Your jealousy will be the signature on your death warrant if you do not cease berating my consort.

Not even deigning to respond to Baldevar, Jimmy decided if he couldn't kill the bastard, it was time to see if there were other ways to cut him down.

"How was your class tonight, Maggie?" Jimmy asked in a pleasant tone, like there'd been no attempted double homicide earlier.

"Fine," Maggie replied with equal civility, though her wary eyes followed his movements like she would those of a rattlesnake.

"Let me give you a topic for your next class. Say one of your budding counselors sees a woman that was involved in a relationship with a sadistic creep that beat her regularly and raped her whenever the mood took him. For some bizarre reason, the ditz wants to get back together with the asshole—after he dumped her. How do you deal with a patient like that?"

Ellie shifted uncomfortably next to her mother, glancing between Maggie and Baldevar to see their reaction to Jimmy's thinly veiled gauntlet. Maggie's lips tightened slightly and Baldevar's only reaction was to turn to Maggie, waiting for her response with the passive interest of someone listening to a stimulating discussion at a cocktail party.

"First, I would advise them never to call a patient a ditz," Maggie said dryly. "Then I would remind them that if you pass judgment on a patient, there is a very good chance they'll abandon therapy out of a sense of shame and your role as counselor is hardly to bully your patient out of seeking help. Now, for the scenario you presented, background questions must be answered. Why did the parties separate? What does the patient feel she'd gain by resuming the relationship with her abuser? Has he sought therapy? If the patient has valid reasons for believing the abuse won't be continued and she feels she can forgive the past, I wouldn't automatically advise her to reject her partner."

"So someone should only reconcile with their partner because any sort of abuse is over?" Ellie questioned.

Those are the only circumstances under which I'd agree to reconciliation," Maggie replied and Ellie sent Jimmy a triumphant glance that almost matched the smirk on her father's face.

Bullshit, Jimmy thought at Maggie, not wanting to yell at her in front of Ellie. What I saw upstairs looked pretty goddamn painful and degrading—would you want Ellie in that sort of relationship ?

What Simon and I do for pleasure is our business, Jimmy, Maggie scowled at him. I've made my peace with Simon and I'd advise you to do the same. Maggie glanced meaningfully at Ellie. She's very dear to him ... he'll, leave you alive if for no other reason than just to please her. Please Jimmy, don't antagonize him any further. I have enough on my mind. . .

And between your legs, Jimmy thought rudely, and then glared at Baldevar. You can't kill me for my thoughts unless you want to blow your Father of the Year carver.

So you no longer seek protection from Meghann but now hide behind a child's skirts ? I would not expect such cowardly actions even from one such as you, Mr. Delacroix.

Flummoxed, Jimmy could only gape helplessly while Baldevar crossed the room, sitting on an ottoman next to Meghann and Ellie.

"Daughter, I must speak with you and your mother on a matter of grave importance," Baldevar said, taking Ellie's hand in his.

"I want Jimmy to stay," Ellie said and even Jimmy couldn't see any shadow of disturbance or annoyance in Baldevar's inscrutable expression.

"Certainly," Lord Baldevar said calmly and turned to Jimmy. "Please take a seat, Mr. Delacroix. Perhaps you'd like a drink before we begin?"

Jimmy sat in a loveseat far from Baldevar, ignoring the subde dig at his mortal drinking problem. "I'm fine."

I rather doubt that, the vampire said, continuing his clever game of only insulting Jimmy out of Ellie's mortal scope, before he spoke aloud again.

I'll be damned, Jimmy thought in wonder. The sonofabitch is beating me at my own game! Like Jimmy, Baldevar was trying to taunt Jimmy into attacking him in front of Ellie, so he'd lose her respect and love.

"Elizabeth," Lord Baldevar said to his daughter. "I have come home, not only because I've missed you and your mother, but because you must transform immediately."

"What?" Ellie stammered confusedly while Maggie leapt to her feet and Jimmy came over to Ellie, wrapping his arms around her protectively—Simon Baldevar would transform Ellie over his dead body.

"Who do you think you are," Maggie cried indignantly, "to just come back and demand Ellie transform without even consulting her as to whether she wants to! You didn't even have the basic respect for me, her mother, to ask my opinion. You don't make a decision like that and then expect the rest of us to follow you blindly. If Ellie ever transforms, it will be when she makes that choice as an informed adult, knowing the drawbacks as well as the advantages to being a vampire. But she will not transform now . .. she's only seventeen! Ellie has a full life ahead of her, a promising career that I will not allow you or anyone else to rip away from her by taking the sun from her like you did to me!"

Jimmy wanted to leap up and applaud. All right, Maggie slept with the asshole ... so what? She was still willing to go the mat for her daughter, that was far more important than anything she did in bed with Simon Baldevar.

"What do you mean, 'if' Elizabeth transforms?"

Baldevar demanded incredulously. "Do you think I would sire a child and then allow mortality to steal her away? Of course Elizabeth will transform and take her rightful place in our world as my heir. Stop shouting, Meghann! There is no time for petty squabbling. Elizabeth must transform, not merely because it is her birthright, but because it is the only way to protect her from the threat Mikal presents to her life."

"Why would Mikal threaten Ellie?" Maggie cried just as jimmy jumped up and demanded plaintively, "Who the hell is Mikal?"

Lord Baldevar's eyes cut between Maggie and Jimmy, finally settling on Maggie with pleased smugness. "I owe you an apology, Meghann. You have not forgotten discretion at all but behaved with admirable prudence. But the time for subterfuge draws to a close. Please feel free to tell Mr. Delacroix who Mikal is."

"Jimmy," Maggie said in a faltering, uncertain voice, her cheeks flaming red and her eyes filled with guilty discomfit. "I haven't been honest with you and for that, I've always been sorry. Whatever anger you feel, I deserve. All I ask is that you allow me to explain myself."

Jimmy nodded dumbly, wondering what secrets Maggie had kept from him.

"Ellie isn't my only child," Maggie said, the words tumbling out of her mouth as though they were something toxic she had to purge herself of before they poisoned her. "She's just my only daughter, my mortal child. When I was pregnant, I was carrying twins. One was Ellie and the other was my son, Mikal."

"You have a son?" Jimmy was too amazed to be angry. "What happened to him?"

"He was born a vampire," Maggie said, her green eyes tearing up and Jimmy thought he might finally have the answer to that inexplicable longing he'd sensed in her all these years—she'd missed her boy.

"You may remember that I once told you Simon believed the offspring of two vampires would have all our strengths and none of our flaws, that when the child grew up, it would be able to walk in daylight

"Our enemies were frightened of Simon ever having that power, obtaining it by drinking a small portion of his son's blood. We knew they'd try to kill Mikal if they found out about him. So Simon and I separated the children, Ellie remaining with me while Simon took Mikal into hiding. In a way, having twins was a godsend because everyone expected a single birth from my pregnancy and assumed that was Ellie, a mere mortal. That's why Simon left... to make everyone believe he had no use for Ellie while he raised Mikal. He had to keep Mikal hidden until he was old enough to defend himself against anyone that would try to destroy him."

"And you thought I'd try to destroy your precious son?" Jimmy cried, the full impact of Maggie's confession and its betrayal of their friendship hitting him far harder than Baldevar's assault had in the bedroom. "Why the hell didn't you tell me all this when I came back?"

Numbly, Jimmy remembered that night when he came back after a year of floundering around by himself, trying to find a way to cope with the vampirism Baldevar had forced on him. He'd come to Maggie believing she was his friend and now he found out she'd taken him in so she could use him to carry on her ruse that Ellie was her only child and Baldevar had disappeared for God knows where.

"Jimmy, I couldn't tell you ..."

"Why not?" Jimmy cried, ashamed of the tears he couldn't control, wanting to scream out his agony when he saw the pity in Maggie's eyes and the compassion shining in Ellie's. "How could you keep something like that from me? How could you lie to my face for seventeen years? My God, Maggie, you put me in the same category with the kind of sick piece of shit that would kill a baby because it might grow up to hurt them? How could you do that, how could you not tell me you have a son? Don't you trust me at all? Didn't I ever mean anything to you?"

"Jimmy..." Maggie said and tried to take his hands but Jimmy flung her off and ran out the French doors, not stopping until he reached the tide line on the shore.

"Damn you, damn you, damn you! "Jimmy screamed at the aloof moon* staring down at him. Foamy black water lapped at his feet and ruined his shoes but Jimmy was oblivious to everything except a tiny voice whispering to him that the worst mistake he'd ever made in his life was the night he returned to this house and Maggie O'Neill.

Five

February 14, 2000

Jimmy Delacroix puffed uneasily on his cigarette, automatically hunching over to avoid the harsh, biting wind blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. Cold didn't affect him much anymore but the awful low- pitched moan of the winter wind made him shiver anyway—a mental reaction instead of physical. The howling wind brought back all too plainly memories of the night he'd escaped the shuttered house a few yards in front of him. When Jimmy thought of that terrible night, his first memory was always the wind keening outside the tiny room where he'd regained awareness after spending almost a year in a stupor, brought on after he'd been transformed into a vampire by Simon Baldevar.

Baldevar!Jimmy spat on the sand—even thinking the name of the warped psycho who'd transformed him and deliberately botched the process so Jimmy would spend eternity as a mindless vegetable left a sour taste in his mouth. He stomped the butt of his cigarette beneath his boot and then cupped his hands around a silver Zippo lighter to light a fresh cigarette, reflecting on how thoroughly that bastard had ruined his life.

Before Lord Baldevar, life had finally been taking a turn for the better. It took time, but Jimmy was finally getting over the death of his young wife and infant son, killed by a demented vampire. Everybody thought Jimmy was crazy when he insisted he'd been a petrified witness while Amy and Jay were mauled by the thing... everybody but Maggie O'Neill, the enigmatic redhead he'd met eight years before.

She'd picked him up in one of the many bars he frequented, unable to face the night and the things he knew were out there unless he drank himself into insensibility. At first, Jimmy only thought he'd been lucky enough to find a pretty, funny, sexy-as-hell girl who could match him drink for drink. But it turned out Maggie had her own secret that she revealed when he told her what had happened to Amy and Jay. Maggie believed Jimmy's story because she was a vampire, transformed against her will by Simon Baldevar in 1944.

After getting over his shock, Jimmy moved in with Maggie, allowing her to teach him all about vampires and their vulnerabilities so he could avenge Amy and Jay by slaying the sick creatures that murdered their human prey during the day. Maggie did nothing of the sort, telling Jimmy any vampire could feed without resorting to murder, if they had the will to do so.

Those were good years, Jimmy remembered sadly, the six years they lived together and healed each other. With Maggie by his side, Jimmy could face the dark without getting blind drunk. As for Maggie, she told Jimmy she'd never expected to find a lover who could also be her friend; she never thought she'd trust a man again after suffering through the pain and humiliation that characterized her years with Simon Baldevar.

But then Baldevar resurfaced. It turned out he wasn't dead, as Maggie believed, killed the night she escaped him by putting a stake in his heart. No, the vampire had apparently bided his time and when he felt strong enough, he came back from the dead to reclaim Maggie and destroy anyone that tried to stop him.

Like me, Jimmy thought, a sick feeling building in the pit of his stomach when he remembered how the vampire tortured him and then, when he was on the edge of death, transformed him, leaning back and watching with immense satisfaction as Jimmy tried futilely to battle the chaos that overtook his sanity.

Goddamn him, Jimmy thought furiously and took several long strides toward the cobblestoned terrace, rage giving him the courage to face down his enemy. Goddamn that monstrous fiend to hell! Jimmy had become a catatonic simply because Simon Baldevar didn't want any competition for Maggie's affections, thinking she'd pity her mortal lover once he lost the ability to think or speak or do anything but drink blood and kill Jimmy herself to end his misery.

Jimmy snorted, thinking in that situation Maggie had gotten the better of Baldevar, telling the sono- fabitch she'd abort the baby he'd impregnated her with by raping her if he didn't allow her to try to bring Jimmy back from the madness Baldevar had plunged him into.

And Maggie did fix Jimmy's mind through a combination of psychoactive drugs mixed in the blood she fed him and ceaselessly talking to him the way people did with coma victims. Awareness returned and brought with it the devastating news that he was now a vampire and had to call the creature he despised master. As if that wasn't bad enough, Jimmy had to sustain the blow of discovering Maggie and Baldevar had been lovers practically the whole time Jimmy lay mindless and unaware.

Why did she do it, Jimmy asked himself for the umpteenth time? Why would Maggie willingly embrace the monster who, according to her, ripped her away from her mortal life and thrust her into a life of sexual and spiritual bondage for thirteen years until she finally managed to get away from him? How many times had Maggie told him she hated Simon Baldevar and was fiercely glad she killed him, or thought she did?

If she was so happy to be free of Baldevar, then how the hell could she have stood before Jimmy a year ago, her body swollen with the bastard's child, tearfully confessing to Jimmy that she loved Simon Baldevar and Jimmy should just forget about her.

