanced over her shoulder at the spires of the church shooting up toward the lavender evening sky, the clouds pink in the setting sun, as Jon steered her away from it. Churches, she thought idly. What are they even for?

To worship in, obviously. But to worship what, exactly? A god who gave you gifts you never even asked for, that were basically just a curse?

On the other hand, what else did people have, exactly?

Nothing.

Nothing but hope that things might get better someday.

The kind of hope that Meena, on her TV show, and the priests at St. George’s tried to give people.

“You’re right,” Meena said with a sigh, turning around.

“We don’t have to stay all night,” Jon said as they rounded the corner. “If it’s bogus, we’ll leave.”

“Sure,” Meena said. “And who knows? It might even be fun.”

Even though, of course, she didn’t for one second actually believe this.

Chapter Twenty-two

7:30 P.M. EST, Thursday, April 15

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11A

New York, New York

Lucien was quite certain his cousin had lost his mind.

“A dinner party?” he echoed as he handed his overcoat to the maid, who took it to hang in the hall closet.

“It’s just…,” Emil explained quietly, so that his wife, busy with the caterer in the dining room, couldn’t overhear, “she seems to have this fantasy that you’re in need of a bride and that New York is the place where you’re going to find one. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. If you want to smite me, my lord, I perfectly understand.”

Lucien, instead of being furious-which he knew was the reaction Emil was expecting from him-felt only amusement. Although he’d made it clear he wanted no one to know of his arrival in New York, that, of course, was a moot point. The damage was done. Clearly, his enemies already knew where he was: an attempt had been made on his life. The information had simply traveled.

Much in the way Lucien expected that news of how he’d treated his own brother would get around. He didn’t regret this. He counted on it. If everyone heard Dimitri had picked a battle with him and Lucien had won, they’d be even less inclined to stage a second attack of the sort that had occurred the other night, which he’d clearly survived.

The prince of darkness was in town and indomitable as ever.

But a dinner party? With humans?

The idea made Lucien smile.

“Your wife,” he said to Emil, “is a bold woman.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Emil said with a queasy smile. “But, honestly, my lord, if you wish to go back to the penthouse-”

“It’s all right, Emil,” Lucien said soothingly. Sometimes he thought Emil would self-implode, he was wound so tightly. “I’m assuming you have some decent wines to serve.”

Emil brightened considerably. “Of course, my lord,” he said. “Some lovely amarones I purchased just for you. Come, let me open them.”

Emil followed Lucien to his library, where he opened a fine Italian red. After a while, from the darkened, comfortable room, they could hear the first guests arriving and Mary Lou’s vivacious voice as she greeted them.

“I suppose,” Emil said reluctantly, “we should go out there.”

“It will be fine,” Lucien reassured his cousin. “I quite enjoy humans. I used to be one, remember? And I teach them.”

The two men emerged into the living room, where Mary Lou shrieked with delight.

“Well, there they are!” she screamed. She had on a long turquoise dress with quite a lot of gold jewelry and matching gold shoes. Her eye shadow was the same color as the dress. Her long blond hair had been perfectly curled and coifed. “Where have you two been hiding? Prince Lucien, I want you to meet our friends Linda and Tom Bradford, and this is Faith and Frank Herrera, and Carol Priestley and Becca Evans and Ashley Menendez from Emil’s office. Everyone, this is Prince Lucien Antonescu…”

The women were attractive, the men jovial. Lucien shook hands with all of them, then joined in the small talk about New York City and the shows and restaurants he was to be sure not to miss while he was there.

It was a beautiful spring evening, and the Antonescus had opened all the French doors to their large wraparound terrace. The sun had already sunk into the west, and the sky was a lovely shade of pink and lavender. Lucien strolled out onto the terrace, joined by several of the women, all holding glasses of champagne and talking excitedly about an art opening they’d been to the week before.

Mary Lou had not chosen poorly. Her guests were beautiful, intelligent women.

When Lucien heard the doorbell to the apartment ring, he didn’t look to see who was arriving next because he didn’t want to seem rude. (And he could tell it wasn’t a member of the Dracul or the Palatine Guard there to assassinate him. They would never bother using the bell.)

But then he did look, because something told him he needed to.

And the sound of the women’s conversation around him died away. Not because they’d ceased speaking.

But because he was no longer listening.

It was the woman who’d been walking her dog the night of his attack, the one who’d nearly been killed herself. Meena Harper, her name had been.

He saw that Mary Lou was kissing her hello and taking a cheap bottle of wine from her tall, male companion.

Of course she was there at Emil’s. Of course she was. What had he been expecting? Deep down, he must have known. Otherwise he’d have left, walked out an hour ago. He wasn’t in New York to socialize with Emil’s wife’s human friends. He’d never wanted for female companionship when he needed it and was perfectly capable of finding it without Mary Lou’s help.

And now the last woman in the world with whom he should have been consorting-because he could feel for himself the magnetic pull she had on him-had walked into the room. And he was just standing there, staring at her, in her inexpensive black dress and boyishly short hair.

And it was clear from the single glance she threw him that the memory wipe had not worked. No, she recognized him instantly. The way her large brown eyes widened and her jaw dropped, it was obvious she remembered their encounter with perfect clarity.

What’s more, just the tiniest touch of her mind-which he threw across the room only to see if she was pleased to see him or repulsed; it was pure vanity, and he supposed he deserved the shock he got in response to it-revealed something startling, something almost horrifying that Lucien couldn’t, for the life of him, understand:

Vampire.

It was on the very tip of her brain. It was all she was thinking about. Vampires.

Also, almost as upsettingly, death.

He recoiled from her mind immediately…but not before he caught his own name.