Meena, realizing she was the girl he was referring to, wanted to point out how badly Abraham was misjudging the situation. Alaric Wulf hated her.

“You’ll only end up getting yourself killed.” Abraham went on. “And we actually need you here, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I’ll be back with the dog in less than an hour,” was all Alaric said, and then he disappeared through yet another swinging door.

“Stubborn fool.” Abraham rolled his eyes and disappeared through his own doorway.

Meena, looking from one doorway to the other, realized belatedly that she’d made an even bigger mess than the gasoline bomb had. How did she keep doing this?

She was after Alaric like a shot.

“Wait,” she called.

He was in the rectory’s foyer, buckling on his scabbard. He didn’t appear, from the look he threw out at her from underneath the hunk of blond hair that had once again fallen over those blue eyes of his, excited to see her. She didn’t blame him.

“What do you want?” he asked.

She suddenly felt aware of his size, which was enormous. His hands, his feet…all of him was big, just huge. When he came into a room, he didn’t just come into it, he lumbered, he banged, he swaggered into it.

She couldn’t count how many times she’d wished over the past twenty-four hours that he had never showed up at her door.

And yet now that he’d saved her life-twice-she couldn’t find the words to express how glad she was that he had. And she was supposed to be a dialogue writer.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean I wanted you to go,” she finally settled for saying, reaching out to lay her fingers across one of those huge, almost ungainly wrists. “You don’t have to do this.”

His hands, busy working the buckle to keep his sword in place, stilled. “Yes,” he said to the threadbare, flowered carpet. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have forgotten the dog.”

“But you didn’t know, Alaric,” Meena said. She curled her fingers around his wrist. His skin felt warm in all the places, she now remembered, Lucien’s had always felt so strangely cool. “You didn’t know any of this was going to happen. How could you have?”

“You knew,” he said, throwing the words at her almost accusingly. And now, she saw, he was looking at her, those bright blue eyes searching her face. “You know everything before it happens.”

“No.” The directness of his gaze unnerved her. “Not everything. Only…well, you know.”

“Right,” he said, dropping his gaze again. “Only how people are going to die. Not dogs, though.”

She shook her head. “No. Not dogs. Only people. Look-” She lifted her chin, attempting a brave smile. “Forget what I said before. Jack Bauer will be all right. You said yourself, he’s a vampire dog. He’ll be able to take care of himself. So stay here. Really. I want you to stay here. I’m going to. I’m going to stay. Please stay with me.”

He lifted his gaze to meet hers once more, narrowing his eyes at her. “You don’t need to worry,” he said. “Holtzman will protect you while I’m gone.”

“Me?” She realized he didn’t understand what she was trying to say to him at all. “I’m not worried about me.”

Now he looked confused. “But I’ll be all right,” he said. “And you want the dog.”

“Alaric.” Her chin was starting to tremble, and she was aware that her brave face was melting. “You may not be all right. And even though I really do love Jack Bauer, in the end, you’re a person, and he’s just a dog.”

His gaze was unreadable. “How?” he asked her curiously.

Now she was the one who didn’t understand. “I beg your pardon?”

“How does it happen?” His fingers were busy again, working his belt. “My death. You’re seeing it, aren’t you? You think if I go, I’m going to die. So how does it happen this time? Not in the pool. Is it still with the darkness? And the fire?”

“No,” she lied. “Not at all. I see you living a really long, happy life and dying of old age in a resort community of some kind. Florida, maybe. Palm Beach?”

It was too late. He’d seen the tears in her eyes. His broad shoulders tensed, and he turned away from her, reaching for his black leather trench coat, which hung on a rack by the door.

“You’re lying to me,” he said. “I would never retire to Florida. Majorca, maybe. Or Antigua. But never Florida. You shouldn’t lie to a guardsman to protect his feelings. The information you are able to provide to us before a mission could save our lives.” His coat on, he looked down at her with those amazing blue eyes. “Never lie to me again, Meena. Swear to me.”

She blinked away the tears that still clung to her eyelashes. “All right,” she said hoarsely. “I swear. I see a death filled with smoke and darkness and fire for you. There. Are you happy?”

“Oh,” he said, brightening. “See? This is good to know. I like this.” He reached out to tap her roughly on the collarbone, then struck his own. “We need to learn to communicate more like this if we’re going to be working together in the future.”

“What?” She shook her head, perplexed. Her throat throbbed, both with emotion and the smoke she’d inhaled back in the kitchen. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Alaric. Why would we be working together in the future? I’m trying to tell you that if you do this, you won’t have a future. But since you won’t listen to me…let me go with you.”

“Oh, no,” he said with a humorless bark of laughter.

“But it’s my dog you’re risking your life to-”

“No.” He wagged one of his massive fingers in her face. “And if I catch you following me, I’ll handcuff you to something to keep you safe. Don’t think I won’t.”

She believed him. “I know you will,” she said. “But at least let me…here.”

Impulsively, she loosened the scarf she’d been wearing around her throat.

Alaric looked down as she began tying the delicate strip of red material around his wrist, the one that she’d been holding.

“What is this?” he asked, his voice sounding…well, strange.

A token, she thought. From milady, for St. George, about to do battle with the dragon for her.

She knew she was losing what frail grip she’d once had on her sanity.

There was no chance she was going to say that milady stuff out loud to Alaric Wulf, however.

“I don’t know,” she said, trying not to let him see the tears that were still in her eyes. “For luck, I guess. If you really are going and really won’t let me come with you.”

“Oh, I’m going,” he said with assurance as Meena pulled his sleeve back down over the scarf. “And alone. The Palatine leave no one behind. This includes dogs.”

“This is for luck then, too,” she said in a tear-clogged voice.

She rose onto her tiptoes and placed a kiss on one of Alaric’s cheeks.

One dark blond eyebrow raised, his small mouth pressed even smaller than usual in…surprise? Disapproval?

She couldn’t tell.

“Meena Harper,” he said, looking down at her very intently.

“Yes?” she asked.

“This is for you,” he said, and slipped something long and hard into her fingers. “Don’t be afraid to use it.”

Then he opened the front door to the rectory, looked around outside, and stepped through it, shutting it firmly behind him.

He was gone.

Meena examined what Alaric Wulf had placed into her hand.

It was a pointed wooden stake.

She couldn’t help smiling to herself.

He was just so…annoying.

So why was she standing there crying?

“There you are.”

Her brother, Jon, had come out into the hallway. He was holding several empty plastic milk jugs.

“They want someone to fill these with holy water,” he explained. “I volunteered you for the job. So can you go scoop some out of the font in the baptistery?”

Meena, reaching up hastily to wipe the tears from her cheeks, slipped the stake into the back pocket of her jeans and said, “Sure.”

She knew what she had to do. What she should have done long ago.