Jimmy, of course, had done nothing of the sort. He insisted Baldevar had used his power to warp Maggie's mind, bewitched her somehow. If Baldevar was dead, Jimmy knew Maggie would be free of his hold over her and start behaving like herself, instead of the simpering ditz Baldevar had reduced her to.

Baldevar had accepted Jimmy's challenge and they'd started to go at it but Maggie placed herself between them in an effort to stop the fight and wound up getting knocked to the floor.

Jimmy shuddered, remembering Maggie curled up on the floor, clutching her abdomen and sobbing in pain and fear as a monstrous crimson stain spread over her white nightgown. God, Jimmy had been so sure she was dying, sure that in trying to free Maggie from Baldevar he'd managed to kill her and her unborn baby.

He guessed Baldevar had been thinking along the same lines because the vampire forgot his battle with Jimmy and rushed Maggie out of the room, some mortal doctor trailing behind him as they took Maggie to an emergency surgery they'd set up within the house.

After Baldevar spirited Maggie away, Charles Tarleton, Maggie's best friend, had urged Jimmy to leave the house before Baldevar killed him, promising to contact Jimmy at his sister's house and let him know what had happened to Maggie.

Charles kept his promise, Jimmy thought and pulled a crumpled telegram from the coat pocket of his black duster, rereading the cryptic message— Meghann is well.

Jimmy surmised that meant she'd survived, though he had no idea what had happened to her baby. Even if Simon Baldevar was the father, Jimmy harbored no ill will toward the child and prayed Maggie hadn't lost it. Jimmy knew all too well what it was to grieve for a dead child.

Meghann is well. Jimmy scowled and returned the telegram to his pocket. Sure, she might be okay physically but as far as Jimmy was concerned, if Maggie thought she belonged with Simon Baldevar she was as far from well as you could get. Someone had to talk sense into her, get her away from the asshole. That's why Jimmy had returned to his enemy's lair, to free Maggie from Baldevar's clutches.

He'd tell Maggie he understood her reuniting with Baldevar—he'd brainwashed her, that's all. He'd explain that he wanted to start over now that they were both equal vampires and Jimmy wasn't just her boy- toy mortal.

Hey, hero, an inner voice spoke up sarcastically—the same pest that had needled Jimmy all the way to New York. Do you think Baldevar's going to sit around twiddling his thumbs while you try to take his woman? You take another step closer to that house and pretty soon your head's gonna be on a spit.

Jimmy swallowed nervously, knowing the voice was right—he was no match for Baldevar. No matter how much Jimmy despised Simon Baldevar, there was no denying his power and strength—he'd crushed Jimmy like a gnat every time Jimmy went up against him. That's why he'd been so cautious since he neared the estate; Jimmy's plan was to shield his presence as he'd learned to do over the past few months and only reveal himself when he caught Maggie alone.

Jimmy heard an odd whooshing sound, felt his long hair lifted by a sudden breeze and whirled around to face Charles Tarleton, clutching a wicked looking machete he held a bare centimeter from Jimmy's neck.

"Christ, Jimmy!" Charles snapped before he could say anything. He tucked the machete against his belt, reproach plain in his jet-black eyes. "What the hell are you doing, sneaking around the house and trying to camouflage your presence? My God, man, I was almost on top of you before I realized who you were ... you were an inch from death!"

Despite the lecture, Jimmy felt some pride when he realized he'd been able to shield his identity from an older, more powerful vampire. But his shoulders slumped when he realized he'd had no inkling Charles was behind him, that his senses had given him no warning he was in danger.

"I wasn't hiding from you or Maggie. I just don't want Baldevar to know I'm here," Jimmy explained.

Charles gave him a disgusted look. "Simon would have felt your presence the moment you set foot in Southampton if he was here. Jimmy, you shouldn't have come here; it was a foolhardy and unnecessary risk."

"Baldevar's not here?" Jimmy perked up. "Is Maggie? I've got to see her."

"Jimmy," a light voice greeted behind him and he spun around again, this time seeing Maggie holding a baby girl dressed in a purple jumpsuit, chubby little arms encircled around her mother's neck.

Jimmy's first thought was that he could have seen this baby anywhere and known she was Maggie's child simply by looking at the spring green eyes that were the mirror image of her mother's. The baby was an adorable little thing with light brown ringlets curling under her ears, creamy skin and faint pink roses in her cheeks. He had a sudden impulse to pat one of those cheeks but held back, seeing in her expression the same wariness Jay had always displayed around strangers. Jimmy knew one sudden move toward her and the baby would probably burst into tears.

"Uh, she's scared of strangers?" Jimmy asked Maggie, seeing under her easy friendliness a certain caution—she wanted to know how he was going to react to this child she'd had with Simon. Jimmy knew Maggie well enough to know that if she thought for one minute he'd resent the baby because of its paternity, he'd lose any chance he had to reconcile with her.

"I don't know," Maggie replied after a slight pause, seeming satisfied that there was no hostility in his attitude toward her baby. "You're her first new person. Aside from the cleaning women, Ellie's only seen me and Charles and Lee since she was born. Oh, Jimmy, you never really met—this is Dr. Lee Winslow. He and Charles were . . . uh, they went out for a while and now they're together again. When we found out I was pregnant, Charles contacted him. He's an excellent obstetrician and he was more than willing to care for a vampire patient. If it weren't for Lee, Ellie and I might have died in that premature labor. Now he watches out for Ellie during the day."

Jimmy shook the outstretched hand of the middle- aged man standing next to Maggie and then turned to the baby. "Ellie? Is that your name . . . are you Ellie?"

"I'm Ellie," the baby replied solemnly and Jimmy laughed, eliciting a small smile from the baby.

"She talks already?"

"She started talking at six months," Maggie explained proudly. "Her development is far above average, Ellie already..

"All right, Meghann," Charles said, smiling for the first time and turning to Jimmy. "Don't let her get started on Ellie's virtues—we'll stand here all night."

"I was only going to say she speaks on the level of a three year old," Maggie sniffed and turned to the little girl pressing her he.ad shyly against her shoulder. "This is Jimmy Delacroix, honey. He's Mommy's friend."

Ellie braved a quick glance at Jimmy and quickly returned her eyes to the safety of her mother's shoulder.

"New," Ellie said to Maggie, her tone indicating new was synonymous with potentially dangerous in her mind.

"I know he's new to you, sweetie. But he really wants to make friends," Maggie said coaxingly. "Come on. Say 'Hi, Jimmy.'"

The baby shook her head negatively and put her small hands over her eyes, making Jimmy's heart lurch painfully. That had been Jay's trick, thinking if he couldn't see the person, they couldn't see him.

Jimmy swallowed hard and blinked back tears, trying not to think of his son, of the smile that lit up Jay's face when Jimmy returned from work and the toddler rushed at him on wobbling, clumsy little legs ...

"Sad," a tiny voice said softly and Jimmy looked up, seeing Ellie staring at him with an expression of sympathy that was oddly adult. She pushed herself away from Maggie's shoulder and stretched her hands out to him. "Want a hug?"

"Ellie's psychic," Maggie explained at Jimmy's shock. "She feels intense emotions—knows when something's bothering someone."

"Come here," Jimmy said over the lump in his throat and smiled at the little girl that looked so concerned for him. "Jimmy definitely wants a hug."

Maggie handed him the baby and he took her carefully, one hand supporting her bottom while Ellie wrapped her arms around his neck.

He hadn't held a baby since Jay died and hadn't realized how much he missed it until his arms adjusted to Ellie's weight and he buried his nose in her sweet- smelling, baby-fine hair. Ellie returned his gaze steadily, moving one hand so it rested on his chin and in that moment Jimmy felt himself fall completely and hopelessly in love with Maggie's baby.

My baby, Jimmy decided, forcing himself not to see the chiseled features of high-bridged nose and slanting cheekbones that bespoke Ellie's paternity. From this night on, he'd never acknowledge that Simon Baldevar had fathered Ellie, from now on she belonged to him.

You 're not Jay, Jimmy told Ellie and the little girl stared into his eyes with a focus that belied the attention span normal for a baby her age. I know you're not my son and I'm not trying to replace him with you. But you 're beautiful and sweet and innocent and I want you to stay that way. I'm not gonna let that sick sonofabitch Simon Baldevar hurt you or warp you the way he tried to do to your mother and me. God help him if he tries to take you from me. I'm going to keep you and Maggie safe; I promise.

Jimmy heard a bitter laugh and looked up, seeing Maggie staring at him and Ellie with the oddest expression ... deep sadness, frustration and something that almost looked like pity.

There's nothing to keep us safe from, Maggie said tele- pathically and even in the thought conversation

Jimmy could hear her sorrow. Simon's gone and he won't be coming back.

What happened, Jimmy asked while he bounced Ellie in his arms, making her squeal with laughter. Where did he go? Why did he leave his daughter?

Because he has no use for her—I'll tell you everything later.

"Let's go inside," Maggie said aloud. "I don't want Ellie out in the cold."

Maggie led him to the study, a comfortable, homey room of overstuffed sofas, teeming bookcases, bright wood fixtures and various toys. Jimmy put Ellie down and she immediately scampered toward a large collection of matchbox cars in the corner of the room.

"Absinthe?" Maggie asked him while Ellie set up elaborate collisions, shouting exuberant vrooms and screeches at each crash.

"That's the only stuff that can get us loaded, right?" Jimmy asked, accepting the tumbler glass full of green, viscous-looking stuff.

"If you drink enough," Maggie replied and extended a bowl of sugar cubes to him. "Suck on these while you drink. You can't imagine how liberating it feels to take a drink. I couldn't have anything—cigarettes, absinthe, spicy food—while I was nursing Ellie."

'You smoke in front of the kid?"

"Outside," Maggie explained. "And in a solar where we keep the sound system; Ellie's not allowed in there. Don't eat the cars, honey." Ellie guiltily spat a miniature Camaro out and returned it to the racing course.

Jimmy took a large gulp of absinthe, choked at the unexpectedly strong, foul taste and shoved several sugar cubes into his mouth.

"You'll get used to it," Maggie laughed and licked her own cube. "Now tell me what you've done for the past year. I was so worried about you, a new vampire without anyone to counsel him. We called your sister but she told us you visited briefly around the New Year and then disappeared."

"Shit, Maggie, how long could I stay with my sister before she got suspicious? I mean, for a few days, she might accept that her whacko brother was just getting loaded and sleeping late but not getting up before sunset is weird even for me. Besides, she's living in a real remote area and there was no way I could get, um ... well, get blood without arousing suspicion."

If Maggie noticed the way he blushed when he admitted to the blood lust and refused to meet her eyes, she said nothing, merely asking, "Where did you go when you left her house?"

"I bought a mobile home," Jimmy explained and Maggie's eyebrows shot up.

"You mean you've become white trash on wheels?"

"Not all vampires are fortunate enough to have a mansion in Southampton, Princess,"Jimmy shot back and they both laughed. "It worked well enough for me. I'd park at some campground and then go to the nearest city for . . .you know."

"Jimmy," Maggie said softly and took his hand. "What's the matter? What makes you look at the floor instead of me when you speak of feeding? There's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Nothing to be ashamed of?" he cried, and Ellie looked up from her play at the loud noise. "How can you say that? We drink blood, for God's sake!"

"Only because we'd die if we didn't," Maggie replied. 'To drink in the name of survival isn't wrong ... as long as you don't kill or damage your hosts. I told you that a long time ago."

"And what if you do kill?" Jimmy whispered, his eyes on the Persian rug beneath his feet "You and Charles . . . don't you believe any vampire that kills his prey has to be destroyed?"

'Jimmy," Maggie said tenderly when the agonized shame he'd had to keep to himself for the past year overcame him and he started sobbing. She moved his head so it rested on her shoulder and started rocking him back and forth, much the same way she would have comforted Ellie if she started to cry. "Honey, I know; I know how hard it must have been. Jimmy, you don't have to tell me but if you do, I promise you've never done anything I haven't done ..."

"But you didn't know! Baldevar told you had to kill—it wasn't till you met Alcuin that you learned better! And then you never killed anymore—what excuse do I have?" Jimmy howled, refusing any sort of absolution for the awful things he'd done. In his mind, he saw the young women he'd managed to lure from the seedy bars to his narrow bed in the trailer. He remembered the sex, the one time his crushing loneliness vanished, which was fine but then there was always that tantalizing smell of blood beneath their skin and soon his fangs would emerge, frightening his dates. They'd scream but Jimmy would order them to stop (he was still amazed by his power, the effortless way he could speak a command and it was immediately obeyed) and they'd become docile while he sank his fangs into their flesh. It was always so good and sweet, the blood pouring down his throat. So much better than booze it was, the way it made his misery vanish and soothed him, made him feel so strong and untouchable. It was the best high he'd ever gotten in his life and once the blood was in his mouth, there was no way he could pull back or force moderation on himself. Despite all the promises he made before each feeding, he'd always find himself greedily lapping up every precious drop of the blood and soon he'd have to stare down in horror at the slack corpse he held in his arms. Then, like the monstrosity he'd become, he'd take his victims to some desolate field and incinerate the corpses to erase all evidence of what he'd done.

