The phone rings five times before voice messaging picks up.

“Hi there. You’ve reached Tamara. If I don’t answer, I may be out baying at the moon. Leave me a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you.”

“Baying at the moon? Cute, Tamara. It’s Anna. Call me.”

I ring off and try to settle down to sleep. My mind, however, refuses to settle down. The idea that Avery could be alive in Sandra, able to control my emotions and project such fear, leaves me sick with dread.

IT’S A LONG NIGHT. WHEN I FINALLY NOD OFF, I’M awakened with a start by a sound from downstairs. It takes me a minute to realize it’s not Avery come to get me, but the sound of running water. I glance at the clock. 7:00 a.m. David must have awakened, moved from the living room to the kitchen, and is making coffee.

Shit. I throw off the covers and jump out of bed. If he’s going through cupboards or the refrigerator, he’s going to notice I have no food. None. I know I should keep something around for this sort of human/vampire contact, but I never think of it. The only place I shop now is Starbucks.

When I appear beside him in the kitchen, the question is stamped all over his face.

“No wonder you’re so skinny,” he says, standing before the open refrigerator with the bag of coffee in his hand. “You have no food. Jesus, Anna, how can anyone have no food?”

I snatch the bag from his hand and take it over to the coffeemaker. “I’ve never liked to cook, you know that. I eat out. So what? I didn’t expect to have a houseguest this morning. You should be thanking me for taking care of your drunken ass last night instead of criticizing me.”

A flush like a shadow creeps over his cheeks. “I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t have had that much to drink.”

“Try three bottles of Chianti. Ted’s treat.”

“Three? Bottles? By myself? Weren’t you drinking?”

Should I tell him the truth? That I only had one glass from each bottle? Make me look like a wuss? Nah. “I had my share.”

He rubs a hand over his forehead. “We split three bottles? How come my head feels like this and yours doesn’t?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I hold my liquor better than you.”

He grunts and takes a seat at the table. While the coffee perks, I get two mugs down from a nearly empty cupboard. It’s a good thing I caught him before he started going through the cupboards. Otherwise, he’d be making some comment about the lack of dishes right along with the lack of food. Everything I’d had was destroyed in the fire. I never got around to replacing them. I will now. I’ll buy some dishes and a few canned goods.

Soon.

Today I have to track down Tamara. Kick her ass for what was done to my car. I should see Jason again, too, and call my dad about O’Sullivan and the “stolen” formula.

It’s going to be a long day.

CHAPTER 54

DAVID LEAVES AT EIGHT, AFTER COFFEE, TO GO home and change. The body shop opens at nine, which gives him enough time to take me to Charmer’s for the loaner and be at the hospital to speak to Gloria’s doctors at ten.

His day will be far less complicated than mine, though I see how uneasy he is with the prospect of being alone again with Gloria. Magnanimously, I offer to stay with her tonight when he’s on his date with Tamara. He immediately thanks me for the offer and accepts. Considering I don’t intend to let that date happen, I should feel guilty about the deception.

I should feel guilty.

I don’t.

When he’s gone, I debate trying to reach Tamara again, but decide instead to call Frey. He gave me the book. Maybe there’s more he can tell me about devamping a werewolf. I go upstairs to make the call.

Layla, his girlfriend, picks up. “Hello, Anna,” she says with a decided lack of enthusiasm.

“Has Frey left for school yet? I need to speak with him.”

She sighs into the phone. “Today is a teacher workday. He doesn’t have to be on campus until ten.”

“May I speak to him please?”

She slams the phone down on some hard surface with enough force to make me wince. Nice talking to you, too, Layla.

In a moment, Frey is on the line. “Anna?” He sounds relieved. “Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Why? You were meeting a werewolf. Did you read the book?”

“That’s why I’m calling. I need more information about vampires and werewolves. The book says a powerful vampire can psychically control a were. What about physically?”

“Physically?”

“Is it possible for a vampire to—I don’t know how to put this—teleport his spirit or soul to a were? So that the vampire is actually in control of the werewolf both mentally and physically?”

There’s a long minute of silence. “What vampire? What werewolf?”

“Can you answer the damned question? Is such a thing possible?”

“Are you speaking of Avery?”

Frey is a member of the Watchers, a group of supernatural beings whose purpose is to protect mortals against creatures who would prey on them. I used to be a member, too. He knows my history. What I didn’t tell him myself, Williams did, so it doesn’t surprise me that he’d assume I might be talking about Avery. Because of that, I answer simply, “Yes.”

I fidget impatiently through another protracted silence, finally breaking it myself to say, “I don’t know why you’re taking so long to answer the question. Either it’s possible or it’s not.”

“Anna, you were the instrument of Avery’s second death,” Frey replies. “Why would you ask such a question?”

Another evasion. I swallow my impatience and tell him. All of it. Who Sandra is. How her eyes and voice became different when she repeated words Avery had spoken to me that last evening. How she was wearing the same dress I had on that night, a dress Avery had given me. How my body’s sexual response to her is the same as it was with Avery. How the fear I felt before I ran away was exactly the mind-numbing fear I felt when fighting him for my life.

All of it.

When I’m finished, Frey’s hushed tone frightens me as much as his words when he says, “You must be careful, Anna. If Avery is powerful enough to do as you suggest, you are in grave danger.”

“If? You don’t know if it’s possible?”

“It’s never been recorded. There have been rumors. I know of two that speak of vampires inhabiting a werewolf’s body at the moment of second death. Neither ended well. If Avery accomplished such a thing, he could live on in Sandra’s body indefinitely as long as he allows her to make the change. If he does not, she will die and he may jump to another host.”

I take a moment to process what he’s telling me. “The book says the vampire can be exorcised. How?”

“That magic has been lost. Probably just as well. It would be powerful and black and not easily invoked. There would be violent repercussions to the one casting the spell, perhaps lethal repercussions. Exorcism is not an option.”

Which leaves only one. Find the talisman. Free Sandra. “Finding the talisman is the only way to stop him.”

Frey’s silence confirms it.

“Then I know what I have to do, don’t I?”

Frey lets a heartbeat go by before he says, “There is something else you should know. Something not in the book.”

“I don’t like the way you say that. What is it?”

“Through the centuries, vampire physiology hasn’t changed. Adaptation allows you to walk in daylight, but most things are the same as they were in the beginning. Your system absorbs nutrients from ingested blood without benefit of a digestive tract, you have superhuman strength and agility and heightened senses, and you are invulnerable to mortal disease. But there is one thing, a toxin, that the vampire is vulnerable to and once infected, there is no cure.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because it’s something you need to know before you face the were again. There is one way the toxin is introduced and one way only. Through the bite of a werewolf.”