"Take Ellie," Jimmy heard Maggie say and he saw Charles scoop up the protesting child.

"No, no, no!" Ellie screeched, beating Charles's chest with her tiny fists. "Don't wanna go—I want Mommy! I don't wanna go, no!"

"Ellie," Maggie said and her stern tone cut through her daughter's tantrum. Ellie quieted but gave Charles and her mother a sulky look.

"Don't you want to play with me and Lee?" Charles wheedled. "I'll make you a peanut butter sandwich."

"Pea butter?" Ellie sniffled and gave Charles a haughty look that said she'd accept the bribe though she was still unhappy.

"Do you think it was that simple?" Maggie questioned when Charles and Ellie left. "Do you think Alcuin said 'Meghann, don't kill anymore' and that was it—I didn't need any other kind of help in resisting the blood lust?"

Jimmy wiped his face with the back of his hand, and shrugged.

"Jimmy," Maggie said and grasped his hands tightly, "our way... not killing ... isn't learned easily. I can't tell you how I struggled... how I still struggle. It's like putting heroin in the hands of an addict and saying look but don't shoot. To drink blood and then have to force yourself to stop . . .Jimmy, I'd be shocked if you had been able to control the blood lust on your own. I know you've probably killed. I won't try to tell you not to feel guilty; taking life is a terrible thing. But what you should do is use your guilt to strengthen your resolve to resist the blood lust instead of taking the coward's way out and killing yourself by greeting the sunrise."

"How did you know?" Jimmy asked, disturbed by Maggie's picking up on that darkest notion of his. How many times in the past few months had he thrown open the circle window in the bedroom of his trailer near dawn, only to feel the first, agonizing pain of the sun rising—then came the scrambled frenzy to a closet or any darkened place so he wouldn't die?

"How do you think?" Maggie replied archly and gave him a bitter look. "You think I never thought of suicide? It was all I thought of before Charles found me and rescued me from Simon. I was so tired of killing, I hated myself for what I was doing but I didn't have the slightest idea of how to stop myself. . . anymore than you do right now. But Jimmy, I can help you; it's good that you came here. You can be at peace as a vampire, I promise."

"How?" Jimmy asked, feeling a stirring of hope. "How do I not kill?"

In response, Maggie stood up and beckoned him to follow her. She led him to a kitchen large enough for a restaurant and reached into the double-door refrigerator, handing him a transfusion pack of blood.

"Let it warm up for a few minutes," she instructed and sat down beside Ellie, perched in her high chair, tearing her peanut butter sandwich apart like a miniature scientist doing a dissection, instead of eating it. "Nothing tastes viler than cold blood."

"I thought of blood banks, "Jimmy said, not wanting to seem like a complete moron of a vampire. He joined Maggie, Charles, and the mortal Lee at the round oak table, the blood pack clutched in his hands. "I just didn't know how to get into them."

"Don't ever snatch blood from a blood bank," Charles admonished. "It's monitored too carefully because there's almost always a shortage. It's easy for us; Ballnamore was a licensed research lab so we had a right to draw blood. Now, Lee's a doctor, so what we do is pay healthy mortals for transfusions and solicit enough to last a year or so."

"So we never have to feed directly from people?"

Meghann sighed. "I wish, but vampires sicken if they go too long without fresh mortal blood."

"What's too long?" Jimmy demanded and opened the now warm transfusion pack, pouring the blood into an oversize coffee mug Charles gave him. He could taste the difference between fresh blood and a transfusion pack immediately—it was kind of like regular versus diet soda. But it wasn't bad and he did feel the familiar strength coursing through him as he drank.

"It varies," Charles shrugged. "I tend to need fresh feedings once a month whereas Meghann needs them bi-monthly. But packs are enormously helpful for new vampires. Through the packs, you can train yourself to make do with less and then when you feed from a mortal, it's easier to stop before you kill them. Also, Meghann or I will chaperone you when you feed for a while. Don't feel insulted—both of us had an escort when we were first learning to restrain the blood lust."

Far from feeling insulted, Jimmy was relieved that if he did get carried away, from now on he'd be pulled off mortals before he hurt them. "Uh, do you think it would be okay if just you went with me, Charles?" The last thing he wanted was for Maggie to see him reduced to a blood-hungry savage she had to pull away from his host like some ravenous dog being yanked away from raw meat.

Charles and Maggie exchanged a look before they both nodded, Maggie seeming to understand why Jimmy didn't want her with him when he fed.

"I'll just handle the other aspects of your training, Jimmy," she said.

"What other aspects? What are you talking about?"

"To begin with, simple tricks any vampire is capable of," Maggie said and started cleaning peanut butter off Ellie's face and hands. "Sit still, Miss... you don't want that sticky stuff in your hair. What do you need to learn? Telekinesis, flying the astral plane—that's very important, it can save your life if you need to escape or you're far away from shelter and dawn is coming. Also, we'll work on any dormant psychic ability vampirism has brought out in you. For example, transformation gave me the ability to summon spirits ..."

"No," Jimmy said forcefully. "I don't want to mess with magic like all of you do. I'm no fucking sorcerer. Just teach me what I need to know to survive—that's all."

Maggie started to protest but Charles took her hand and something passed between the two of them that made her shrug. "Okay, Jimmy. If that's the way you want it. But flying the astral plane is something you'll need to learn for survival."

"Yeah, "Jimmy muttered, not so much in agreement as acknowledgment of her words. He couldn't explain what made him so uneasy. It just seemed that once he became like Maggie and Charles, with their way of holding whole conversations without ever opening their mouths, appearing and disappearing as the spirit willed them, that would be the end of Jimmy as a human. A cynical voice told him he'd stopped being human the moment Simon Baldevar forced his blood down Jimmy's throat but Jimmy shrugged it off just as he'd shrugged off Maggie. He'd learn to drink blood without killing and he'd adjust to never seeing the sunlight but as for the rest... Maybe it was stupid but Jimmy thought the more he behaved as a mortal, the easier it would be to pretend this whole awful nightmare had never happened.

Suddenly Jimmy remembered the terrible fights he used to have with Maggie, the way he'd beg her to transform him and she'd refuse, saying transformation was a curse. At the time, he'd refuted her words with bitter sarcasm—what the hell was so terrible about living forever and never getting sick or infirm? But now Jimmy understood. She'd been speaking of that awful feeling of being different, of standing to the side of humanity—observing but never belonging.

"No, Jimmy," Maggie said, not the least bit embarrassed that she'd eavesdropped on his thoughts. "We do belong ... maybe not with humans ... but we have each other. Some vampires, it's true, become cold and cynical. They live just to prey on victims, never allowing themselves to be touched by love. But Charles and I never feel alone; we have each other. Don't ever close your heart or feel you're an outcast. It's those feelings that can turn you into a monster, not the blood lust."

"Are those feelings what turned Baldevar into a monster?" Jimmy asked caustically, his tone full of all the anger and betrayal he'd felt when Maggie told him she loved the hateful bastard.

Maggie flushed but held his gaze and her voice betrayed no emotion when she spoke. "I don't want any false pretense between us, Jimmy. I did love Simon, in spite of what he is. But no matter how much I loved him, I still cared about you. I still did everything I could to help you."

"I wouldn't have needed any fucking help if your shithead boyfriend left me alone! "Jimmy snarled and Ellie whimpered. Immediately he lowered his voice, feeling ashamed of himself for yelling at Maggie when he'd still be a vegetable or dead if she hadn't helped him. "Look, Maggie, I just can't understand it. Why the hell would you love him after all he did to you, after the way he murdered poor Alcuin in front of you?"

Maggie and Charles both lowered their heads and Jimmy felt like even more of a heel. He probably shouldn't have brought Alcuin up—he knew they were both still grieving for the gentle priest-turned-vampire who had taken them both under his wing and taught them his way of living in peace with mortals.

"Simon does terrible things," Maggie said and just the way she said his name told Jimmy how much she still cared for him. He swallowed his rage and forced himself to listen to her. "But for all his monstrous behavior, he's also capable of great tenderness and love."

"Simon is a very different person when he's with her," Charles said quietly. "I was just as incredulous as you when they first reunited, Jimmy. But the way I saw him treat Meghann ... so sensitive, so devoted to her and the baby ... I really thought his love for her would change him. And of course, during Meghann's pregnancy, she really had no choice but to trust him—he was the only one that could keep her safe."

"Yeah," Jimmy agreed, remembering Maggie telling him that as soon as it became known that she was pregnant, all the vampires that used to fight on the side of Alcuin wanted to kill her. "I still don't understand that. I mean, I thought Alcuin taught you guys not to kill—going after a pregnant woman sounds more like something Baldevar would do."

Charles and Maggie exchanged another of their complicated, indecipherable glances.

"Before Simon transformed, he was an alchemist,"

Maggie told Jimmy. "He believed the secret to eternal life lay in transmutation of blood—purifying it of every flaw that left humans vulnerable to disease and old age. After he transformed, he worked on developing his theories, trying to discover why vampires could defeat death but be destroyed by sunlight. He finally decided that when you transform, your blood banishes many impurities from your system, but it's still not perfect. However, Simon thought there was one way to achieve a strain with all our strengths and none of our flaws—by mingling the blood of two vampires through conception. He thought a vampire baby would be immortal, walk in daylight and give its parents that same ability once they drank a small portion of the child's blood.

"Of course," Maggie finished with an ironic grin, "none of Simon's enemies wanted him to gain this ability. So they decided to kill me before I gave birth to a child that would free Lord Baldevar from darkness and give him a deadly edge over other vampires during the day."

"You mean they thought he'd drink the kid's blood and then go around offing vampires during the day?" Chilled, Jimmy glanced at Ellie, noisily banging a plastic cup against the tray of her high chair. Was Baldevar planning to drink Ellie's blood and then murder every vampire in existence, with the possible exception of Maggie and Charles? It was hard to believe, looking at the giggling little girl with her just-washed face and innocent green eyes that she was a superhuman and utterly unique creature—a vampire unaffected by sunlight.

"Ellie's not a vampire at all," Maggie said shortly. "We discovered that shortly after she was born. She's mortal, with no signs of vampirism in her chromosomes or her behavior. She's only different from other babies in that she show signs of genius level intelligence and a highly developed extrasensory ability."

"So she's not a threat to those assholes that tried to kill you ... they'll leave you and her alone?"

Maggie shrugged. "It certainly seems that way. At first, right after Ellie was born, a few came here to do battle. That's why Charles attacked you when we sensed a vampire's presence; we're still pretty edgy. But they haven't bothered us in a while . . . not since word got around that Ellie's just a mortal baby Lord Baldevar has no interest in raising."

There was a weird, rushed quality to the way Maggie said those last words that made Jimmy's eyes narrow. "What do you mean 'a baby Baldevar has no interest in raising?'"

"He abandoned Meghann and Ellie," Charles said and Maggie shot him a grateful look. "He was so disgusted when all his plans and schemes gave him nothing more than a human child—a girl child at that—that he wants nothing to do with mother or daughter."

"What an asshole," Jimmy proclaimed in disgust. "Blaming Maggie cause they had a mortal kid. And who gives a shit—it's still a baby to love." So smug did Jimmy feel in his superiority to his narrow-minded enemy that he never noticed the shuffling glances and tension of everyone else at the table. "So he just took off?"

Maggie nodded. "We have no idea where he is or if he has any intention of coming back. I don't think he hates me or Ellie; he left me the deed to this house and enough money to live comfortably for several centuries."

"So that makes everything all right?" Jimmy flared, angry because Maggie wasn't angry. "What the hell is the matter with you, Maggie? The asshole walked out on you both; you should fucking hate him—not give thanks cause he left you a beach house and a couple of dollars for his own twisted form of alimony. And when you combine that with what you tell me he used to do—how he beat you up and stuff—Christ, Maggie! What's it going to take to make you forget about him?"

"I'm never going to forget Simon," Maggie said and now her voice sounded ragged and squeaky, like she was trying to suppress tears. "I'm sorry, Jimmy, I know what you want. You want us to be like we were before and I won't lie to you. I don't think I'll ever be able to love another man, not after ..."

"Mommy," Ellie cried in distress when Maggie put her head in her hands and started sobbing. "Mommy, no!"

"No, baby, don't cry," Maggie said, tears still streaming down her face though she tried to smile when Ellie started to cry at the sight of her mother so upset. Maggie shoved her chair aside and picked the little girl up before rushing out of the room.

"No, Jimmy," Charles said and grabbed Jimmy's wrist when he would have rushed after her. "Let her alone."

"She needs me! She needs someone to make her see ..

"Jimmy." Lee spoke up for the first time and came over to take Jimmy by the arm and guide him back into his chair. "Can't you see how much it upsets her to talk about Simon? You're opening a very nasty wound and we can't have you doing that. Meghann needs time to heal."

"What the hell are you going to do to stop me?" Jimmy sneered and then stopped, appalled by the bullying tone of voice—he sounded just like Baldevar did whenever he'd threatened Jimmy.

To his credit, Lee neither cowered nor challenged him; he simply went on speaking calmly. "I won't have to stop you because I know you're just like Charles and me—you want only the best for Meghann. Isn't that right?"

At Jimmy's nod, Lee continued. "Now you seem to think the best is resuming your former relationship with her, becoming lovers again. But Meghann isn't ready for a lover, not yet."

"Are you trying to tell me we should let her spend eternity pining away for that creep?"

'Jimmy," Charles said and Jimmy's eyes narrowed at the slight amusement he thought he heard in the other vampire's tone. "It hasn't even been a year since Simon disappeared. I'd hardly say that counts as eternity. You must understand, no matter how much it hurts you, that Meghann was very vulnerable during her pregnancy and she turned to Simon for comfort. And I must say, he treated her with extraordinary sensitivity and tenderness. I know you think he's nothing but a cold-hearted fiend and certainly you have every right to feel that way after the way he treated you. But just as Meghann understands your feelings, you must try and see things from her point of view. If you keep trying to ram your own hatred down her throat, you'll do nothing except drive a wedge between you. For now, give her time to grieve, time to heal."

Jimmy nodded his agreement. If anything proved Charles's point, it was the way Maggie had run out of the room when Jimmy kept needling her about Simon Baldevar. He should have remembered from all the years they'd been together that Maggie never liked to talk about Baldevar.

That bastard did some job with her head, Jimmy thought grimly and got up. "I'm just gonna make sure she's okay," he told Charles and this time the vampire made no protest when he left the kitchen in search of Maggie.

It took awhile of prowling the endless corridors of the house but Jimmy finally found Maggie when his sharp ears detected a low voice singing on the third floor.

Maggie and the baby were in a room that was plainly the nursery, with cheerful murals of fairy tales painted on the walls and expensive-looking baby furniture that consisted of a crib, toy trunk, a small bureau and a changing table.

Maggie was perched on a green-and-white striped window seat, her sleeping child lying against her breast. Maggie's chin rested on Ellie's head, the long cascade of her fiery red hair covering the baby like a blanket while she crooned a lullaby to her daughter.

Don't move, Jimmy silendy implored and gave thanks when Maggie kept still while he squeezed off a few shots from the Nikon around his neck. What a perfect shot of mother and child reposing together; the sleeping litde girl with her flushed cheeks and damp curls cuddled against the beautiful young woman who barely looked old enough to have a child.

Before transformation, Jimmy had considered himself a decent amateur photographer. Now what used to be a hobby was rapidly becoming one of the few times he felt at peace with himself. Behind the lens, Jimmy wasn't an outcast predator; he was a chronicler of life, seeing the night from an utterly unique angle.

When Jimmy gave her permission to move, Maggie turned to him and he was relieved to see her green eyes were clear and dry. "That's my first picture with Ellie. Of course, we have tons of pictures of her but we weren't able to get any of the two of us together. You're the only one who knows how to manipulate the negatives so vampires don't come out as the usual blur in a picture."

"It's no big deal,"Jimmy shrugged.

"It is so," Maggie protested in a hushed voice so she wouldn't wake the baby and carried Ellie over to her crib. "How would you feel if you'd had no pictures of you and Jay together? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"No," Jimmy told her. "I know what you mean and I'm glad I could take a picture of you and Ellie. I'll take plenty more if you want me to."

"I'd like that,"-Maggie smiled and pulled a pink blanket over the baby before tucking a golden-brown teddy bear into the crook of Ellie's arms.

"Goodnight, Princess," Maggie whispered and leaned down to kiss her daughter's forehead. Then, turning to Jimmy, she said, "We have a suite with an extra walk-in closet. Maybe you could turn it into a darkroom."

Jimmy followed her to a room that, thank God, wasn't the same one Baldevar had imprisoned him in. This suite was on the north side of the house, overlooking the fir-lined private road instead of the beach. He could see that the extra closet in what Maggie called the day room would serve as a fine darkroom. Next, Maggie showed him a bedroom he immediately felt comfortable in with its polished wood floor and furniture decorated in solid earth tones.

"You'll be happy here?" Maggie asked a little anxiously and Jimmy almost laughed when he thought of the difference between this luxurious house and the cheap trailer he'd called home for the past couple of months. She might as well ask a wino if they'd prefer to keep their cardboard box rather than move in with her.

"I'll be happy as long as you want me here . .. and you're not just asking me to stay out of pity."

"No, Jimmy," Maggie said, seeming surprised that he'd even think that. She came away from the window over to Jimmy's side and hugged him tightly. "Charles was right when he said you took a risk by coming here but I'm very happy that you did. I've missed you."

"I missed you too, Maggie," Jimmy whispered and tried to remember his resolve downstairs not to push a physical relationship on her but the hug was making it damned difficult. For one thing, her thick, long hair was tickling his hands as he grasped her waist and it didn't take a lot of imagination to remember making love with her on top of him, that brilliant red hair fanning out and teasing his chest.

No! He'd screw up his chances with Maggie for good if he kept panting at her, insisting she forget Baldevar and start up with him again. Maggie had been through a lot what with Alcuin dying, giving birth, and those other horrid vampires trying to kill her and Ellie. It was understandable that she'd turned to Baldevar and that the prick, with the centuries he had over her, all his Black Magic mumbo jumbo and most of all that damned blood link that connected any vampire with their master forever, was able to twist Maggie's thoughts until she thought she loved him. Jimmy knew Maggie had been brainwashed; all he had to do was make her see that.

But just try and tell all those good, rational thoughts to certain idiot parts of his body that were growing harder and more insistent by the second, tantalized by the tea-rose scent Maggie always wore and soft feminine curves of her body pressed against him.

Maggie stiffened in surprise and as she raised her head, Jimmy steeled himself for more recriminations.

But the jade eyes on his sparkled and her broad grin made Jimmy choke back his unspoken apology.

"For the past year, I've lived with two of the most wonderful men in the world," Maggie told him and made no attempt to pull away. "But they're homosexual and it's been a very long time since anyone made me feel like a woman instead of just Ellie's mother and a beloved but sexless friend."

'They'd have to be gay to see you as sexless," Jimmy grumbled and Maggie giggled, her old, full laugh that contained none of the hesitation Jimmy had sensed in her since he arrived. In that moment, all the tension between them melted and Jimmy finally felt himself in the presence of Maggie O'Neill, his sharp-tongued, reckless girlfriend instead of the sad, reserved woman who'd taken her place. "Maggie, I love you. But God help me, if you say 'I love you, too—as a friend', I might just wring your neck or grab the nearest stake."

"But you are my friend," Maggie laughed again. "Would you feel better if I said you're my enemy?"

"I'd feel better if you said Baldevar was your enemy, "Jimmy said honestly, holding his breath until Maggie simply nodded instead of bursting into tears at Lord Baldevar's name again. "But I'm trying to understand, Maggie. You felt... something for him and that's why you won't do anything with me." The words nearly choked him coming out of his mouth, but it was worth it to feel Maggie sag against him in relief.

"I was so worried that you'd hate me for what I did with Simon—that you'd think I was nothing but a whore."

"I don't hate you, Maggie," Jimmy said into her hair. No, it was Baldevar he hated, for ruining what he and Maggie had had together, for impregnating her (though he already loved Ellie dearly) and making it so Maggie had to turn to him or die. The only thing

Jimmy didn't understand was how Baldevar could win back Maggie's love and then throw it away just because their kid was mortal. . . that just didn't make any sense.

Jimmy felt Maggie tense up again and wondered if she was playing Thought Police with his mind again— poking through his thoughts was one habit she'd better break damned quick.

"What happened between me and Simon isn't the only reason I don't want things getting more ... intense with us," Maggie said and pulled away from him. She sank down into the fat, feather-stuffed mattress of the bed and threw her arms over her head to stretch, prompting Jimmy's imagination into flights of erotic fantasies. "Jimmy, you must know by now how, um, possessive Simon is of me. He may have left but that doesn't mean he won't destroy anyone I try to replace him with."

"But that's not right!" Jimmy protested. "If he leaves, he can't expect you to stay faithful. It's not fair ... it's not even sane ..."

"Fair and rational thought isn't always Simon's forte," Maggie said wryly. "Right or not, he despises you for what you mean to me and I don't want him to hurt you. I probably shouldn't even have you here but you mean so much to me. I hated the thought of you not being in my life anymore. It's selfish but I just can't let you go—I need you."

Jimmy sat down next to her and put his arms around her, emboldened by Maggie's words. "I need you too, Maggie. Look, I say in for a penny in for a pound. If Asshole comes back here and finds me, he'll try and kill me again anyway... at least let me be killed for being your lover instead of a platonic friend."

He'd hoped to make Maggie laugh but she only smiled sadly, though she didn't shrug off the arms that held her close to him. "Jimmy, it's a very tempting offer but it wouldn't be right. I'm just not capable of loving you the way you deserve to be loved. If I slept with you right now, I'd just be using you."

"I'm a man for God's sake—use me, please!" he rasped and this time Maggie did laugh.

'You deserve better," she said and kissed him lightly on the lips. "And until I can give you what you deserve—a woman who only wants you, only thinks of you I think it's better if we're just friends."

"Okay,"Jimmy finally said and gave her another hug, this time the kind bf embrace one friend would give to another. 'Just friends ... for now." Maggie's words and the light, sweet kiss gave him hope that there would come a time when she got over Simon and they'd find their way back to each other. Besides, Jimmy knew Maggie was a highly passionate woman ... he couldn't see her playing the celibate vampire for long. He'd just have to do as Charles and Lee suggested and give her time.

And he had nothing but time, Jimmy thought, smiling down at Maggie. Time was the one gift Lord Baldevar had given him so all he had to do was be patient and wait.

Six

Sixteen years later

Jimmy sat at the far end of a jetty and glared at the dark sea churning by his feet, indifferent to the water cresting over the rocks that was soaking his jeans and boots.

Either Maggie was a brilliant actress or he was the stupidest man ever to walk the earth, Jimmy thought furiously, feeling like a fool when he remembered all her tender sympathy and seeming love for him. To think all of that—the welcome home, the insistence she relied on Jimmy's friendship—was nothing but a calculated lie.

He should have seen through it, if not that night then any of the thousands of nights that followed when he'd plead with Maggie to love him the way he needed her to love him and always she'd hand him that simpering you-deserve-better-than-me bullshit.

Maggie was right he deserved better than her, a deceitful, conniving bitch that used him as her fucking beard for Simon Baldevar! That's what Jimmy had been for seventeen years—a beard, a convenient dupe she presented to the world as her lover (though he hadn't even gotten sex out of the miserable situation) while panting for the night Lord Baldevar would come back and Jimmy could be disposed of, no longer serving any purpose in her life.

"That's not true."

"You stay the hell out of my mind!" Jimmy yelled and glanced over his shoulder at Maggie, standing barefoot on the slimy rocks and daintily holding her skirt in one hand to keep it from getting wet.

Jimmy felt a turn of disgust for himself when he couldn't suppress a small part of his heart that saw nothing but beauty as he glared at Maggie. A creature as base as she'd turned out to be had no right to look so bewitching, seeming like some faerie queen as she stared down at him, the moonlight outlining her dainty, china-doll features with silvery luminescence.

"Get lost, "Jimmy snarled.

"I'm not going anywhere until you understand what happened," Maggie replied and crossed her arms over her chest, no longer a fey pixie but a creature as formidable as Morgan le Fay when she stared him down with her implacable green eyes.

"I understand just fine," Jimmy snapped and rose to his feet, feeling height might give him some advantage over the petite Maggie. "You needed me here to convince all your vampire enemies that you and shit- head were really through. So what if lying to me the way you did meant spitting on any friendship we'd had ..."

"Stop it!" Maggie yelled and the shrill scream went through Jimmy like a knife, so for several moments he couldn't find the will to speak again while Maggie launched into her explanation.

"You're so fucking self-centered, Jimmy—everything's always me, me, me! How does this affect me? Why did Maggie lie to me?"

"Why did Maggie lie to me?" he roared rhetorically. "Because her lord and master told her to!"

"Shut up!" Maggie screamed and her fist flew at his solar plexus. So taken aback was Jimmy by the unexpected blow that he flew backward into the ocean. Had he been mortal, Jimmy might have been dragged into the deep sea by the brutal undertow, but as it was, he was able to climb back onto the jetty after getting a tenuous hold on the rocks.

"Are you going to keep your mouth shut and listen to me?" Maggie demanded, completely unapologetic as she glared at the dripping, shivering mess she'd turned Jimmy into.

"Will you feed me to a shark if I don't?" Jimmy replied sulkily, but sat down and removed his soggy boots, socks, and vest. He thought of taking off his wet jeans but decided the discomfort of wet denim was preferable to carrying on this argument in his underwear.

"Simon never told me to lie to you and if he had, I would've told him to go to hell—just like I should tell you that for thinking such terrible things of me."

"But you did lie," Jimmy pointed out. "You never told me you had twins and you let me believe you and Baldevar were through."

"I didn't do it to hurt or exploit you. I did it for Mikal and I'd do it again if it meant my son's well- being." Maggie hunched down next to him and grabbed his hands with an inexorable grip he couldn't break. "I couldn't tell you about Mikal because you were too newborn to be able to keep the secret."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Jimmy cried, deeply insulted. "Being a vampire made me stronger..."

"Stronger than mortals," Maggie broke in. "Not other vampires. Jimmy, I knew if you went anywhere and Charles or I weren't with you, any older vampire could pick up on your presence without you having the slightest awareness of them. They'd be able to spy on your thoughts and that would mean if I had told you about Mikal..."

"They'd see it," Jimmy finished. Christ, he hadn't thought of that at all, that some monster like the ones that tried to kill Maggie could spy on his mind and learn all about her son.

"All right," Jimmy nodded and watched Maggie's shoulders sag in relief. That gesture went to his heart more than anything else she'd done. Maggie had come running out here after him to explain herself; maybe she really did value his friendship in some way.

"I value you in every way," Maggie said, and then flushed. "Sorry, I shouldn't pry. But your thoughts are so intense they're coming at me whether I want them to or not. Don't you see, Jimmy? Suppose that happened on one of your trips?"

"I understand," Jimmy said and he did—part of the twisted truth, at any rate. "You were trying to keep Ellie and Mikal safe."

"Ellie!" Jimmy yelped and jumped to his feet. "Jesus, Maggie, what if he's transforming her while we're out here?"

"I'd know if something like that was being done to my daughter," Maggie replied. "But we should head back inside."

Feeling more amiable if not completely understanding of Maggie and her baffling attraction to Lord Baldevar, Jimmy took her arm and guided her over the slippery rocks as they made their way back to shore, his wet jeans squishing noisily as his thighs rubbed together.

"Maggie," Jimmy said, keeping his hand on her when they reached the relative stability of the sand. "I can understand that you needed to keep Mikal hidden but did you have to let Simon have him? What if we'd all gone to ground ..."

"Ellie included?" Maggie demanded. "What kind of life would that have been for her?"

"What kind of life was it for Mikal?" Jimmy asked quietly and Maggie shrugged helplessly.

"I don't know," she replied and Jimmy saw the old frustrated helplessness that he finally understood shadow her eyes. "Simon never gave me any word of him."

"Holy shit, Maggie, you've got to be kidding me!" Jimmy exclaimed but one glance at her expression showed this was no joke. "Of all the fucking . . . how could he not tell his son's mother how the kid was? And how could you let this go on?"

"What could I do?" Maggie cried and Jimmy felt his throat tighten at how woebegone she looked. "You think I wanted to just wave goodbye to my son and leave him with Simon?"

"You didn't?"

"Of course not!" she yelled and Jimmy glanced uneasily at the house—surely Baldevar could hear her carrying on. "I'm not blind, Jimmy. I know Simon's faults ... I bet I know them better than anyone in the world. I know what he's capable of and I knew what he could raise our son to be but I just couldn't see anything else to do but let him take Mikal. Besides, do you honestly believe I could have stopped him?"

God knows I couldn't have, Jimmy thought bitterly. "Don't beat yourself up, Maggie. You're right—you couldn't have kept him from Mikal."

"I don't think I would have tried," Maggie confessed and gave Jimmy a tired smile. "Does that shock you? Let me tell you about the night our vampire enemies found me alone. I fought them as best as I could but there were too many and I was weakened by pregnancy. Do you know what they did to me? They were going to kill me by scalping me and running a sword through my womb, then leave me wounded and bleeding for daylight to claim me. With the last of my strength, I called out to Simon and he came, Jimmy. He came to me and he destroyed every last one of those monsters and all he wanted for saving my babies and me was for me to love him. That night he saved me was when we became lovers again. After Mikal and Elizabeth were born and Simon proposed taking Mikal into hiding, I went along because I couldn't get that night he saved me out of my mind. I just kept thinking that whatever those sick sons-of- bitches had tried to do to me, imagine what they might do to Mikal. I knew I might not be able to protect my son from that, so I had to give him to Simon. I had to keep Mikal safe, Jimmy. Can't you see that? I had to keep him safe."

"Okay, Maggie,"Jimmy said when she started to cry the miserable, rasping noises of a person that didn't want to cry but couldn't stop. Jimmy gathered her up clumsily and held her tighdy. "It's okay, Maggie. I understand." He understood that Maggie had had a choice that was no real choice to make—keep her son with her and know he'd grow up decent but might die if she couldn't defend him or give him to the one creature that could keep him safe, knowing all too well what Simon Baldevar might turn her son into.

"It's not okay," Maggie cried against his shoulder. "Every dark vision I've had of what Simon might do has come home to roost. Did you hear him? Ellie has to transform because her own brother wants to hurt her. My God, what kind of creature has my son turned into?"

"Like father, like son," Jimmy said, unable to keep his bitterness toward Baldevar inside. "Maggie, it's not your fault but if you give a kid to a psychopath, you have to expect..."

"Simon isn't a psychopath," Maggie argued. "A sadist, maybe .. . really more of a narcissist than anything else. Psychopaths lie constantly and can't maintain anything but surface relationships. Simon doesn't lie, he's capable of some empathy and maintaining relationships..."

"Like the one he maintained with you while he went off with your boy?"

"Simon said he thought it would be easier on us all to maintain minimal contact," Maggie answered. "He wrote to me and Ellie all the time but we could never risk joining together until Mikal was strong enough to fight his own batdes. And he never wanted the twins to have contact while they were children—he worried that Mikal would despise Ellie because she didn't have to be hidden away."

"It's sounds like the sick bastard despises Ellie anyway," Jimmy said cuttingly. "No doubt dear old Dad taught him any mortal—including his sister—is just food..."

"No! Simon loves Ellie. Jimmy, I know what he put you through and I'd never excuse it but there is a good side to Simon."

"Would that be the one that drained you dry while humping you?"

Maggie flushed and glared daggers at Jimmy. "What we do in bed is none of your business. We're not hurting anybody."

"Bullshit! "Jimmy replied. "You're my friend so I'm making it my business. Look, I know what we used to have is in the past—I can accept that. I want you to find a man who'll make you happy just as much as I want that happiness for myself. But you won't find it with Simon Baldevar. What he was doing in bed wasn't just some kinky sex and furthermore, someone is being hurt—you. Christ, how can you let him just... use you like that?"

"I know what it looks like," Maggie said and gave Jimmy the most complex look of pain, confusion, and reckless defiance he'd ever seen. "You think I'm Lord Baldevar's little sex toy . . . his blood whore, as so many of our kind have called me. And you want to know something? There are plenty of times I feel like a whore but I ... I want him. When we're . . . alone ... I want him anyway he wants to have me. It's like ... nothing seems to matter anymore. I can't think when he touches me. My mind goes blank and all I know is his touch, the wonderful places he takes me while I sacrifice my pride and self-respect on the altar of his ... uh, you know. Why do you think I left him, Jimmy? I hated the power he had over me, the way he controlled my mind through my body and the blood lust."

"Then why the hell did you go back with him, Maggie?" The question wasn't asked reproachfully but with genuine puzzlement. The things Maggie had just said to him—that she had been so open about her feelings toward Lord Baldevar astonished Jimmy. Jimmy wanted desperately to understand her and then help her ... help her the way she'd helped him so many times.

"I was once like you—before Simon transformed me," Maggie said and gave Jimmy a bleak little grin that made him want to weep for her, this complex woman he was only now beginning to understand. "I thought love was a safe, pleasant matter of finding a boy I had things in common with, who I thought was handsome, who made me laugh, who'd be my friend .. . someone to raise a family with, grow old with."

"Then I met Simon," Maggie said and her voice was so low and far away sounding, Jimmy wondered if she was in a trance. "And I found out true love isn't about companionship . . . it's about desire and voracious need. It's about having that need take you over completely, dominate you with all its cravings and pulls so that nothing else matters. That's what I thought when Simon offered transformation—'I want to be with him, nothing else matters.' And nothing did matter—not my scruples, my conscience or the mortal family I gave up without a second thought. He filled the world for me, Jimmy—he still does. And it wasn't just sex. It was the way he'd hold me when I woke up frightened, the way he was interested in my every thought, the way he filled my heart to bursting. I left him because I saw that love was turning me into a slave. A slave to my desires, to an insatiable need that rages and demands and won't rest until it's sated."

"Is that what you want to be now? "Jimmy asked and Maggie looked up at him with surprise, like she'd forgotten he was there, and then shrugged helplessly.

"Sometimes I don't think there's anything else I can be when it comes to Simon Baldevar," Maggie answered and Jimmy had an aching wave of pity for her. He couldn't even begin to imagine what this battle must be doing to her soul—her intelligent, forthright nature warring with the heart and body that craved Simon Baldevar.

"Don't look like that," Maggie smiled at him, and Jimmy wondered if Baldevar was any better at coping with her quicksilver mood swings than he was. "I'm not a lost soul. It really isn't like that with Simon and me anymore. I know it's difficult for you to believe, but he has changed in the seventy years I've known him. Yes, he's capable of brutality but he's also capable of deep love. You know I almost died when I had the twins. When I came out of my coma, Simon was crying over me ... crying over my impending death. There is tenderness in him . . . haven't you seen it in the way he treats Ellie? I believe he could become a good man, one I could give my whole heart to without qualm."

"And I believe you need to take those anti-crazy pills you used to give me," Jimmy said.

Maggie's brows started to meet in an angry frown that became a perplexed question when a raw scream of panic and desolation shattered-the quiet around them.

"MOMMY!"

Jimmy and Maggie turned around to see Ellie flying down the beach, tears streaming down the face that leered at them ghost-pale from the darkness surrounding her.

"Ellie," Maggie whispered, her face as white as her daughter's. In an instant, she vanished, reappearing next to Ellie and reaching out to draw her into her arms. "Sweetheart, what's the matter?"

"Mommy ..." was all Ellie could choke out and Jimmy, who'd chosen to run rather than fly the astral plane, exchanged a fearful glance with Maggie, all other matters forgotten in their concern for the shattered girl sobbing in Maggie's arms.

She hasn't called Maggie Mommy in ten years, Jimmy thought, not since she decided it was for babies. What the hell had happened to make her regress like this, to make her stare at them with glassy, unseeing eyes while she continued to cry?

"Ellie, baby, what is it?" Maggie asked soothingly and Jimmy could see she was fighting to keep her own terror out of her voice when she spoke. "Please tell me what's wrong."

"Did Baldevar do something .. ."Jimmy began and Maggie sent him a withering glance while she continued to rock her daughter.

At her father's name, Ellie came out of it a little and started speaking though her teeth chattered violently while she spoke. "Lee ... Uncle Lee le ... left your mail by your desk the way he always does. I thought I'd ... I thought I'd sort it out for you while you and Jimmy were out here. Then I came to this box ... I was going to open it up but Daddy snatched it away from me. He didn't have to look, he knew right away..."

"Knew what?" Maggie demanded when Ellie burst into fresh sobs. "Sweetheart, please try to calm down. Where's your father now?"

"Don't go in there!" Ellie screamed, though Maggie had made no move toward the house. "Don't go inside ... I don't want you to see ..."

"Ellie, please," Maggie cried. "You're scaring me. Please try and tell me what happened. What don't you want me to see?"

"Daddy knew what was inside the box," Ellie said dully as though she hadn't heard her mother's question. "I should have known, too, I should have felt how . . . how much evil and hurt surrounded it but I didn't, I had no idea. Oh God, why did he do this? Why? Daddy . . . oh, Mommy, Daddy's really sorry. Daddy's right, he's bad and he wants to hurt us but Daddy says he won't let him. But what if Daddy can't help us? He wasn't able to save . . ." Ellie wrenched away from her mother with a violent twist and vomited into the sand.

"Look what he's done," Jimmy cried furiously over Ellie's retching. "You let that sonofabitch back into our lives and he's already damaged her ..."

"No!" Ellie screamed and raised her head. Hastily, she wiped the bile from her lips and shook her head at Jimmy. "Don't you be mad at Daddy! He didn't do anything . . . Mikal did. Mikal is the one who's going to try and get me and Mommy." Ellie threw her arms around her mother again, kneeling on the sand with her head on Maggie's stomach. "Mommy ..."

"What, baby?" Maggie beseeched, stroking her daughter's hair. "What is it? Did Mikal send something to me?"

"Yes," Ellie said and her voice was hoarse and full of grief. "There was a note inside—'A belated Mother's Day present.' How could he do that to you?" Ellie started weeping again and wouldn't respond to any of her mother's increasingly frantic questions.

"She's hysterical," Maggie finally said to Jimmy. "Help me get her back in the house. I'm going to give her one of Lee's sedatives and put her to bed. Simon can tell us what's going on."

"Ellie," Maggie said gently, pulling her daughter to her feet. "Can you walk? I want to take you back to the house."

At the mention of the house, Ellie lost the last bit of color in her face and put her hands out as though trying to ward off something unseen by Maggie and Jimmy.

"No," she whimpered. "No, I can't go back ... I can't... the box ..."

Ellie swayed and Jimmy leaped forward to catch her and swing her into his arms.

"It's all right," he said helplessly when her arms went around him in a death grip and she buried her head on his shoulder, whimpering and crying. "Ellie, it's all right... I won't let anything there hurt you; I promise."

"No," Ellie moaned and raised pleading, frightened eyes to Jimmy. "Please don't make me go back inside."

Jesus Christ, what the hell had this Mikal done to put Ellie in a state like this?

"You want me to take you back to your cottage?" Jimmy suggested and he felt the wire-tight tension in

Ellie's body ease slightly. But then she shook her head and said in a resigned tone, "I can't leave Mommy alone .. . she'll need me."

Maggie turned around at that and pushed wet curls off Ellie's clammy forehead. "Honey, I'm just going in to talk to your father..." she began but stopped when Lord Baldevar appeared at the French doors.

"Meghann," Baldevar said, gold eyes flat and lips drawn into a tight line. "Meghann, I am so sorry."

"For what?" Maggie screamed in a mixture of impatience and fear. "Would somebody please tell me what's going on?"

"Meghann, come with me," Baldevar said and held out his hand, tossing an order to Jimmy. "Put Elizabeth on the couch and pour her a brandy."

Jimmy wanted to snap back that he wasn't a servant but the brandy suggestion was a good one—it might be just what Ellie needed. Once inside, he pulled the stopper out of the crystal cognac decanter and rapidly poured three fingers of the amber liquid into a snifter and brought it to Ellie's lips, drawn into a grim line identical to her father's.

"C'mon," Jimmy coaxed, holding the glass while Ellie sipped at it sluggishly.

"Simon," Maggie said in a pleading voice and Jimmy saw the puzzled anxiety and building fear in her eyes. "Simon, what..."

Then her eyes cut to a cardboard box next to the table and she let out a low moan that made Ellie flinch and put her hands to her ears.

Maggie continued to stare at the box, her hair clutched in two fists on either side of her head with her eyes and lips clamped tightly like she was trying not to cry.

"No," Maggie said over and over, staring at the box with abject fear. "No, no, no ..."

Baldevar put his hand on her shoulder and that broke Maggie's paralysis. She shrugged his hand off and ran to the box, pushing away layers of newspaper to find what lay underneath. Then she lifted something out and let out a scream unlike anything Jimmy had ever heard before. It was a primal howl, coming from the deepest part of her soul, a desperate keen filled with raw, uncontained sorrow that made Jimmy feel pain even before he knew what had happened, feel Maggie's pain cut through him and make him cry without knowing what he was crying for.

Jimmy reached Qut blindly to draw Ellie against him, unmindful of the brandy that soaked them both when the snifter turned over.

"Maggie, what..." he started to say and then broke off when he saw what had made her scream like that—the box contained Charles Tarleton's decapitated head.

Jimmy heard himself breathing heavily and grabbed Ellie closer, unable to believe what he was seeing. No, was his first blind thought. He just couldn't be staring at Charles Tarleton's severed head. Jimmy swallowed hard and felt the nausea that had attacked Ellie start to work on his own system as his eyes took in the gruesome details of the long, stringy bits of gore hanging from the neck, the stretched, wrinkling skin and purple circles under Charles's cloudy, vacant eyes.

"Maggie," Jimmy said helplessly, not knowing what to say, not knowing if there was anything he could say. Jimmy could only guess at what Maggie was feeling. He knew how close Maggie and Charles were, knew that the special love she had for him that was, in a way, a stronger connection than she had with anyone else in the world—even Simon Baldevar.

Maggie didn't respond to Jimmy and he felt serious fear at the empty green eyes staring through the decapitated head.

"Maggie,"Jimmy said again, but Baldevar shook his head negatively, then walked over and gently stroked Ellie's cheek.

"Go to your mother," Baldevar said and Jimmy heard something jagged in the vampire's voice, something he'd think was grief in another person. Could Baldevar be sharing in the palpable sense of loss that filled the room? "She'll hear you, Elizabeth."

Ellie nodded and left the protection of Jimmy's arms, kneeling down next to her mother. Jimmy saw that Ellie was careful to avoid looking at Charles's poor remains, focusing only on her mother's face.

"Mom," Ellie said hesitantly and Maggie looked up at her daughter with an expression of dumb, uncomprehending pain like a hurt animal or a small child.

"He didn't kill him right away," Maggie said and Jimmy's heart broke at how frail and utterly destroyed she sounded. Her hands trembled violently as she stroked Charles's lank black hair and her breath came out in odd, halting gasps as though she'd forgotten how to breathe. "I ... I see what happened. He attacked my Charles in the day, like the coward he must be."

"Oh, God, why couldn't he have killed him then?" Maggie shrieked, tears pouring down her face and soaking the collar of her shirt. "Why did he do that to Charles? Why? He ... he staked Charles during the day. He put a stake in his heart and then he sat there and he waited—just waited for sunset. He waited and thought of all the things he'd do to Charles when dark came and ... oh, Charles. Charles, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry my son did this to you. To torture you like that when you were helpless and couldn't fight back before he finally let you go ... why? Why? Why?" With each why, Maggie's voice scaled alarmingly and her eyes took on a harsh, disconnected gleam.

"Why?" she yelled again and Jimmy watched the glass panes in the French doors crack, the glass and chrome table shatter as Maggie screamed out her terrible rage and grief.

"Don't," Baldevar said softly and moved to take Maggie in his arms but she pushed him away with a strength borne of madness and despair. Whether unprepared for the attack or thinking a struggle would make Maggie lose whatever sanity she had left, Baldevar stepped away and moved Ellie back to the couch.

"Don't you touch me," Maggie hissed, barring her blood teeth and giving Baldevar a look of pure hatred. Jimmy heard Ellie gasp and immediately moved her head to his shoulder so she wouldn't have to see her mother like this.

"You've done this," Maggie snarled in a low, choked voice and Jimmy thought she'd spit venom if she could.

"You!" Maggie screamed as though he'd contradicted her though the vampire had done no more than stare impassively while she spoke. "You killed my best friend, you bastard!"

"Mommy, no .. ." Ellie started to say and Maggie whirled around.

"Stay out of this!" she cried in the harshest voice Jimmy had ever heard her use on Ellie. Ellie shivered and Jimmy clutched her tighter, praying she'd understand Maggie was simply hysterical.

"I'm sorry," Maggie said at the stunned hurt in Ellie's eyes but her voice was barely under control. "But you don't know what kind of monster he is ... I should have told you, I shouldn't have tried to protect you by romanticizing him."

"This is all your fault!" Maggie screamed, turning back to Baldevar. "And mine too. I killed Charles because I put my trust in you. I believed you when you said you'd raise my son with kindness and sensitivity— that you wouldn't bring him up to be a coldhearted killer." Carefully, as though she was handling delicate china, Maggie wrapped Charles's head in a chenille throw rug she snatched off the sofa and then stored it back in the box before hurling herself at Baldevar.

"Bastard!" she howled and raked her nails down his cheeks. Jimmy blanched at the ragged, gouged holes that appeared on Baldevar's face only to disappear almost instantaneously. Maggie seemed even more enraged by the speedy vampiric healing process that wouldn't allow her to permanently scar Baldevar's skin and attacked harder, kicking, punching, and clawing while she screamed out her rage and grief in an incoherent, babbled torrent of obscenities and accusations. Jimmy was surprised that the vampire made no move to defend himself or even restrain Maggie, simply staring with soft compassion and pity at the howling woman doing her level best to kill him.

"Mom, please," Ellie pleaded in a soft whisper and Maggie stopped abruptly, only seeming to remember Ellie's presence and what she was witnessing when her daughter spoke.

"I want you out of here," Maggie spat at Baldevar and grabbed the box containing Charles's head, along with her car keys. 'You caused this! You raised Mikal to hate, despite what you promised me. You forced your sick, twisted views on his innocent brain. You taught him to wallow in blood lust, to crave the kill! You nurtured his hate, encouraged it—but now the joke is on you because the thing he hates most in the world is you!" Maggie let out an appalling sound that might have been a laugh and continued to spit out the contemptuous, heated words that Jimmy thought probably hurt Baldevar more than her fists or claws had. "That's why you're here, isn't it? Mikal must have tried to kill you and I'm only sorry he failed! Now he's looking to kill anyone that might aid you—me or Charles or Jimmy or Ellie."

Maggie shoved the box at Baldevar, brandishing it like a weapon. "Look what you got from your hate, Simon! Look what your hate, what your failure to raise my son with any kind of decency, has cost an innocent man! Damn you, Simon Baldevar! Damn you for putting me in a position where I may have to kill my son to save my slaughter. Get out of here! You're not welcome in my house ... I won't have you being the lightning rod that brings death to Ellie! You be gone when I get back here ... get out of our lives and make sure your sick, twisted son knows not to look for you here!"

Maggie started to turn on her heel then whirled around, fixing Baldevar with a look of steely contempt that contrasted oddly with the tears still running down her face. "You think I can't force you out of here, don't you? You think you can do whatever you want and I'll always go along because I'm helpless to act against you. Well, let me tell you if I ever see you again, I'll get a stake through your heart and this time I'll do it right! I'll cut off your worthless head like Mikal did to ..." Maggie sank to the ground, weeping wildly while she rocked back and forth, cradling her best friend's remains.

"Stay away!" Maggie screamed through her sobs when Baldevar stepped nearer, his eyes still showing nothing but concern for her. "I mean it! I will kill you, I will! Jimmy, make him get out! You were right all along. Will you please look after my daughter? I have to do something for Charles."

Jimmy could only nod and Maggie came to the couch to kneel by her daughter, her voice gender but still cracked and desolate. "Honey, I'd take you with me but I think you're safer here with Jimmy to look after you. I'll be back tomorrow night. Okay?"

Ellie nodded and kissed her mother's cheek. Maggie kissed her back then whirled out into the night In a few seconds, they all heard the roar of a car engine and the squeal of tires as she took off.

"Maybe we should have stopped her, "Jimmy said uneasily, speaking only to Ellie. He was in complete accord with Maggie—out of her mind with grief or not, she was right to blame Simon Baldevar for this tragedy. Maybe now whatever hold that bastard had on her was obliterated for good. "I mean, she's so upset she's likely to drive that car off the road or into a tree ..."

"She'll be fine," Lord Baldevar said briefly. "The drive will give her something to concentrate on." He came over to the sofa and knelt beside Ellie, picking up her slack, unresisting hands, ignoring Jimmy as though he didn't exist.

"It's a very frightening thing to see your mother lose control, isn't it?" he said tenderly and Ellie nodded through her tears.

"You mustn't worry or be angry with her," Baldevar went on in that same gende tone. "Now I'm afraid I must leave you for a while. As Mr. Delacroix pointed out, it is dangerous for your mother to be alone."

"Daddy," Ellie said while he cleaned her face with a linen handkerchief. "Daddy, you won't hurt Mom, will you? You're not mad for what she said .. ."

"Your mother lashes out when she's hurt," Baldevar replied. "And this blow has hurt her very badly. Charles Tarleton was more than a friend to your mother; he was her anchor and support for many years. It will take a great deal for your mother .. . for any of us to recover from his loss. Dr. Tarleton was a very fine person and I shall always be grateful that he helped to raise you, Elizabeth. I am truly sorry that Mikal has brought this pain on all of us."

Baldevar's hurting, too, Jimmy realized numbly. Grief darkened his amber eyes to copper and he blinked constantly, as though holding back tears. Or maybe he was upset over Maggie's words, no matter what he said to Ellie. At any rate, it was the first time Jimmy saw his enemy without the cool, sardonic mask in place that tempered his emotions even when he was in a rage.

"I shall take care of your mother," Baldevar said and hugged Ellie close to him. "Now I must go to your mother but I cannot leave, Elizabeth, if I think you're in danger. Mikal presents a threat to all of us . . . I've already enchanted these grounds so he cannot enter. You must promise me that, until your mother and I return, you will not leave this estate and you will remain close to Jimmy Delacroix at all times."

Stunned at Lord Baldevar entrusting Ellie's care into his hands, Jimmy tried to catch Baldevar's eye but the vampire's attention was on Ellie. Not that he needed Ellie's promise .. .Jimmy had no intention of letting Ellie out of his sight.

At that thought, Lord Baldevar glanced over at him, an appraising, neutral stare while words flashed in Jimmy's mind with an almost painful intensity. Protect my daughter with your life.

Jimmy nodded automatically as Ellie said, "I promise," to Baldevar and the vampire got up, indicating to Jimmy that he wanted him to walk him to the door.

Jimmy followed docilely enough, not wanting to make a scene in front of Ellie, but once they were out of hearing range, Jimmy said in a low whisper, "You'd better keep your promise and not hurt Maggie."

"Meghann is already hurting," Baldevar said. "I'm merely ensuring her safety."

Jimmy nodded, resigned to the notion that their shared concern for Maggie and Ellie put him and Baldevar on the same side—at least until this crisis was over. This was the first time Simon Baldevar had ever talked to him instead of at him, the first time his words weren't some cutting remark or an attempt to intimidate.

"Where are you going to search for Maggie?"

"She's gone to Lee Winslow," Baldevar replied as though that were the most obvious thing in the world.

Of course, Jimmy thought. Where else would Maggie go but to break this awful news to Charles's mortal lover? Then Jimmy felt a pang of jealousy and grudging respect, realizing Simon Baldevar did know Maggie better than he did, for he'd been able to figure out where she'd go immediately.

"I can reach her in Chicago easily but I doubt we'll be back here before sunset tomorrow at the earliest," Baldevar said coolly. "Are there sedatives in this house?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Lee sometimes has trouble sleeping. His time clock is all screwed up because he tries to spend so many hours with Charles . . ."Jimmy broke off, feeling his own choking grief for the man that had done so much to help him adjust to immortality. Charles Tarleton had been Jimmy's friend, too, and his absence would leave a painful hole in his heart... as well as a desire to get his hands on the despicable creature that slaughtered him.

"My son is indeed despicable," Baldevar agreed, sounding both furious and resigned. "That is why you must protect Elizabeth from him. Make sure she takes a sedative before you sleep for the day. I want her to sleep all day tomorrow until we are awake to protect her." .

"Is that necessary?" Jimmy asked, not liking the thought of Ellie spending her daylight hours in a drugged-out stupor.

"Mikal's attack could come from any quarter," Baldevar responded. "Elizabeth says she will remain on this estate, but remember her youth, Mr. Delacroix. She might blunder unthinkingly into a trap; Mikal could lure her away from the house by having any of her friends contact her, say they are hurt or need her. I do not suggest they collaborate with him; they most likely would have no thought he was anything but another mortal for that is what he appears to be in daylight. I don't want Elizabeth responding to any temptation tomorrow. If she sleeps, Mikal cannot reach her for this house is barred to him."

"Okay," Jimmy nodded. "I'll make sure Ellie takes something." He thought she could use the Valium he planned to give her anyway, after all she'd been through tonight.

Baldevar nodded and with his hand on the doorknob to leave, he turned and gave Jimmy one last order, filled with a vehemence Jimmy couldn't have ignored even if he wanted to—Keep my daughter safe, Mr. Delacroix.

Seven

"You're very lucky ma'am," the disembodied customer service voice told Meghann and she bit back an acid comment about brainless automatons putting their foot in their mouth when they didn't know the reason behind a last-minute flight. 'There's a seat available on Delta Airlines Flight 458 nonstop from New York to Chicago, first class. May I have your credit card, please?"

Meghann recited the information from memory, relieved that she'd gotten a flight on such short notice. She'd worried she wouldn't be able to leave New York tonight and then who would go to Lee? He must be wondering by now where Charles was ...

No! Ruthlessly, Meghann suppressed the dangerous thoughts. She couldn't think of Charles now; she'd go crazy if she did.

"Ma'am?" the operator said. "That flight starts boarding in forty-five minutes. Will you make it?"

Meghann glanced at the signposts on the Sunrise Highway; she was five exits from MacArthur Airport. "I'll be there."

She had to be there; the flight left at one AM and would touch down at O'Hare around four. A later flight and Meghann risked being exposed to daylight if there was the slightest delay. She put her foot down on the accelerator and pushed the Cadillac up to 120 mph, zooming past the thin night traffic.

Inevitably, Meghann heard the whirring siren and blinked at the flashing lights of a police cruiser behind her a few minutes later.

Go away, Meghann glared at the cop reflected in the rearview mirror and watched him cut the lights and siren, veer meekly into the right lane and pull off by the side of the road to wait for some mortal speedster he could ticket

A dozen knives stabbed at Meghann's temples and she rubbed her head gingerly, wondering why she felt so ill at such a simple trick. Then she remembered how thoroughly Simon had drained her and realized she'd have to make a quick stop.

Meghann slowed the car to a normal speed as she drove through the ugly, blighted town of Ronkonkoma on her way to the airport, scanning its quiet streets and boarded-up strip malls until she found what she was looking for at a 7-Eleven. Pulling into the parking lot, she watched it detach from a circle of friends and wander over to her.

"Hi," Meghann greeted the young boy with a safety pin fastened through his nose, shocking pink hair, and vacuous eyes. She longed to tell him she could remember when the punk look was a sign of daring nonconformity and not the slick marketing gimmick MTV had warped it into.

"You're a Goth, right?" the boy said in greeting. "You've really got the vampire look down, especially those half-moon circles under your eyes they look so natural. How do you do it?"

I let the bastard who killed my dearest friend suck my blood while he screwed me. "Get in," Meghann said shortly and clenched her teeth at the nausea she felt from exerting that slight control over the boy's will. Just how much had Simon taken from her that her skin was pale enough to incite mortal comment and these baby tricks were making her sick?

The boy obeyed, either Meghann's command or his own libido, and vaulted over the car door onto the passenger seat

"I like your car," he announced and Meghann nodded her head in reply, her sharp eyes inspecting the area for a suitably deserted place to take her victim. "You're into the Goth scene? Me, too. You know, there's this club opening in Manhasset on Saturday. We could go together or something. It's gonna be really cool. They're saying there's gonna be this display like that hanging cop in Silence of the Lambs, some guy with his guts ripped out just stuffed over the front door. You pay the cover charge by putting the money in his abdominal cavity! I know it'll just be a dummy but that's still a great idea ... hey!"

Meghann pulled the car behind a Salvation Army dumpster next to a densely wooded area, cut the ignition and jumped on the hapless boy. She didn't even bother stripping him, just attacked the femoral artery in his left thigh through his pseudo-army fatigue pants.

The young man's blood, tinged with a pleasant overtone of marijuana, filled her mouth and Meghann drank greedily, feeling her grief abate in the dizzying high of the blood rush. With blood pouring down her throat and restoring her power, the crushing sadness faded and Meghann could almost forget Charles's poor, sorry remains lying in the trunk. Now Meghann's entire focus was on the strength coursing through her, strength and the sudden, irresistible desire to revel in the complete control she had over her prey. She could drain him to death if she wanted to and no one could stop her ...

But Charles wouldn't like that, Meghann thought and the blood in her mouth turned sour. She sat up abrupdy, wiping her mouth and chin clean with a rag she took from the glove box. Charles wouldn't like it if she hurt someone. He was looking down on her now; she couldn't do anything to make him ashamed of her.

Meghann glanced at her victim, pale and shocked, but well enough. He was still conscious, fear making him look much younger as he stared in disbelieving terror at Meghann's fangs, his lips moving with no sound coming out.

"We had sex and then you got out of the car," Meghann said to the boy, relieved when she felt no drain on her energy as she reached into his mind. "You started walking back to your friends and a dog"—she glanced at his thoughts to see if there was any breed he particularly disliked—"a Doberman attacked you. You pushed him away before he could do more than bite your leg. That's all that happened tonight. Do you understand?"

The boy nodded and repeated Meghann's hypnotic suggestions when she asked him how he got the wounds on his leg. Satisfied, she dismissed the boy and tore through Ronkonkoma, reaching MacArthur Airport with ten minutes remaining to final boarding for her flight.

She checked in rapidly, enchanting everyone from the security guards at the metal detectors so they wouldn't see her when she walked past them to the flight attendant who believed the Queen of Spades card she handed her was a driver's license when she asked Meghann for identification before presenting her with her boarding pass.

Meghann sank into the plush first-class seat, indifferent to her surroundings. She could care less if she flew in the cargo hold as long as she reached Chicago tonight.

"Miss," a flight attendant said politely. "You'll have to store that in the overhead compartment."

You saw me stow it, Meghann smiled and the girl smiled back, going away thinking Meghann no longer held anything on her lap.

Meghann leaned back and shut her eyes, ignoring the instructions for emergency procedures and heaving a sigh of relief when the plane took off on schedule. Now she'd get to Lee tonight...

What if Mikal has killed him, too?

Meghann's eyes flew open and the fingers clutching Charles's remains tightened until the knuckles were white and strained with anxiety. Could Mikal have anticipated her agonized rush to Chicago? Was she blundering into a trap at Charles's house—Mikal waiting to kill his own mother?

Meghann shrugged off the disquieting thoughts. She wasn't going to change her plans. If Mikal had... done something to Lee, it would just be one more score she had to settle with this monstrous boy she could no longer think of as her son. Let Mikal try and get her. It wasn't daytime and he couldn't sneak up on her. If Mikal wanted a batde, he'd get one and hopefully Meghann would kill him before he got a chance to harm Ellie.

I can kill him, Meghann thought, ignoring the cries of her heart just as she had earlier when she screamed at Simon but wanted nothing more than to run into his outstretched arms and let him comfort her ...

No! Simon was the cause of all this—to seek solace from him was like spitting on Charles's grave. This was all their fault, hers and Simon's. She'd killed her best friend because she allowed herself to trust Simon

Baldevar when he swore he wouldn't raise Mikal to be a cold-blooded, remorseless killer.

No, Meghann thought wearily, the whole mess went back further than that. Her true blunder was the night she let Simon take her and impregnate her. Whatever darkness in her soul responded to Simon, it mingled with his own ruthless evil that night to create the monster that was their son. A child of vampires—how could they have expected anything but the curdled, bleak soul Mikal apparendy had? Mikal should never have been born. If Meghann had just resisted Simon, none of this would be happening—Charles would still be alive.

But then Ellie wouldn't have been born either and Ellie was the whole world to Meghann. Ellie wasn't dark or warped, she was a sweet, good girl. Was Ellie so different from Mikal simply because she was mortal? Why couldn't Ellie be her only child? But such regrets were a stupid waste of time. Playing if only wouldn't give Meghann back her best friend. Nothing would bring Charles back now. Meghann could only try to protect Lee and Ellie.

Lee . . . how was she going to tell Lee that Charles was dead, taken away just as he and Lee were finally ready to be together forever? Lee had every right to hate her and Simon for producing the miserable offspring that slaughtered Charles. But no matter what Lee said, no matter how he tore into her, Meghann would keep him safe. It was the only thing left she could do for Charles, keep his mortal lover safe.

Charles, Meghann thought and saw him clearly in her mind's eye, reliving the night they became friends, the night he saved her from suicide. He'd found her huddled over a victim in some back alley, weeping and hating herself because she didn't want to kill anymore but didn't know how to stop. She'd never forget the kind, concerned face looming out of the darkness or the gende, firm hand that pulled her off the cold street. Before he ever spoke a word, Meghann loved Charles, loved him for the way he'd seen past the worst in her to something good and decent that Simon Baldevar hadn't been able to warp.

What would have happened to her if Charles hadn't risked Simon Baldevar's wrath that night to take her away from him and helped her learn to tame the blood lust? And how many other times had Charles saved her from despair? No one, not her mortal father or even Alcuin had been there for Meghann as consistendy as Charles. Not once in their sixty years of friendship had he let her down. Charles was always there to listen or offer advice or just be her friend. What was she supposed to do without him?

"Miss?"

Startled, Meghann opened her eyes and gazed at the middle-aged man seated next to her, the eyes beneath his black-framed glasses filled with concern.

"Are you all right?" he asked politely. "You were crying in your sleep."

"I wasn't sleeping," Meghann choked out and nodded her thanks at the cocktail napkin he gave her to wipe her face and blow her nose. "It's just. . . there was a death in my family."

"I'm sorry," he replied gravely and Meghann could see this nice, plain man really meant that. "May I ask who?"

"My brother," Meghann said truthfully, not able to stop crying now that she'd started. Crying was the only thing that mitigated the tight, clenching ache inside her. "He was murdered."

"That's just awful," her newfound friend said and Meghann saw several other first-class passengers around them nod their agreement. "Have the police caught the killer?"

"Not yet," Meghann said. The killer's my own son and he's still at large, he still presents a threat to my daughter and the only friends I have left—Jimmy and Lee.

"I'm really sorry," the mortal repeated and Meghann felt humbled by his simple desire to comfort and ask nothing in return. Charles had had that kind of unselfish nature, the kind Meghann had always aspired to—noble and giving, helping mortals instead of victimizing them like Meghann had almost done to that foolish boy tonight.

Well, Meghann could start improving herself right now, by doing something Charles would approve of. Clutching her comforter's hand, Meghann looked into his mind and then used the Sight to see what in his future would make him happy.

"Don't worry," she smiled at the thirty-nine-year-old man. "The new fertility treatment will work—your wife is going to conceive in three months."

"What the ..." the mortal started to stutter but Meghann shook her head gently and put a finger to her lips—don't question how I know, just accept and be reassured.

The mortal {Bill, Meghann saw) quieted and a few minutes later, the plane began its descent into O'Hare.

"Are you a psychic?" Bill asked as they walked off the plane together.

Meghann nodded, thinking she wasn't much of one if she'd had no premonition of Charles's death. What good was her much vaunted Sight if it didn't save Charles, if it might not give her any warning that Ellie was in danger? Meghann sighed and remembered Alcuin's many admonitions that vampirism did not make her a god and only the gods saw all the future might bring.

"Would you like a ride into the city?"

Meghann shook her head; it was now a quarter past four. Driving, Meghann wouldn't reach Charles's Hyde Park neighborhood for another hour at least. Thank God his home fell within the thirty-mile radius of the astral plane and she'd visited before so she could fly there now.

Meghann bid Bill goodbye and walked to the nearest ladies room, locking herself in a stall so no one would observe her disappearing when she used the astral plane.

Meghann shut her eyes and inhaled as Alcuin had taught her to, clutching Charles's remains tightly. Transporting objects across the astral plane was difficult, but not impossible; you just had to concentrate.

Meghann cleared her mind, shutting out all the grief and fear, willing herself to see and feel nothing, to try and float in a soothing nothingness. Soon her concentration was rewarded and she lost touch with the physical world. The harshness of the bathroom's fluorescent lights no longer burned against her closed eyelids; her nose wasn't offended by the overpowering scent of disinfectant and urine. All that was gone now and Meghann was ready to start her trip.

Charles, Meghann thought and envisioned her destination—the long, rectangular brick and limestone mansion on Kenwood Avenue where Charles had lived his mortal years.

Meghann remembered what Charles told her of his mortal life, that his father had been one of the robber barons of the late nineteenth century, making his fortune through steel factories and shipping. With wealth came a desire to climb and Charles's father attempted to ingratiate himself in high society through his children. Charles was sent to the best prep schools and then Harvard Medical School, only to be disowned when his disgusted father discovered his son's homosexuality.

Charles quietly vanished from his family's life, later becoming a vampire when one of his lover's transformed him, but he kept tabs on his mortal relations and felt only pity when the 1929 crash wiped out his family's fortune. Charles, who'd only been immortal a few years then and would not stir concern by his young appearance, diffidently offered his father money enough to keep him on his feet and allow the family to retain their home. But his father wanted nothing to do with "a dirty queer's filthy money" and refused the loan.

Charles bowed to his father's wishes for Alcuin insisted it wasn't a vampire's place to force his desires on humans and watched his family fade into obscurity, his father dying of tuberculosis in a charity ward ten years later.

But Charles still yearned for the house he'd grown up in and bought it when it came on the market in 1962. Meghann smiled, remembering Charles's glee and pride as he escorted her through the eye-catching house his father built in 1905.

Ellie was the one who'd pointed out that the house was a true example of Frank Lloyd Wright's style when they took her there for the first time at the age of ten. Already she had enough interest in architecture to point out to Meghann, Charles, and Lee the many modern innovations of Charles's home—the horizontal lines of the roof, limestone sills, art glass windows (pretty eggshell colored steel shutters were drawn over them during the day) and dramatic living space with its broad central hearth. How many times had she and Charles finished out a night by that cheerful redbrick fireplace with a few glasses of absinthe, not talking but simply enjoying each other's companionship?

"Meghann?"

Meghann opened her eyes and saw her thoughts had directed her over the astral plane very well; she was standing in front of the hearth now with Lee Winslow staring at her apathetically.

"Meghann," Lee said again and Meghann felt new remorse squeeze her heart when she saw the deep furrows around his eyes and mouth that had never been there before, the way his eyes had taken on a beaten, weary look like a tired old dog.

"I can't cry," Lee said dully and Meghann wanted to cry herself when she watched him shuffle over to the mahogany wet bar with the slow, fumbling walk of the very, very old. "I know I should, but somehow I can't seem to believe Charles isn't going to come walking through that door..."

"Who told you?" Meghann demanded, feeling a flush of anger. Why would Ellie or Jimmy decide to inform Lee of his lover's death over the phone and then hang up, thinking their job was done while Lee had to cope with his monstrous grief by himself in this lonely house? Such thoughtlessness wasn't like either of them.

"Simon," Lee said and Meghann started uneasily; she hadn't known he knew where Lee and Charles were supposed to meet tonight. Did that mean he was going to try and come here tonight, force his own selfish need for her attention on her? "Did Simon tell you how ... who did it?"

The tumbler glass of gin in Lee's hands dropped and shattered on the white Italian tile floor and Lee raised grief-stricken, enraged eyes to Meghann and she saw that, yes, Simon had told Lee everything. Seeing Lee's rage, Meghann prepared herself for the recriminations she deserved but Lee only held his arms out to her and said sadly, "Oh, Meghann. What are we going to do?"

Meghann dropped Charles's remains and held Lee tightly, knowing now he had no intention of blaming her. It would be selfish to cry of the guilt that drove her here and make Lee console her; she had to help him. "We're going to say goodbye to Charles. That's why I came here."

"A funeral," Lee said, soundly faintly surprised. "Of course." Then his gaze fell on the cardboard box by Meghann's feet. "Is that... Charles? I want to see."

"Please," Meghann said. "Don't look at that . . . Charles wouldn't want you to remember him that way." Bad enough the desecration Mikal had visited upon Charles was burned in her mind forever—let Lee hold something else in his heart when he thought of Charles. "Lee, you don't need to look at that to see Charles again. You know all vampires have at least one great gift. Mine is the ability to summon the spirits of my loved ones. Forget this empty shell and let me bring Charles's soul to you."

"Summon?" Lee asked and his voice took on a guarded optimism that made Meghann regret her words, for they'd given Lee a false hope in place of the comfort she meant to offer. "You mean you can bring Charles back, resurrect him?"

"Not exactly," Meghann said gently and her heart lurched when the hopeful light in Lee's eyes dimmed. "No one can bring the dead back to life. Death is ... death is the beginning of a different existence and usually, when someone passes on, their spirit can no longer communicate with those of us on the physical plane. No one knows why there's a barrier between the living and the dead or where the soul goes—not even vampires. But vampires . . . our souls seem to have a flexibility mortal spirits don't have, we can puncture the barrier temporarily. That's why I came here tonight. I want to give you and Charles some of the time Mikal cheated you of, time enough to say goodbye."

"What are you going to do, Meghann? Is this like a seance?"

"Something like that," Meghann said, almost smiling at Lee's naivete. Like Jimmy Delacroix, he'd never wanted to know a great deal about the mysticism she and Charles dabbled in—those things that Lord Baldevar was a master of. Meghann shuddered, wondering if Mikal was not only able to survive daylight but also a sorcerer of his father's caliber. If so, what (if anything) would stop him?

Enough of that, Meghann scolded herself. Concentrate on the task before you. Besides, she knew Simon's guarded ways well enough to know he'd never show anyone all his tricks ... not even his flesh and blood.

"Get me some hot water," Meghann said to Lee, whose eyes widened with surprise at her banal instruction but hurried off to carry out her bidding.

With Lee out of the room, Meghann removed Charles's head from its chenille wrapping, kissing the forehead reverently. She made the Sign of the Cross in the center of Charles's forehead and over that drew a seal of protection with her fingertip.

"I love you," Meghann said and carefully placed Charles's head in the large, black cauldron hanging in the fireplace.

Lee came back to the center room, and handed her a steaming pail of water. She poured the water into the cauldron and built up a fire with some kindling Charles kept by the fireplace, no matter what the season.

Soon there was a fine, glowing fire though it raised the already muggy temperature in the room to something unbearable. When Meghann went to switch on the air conditioning, Lee explained the central air system was malfunctioning and the repairman was due to arrive tomorrow afternoon. There was a fine sheen of perspiration on Lee's face and Meghann's clothes felt plastered against her body, her long hair stuck to her back in wet, stringy clumps.

Meghann waved her hand and the lights went out, the flames from the fire casting eerie, elongated shadows along the wall. She didn't really need the darkness but used it to distract Lee—she didn't want him to concentrate on the odor of roasting flesh when the cauldron started to boil.

Walking clockwise, Meghann cast a circle to protect her and Lee from any mischievous spirits attracted to her ceremony that would try to mimic Charles, using the cauldron as the northernmost point of the circle.

"My God," she heard Lee breathe in awe when a thin band of golden light appeared around them.

"It's all right," Meghann whispered and took his hand, looking deep into his heart to find his love for Charles and combine it with her own. She took that love and imagined its essence as a windstorm, a small speck at first but gathering more and more momentum as she concentrated and fed it all their love for Charles, their need for him and grief at his passing. When Meghann felt the essence as a living, breathing thing, she pulled back from Lee and grabbed the whirlwind force she'd erected in her hands, throwing it up and away from her with all the force she could muster while she screamed, "Charles!"

"Excellent, Banrion, " Meghann heard a dearly familiar voice congratulate her and she turned to see Alcuin standing by her side.

No matter how heavy her heart was, Meghann could always feel some calm settle over her spirit at Alcuin's sporadic visitations.

"How well you choose to employ your gifts, Banrion, "Alcuin said, smiling proudly as he stared at the hearth.

Meghann turned to the fireplace and her breath caught at the handsome young man standing there with black hair and cheerful black eyes, wearing a Panama white hat and a cream-colored linen suit reminiscent of the early twentieth century. It made sense for Charles to appear as he'd been in his youth, for Meghann had summoned him to the place where he spent that youth.

Meghann smiled tearfully at her friend's fetch, watching him and Lee speaking earnestly, their eyes happy but resigned to their inevitable separation. Strange that she couldn't make out what they were saying to each other, stranger that they didn't seem aware of her at all.

"Charles," Meghann started to say and Alcuin clamped his hand on her shoulder.

"No, Banrion. This time is for them alone," he whispered, pointing to the male couple embracing. "Now you must come with me."

"Come with you? But..." Then Meghann saw her body slumped by Lee's feet and understood Alcuin had extracted her soul so she could walk in his dimension.

Soon the physical world became blurred and indistinct, only Alcuin having any substance as they wandered through something like a thick fog.

"You spoke very bravely to Charles's lover, Banrion, telling him Charles's death is not as crushing or final as it could be," Alcuin said and Meghann had an impression of something like a warm hand settling over her. It wasn't a physical sensation, more like she received the emotions such a touch would evoke—caring, love, and pride. "But do your words bring comfort to your own heart?"

Meghann couldn't answer; she only stared up and beseeched Alcuin with a deep, stinging pain that came out of her soul as soundless, phantom tears.

"My poor young queen," Alcuin said and Meghann felt his touch on her the way it would have been in life—his thin, skinny arms that were so strong and comforting despite their wasted appearance, the feel of his woolen monks robe brushing against her skin in a way that reminded her of her- treasured childhood blanket. "Cry here where no one sees; purge your heart of this bitterness so you may regain the strength you'll need to keep your loved ones safe."

"Charles didn't deserve what happened to him!" she cried against Alcuin's chest. "He didn't, he didn't!"

"No more than you deserve the hair shirt of guilt and reproach you're whipping yourself with now. Look at me, Banrion. "Alcuin took her by the shoulders and she tilted her chin to meet his eyes. "This tragedy is not your fault. Had you any inkling Charles was in danger, would you not have done all you could to save him—even given up your own life to save his, just as you'd do if someone threatened Elizabeth?"

"But Mikal is my son," Meghann protested.

"You are not to blame for Mikal's actions," Alcuin said firmly. "He has made his own choice to use all his talents and abilities for destruction and you did not affect that choice—nor did Simon Baldevar. You must not hold him responsible for Mikal."

"What?" Meghann said dumbly, certain she misunderstood for she'd never expected to hear Alcuin defend the vampire he'd spent four hundred years attempting to kill for his sadistic, depraved behavior toward mortals and vampires alike.

"Simon Baldevar was an altogether different being before he met you," Alcuin said quietly. "He was an unfeeling, cold monster that gloried in the pain he brought to others. When he took a consort, I thought you would be one of his victims and I did not see how wrong I was in that assumption until your children were born. He loves you, Banrion, and that love has tempered the darkness in his soul. Not completely, it's true, but you gave him something he never had before you—a heart, and the ability to care deeply for someone besides himself.

"You cannot rip that heart away from him now when he needs you so badly." Alcuin's specter hands clutched hers with a grip that crushed the bones together and made her cry out "Simon needs you, Banrion, and this is no time to selfishly indulge your grief for Charles by pushing him away to soothe your guilt."

"Selfish?" Meghann cried and tried to wrench away from Alcuin but this was his world and her resistance to his power weak. "I want Simon out of our lives to save Ellie, to . .."

'To punish him, to make him pay for the pain that's tearing you apart. Banrion, you cannot begin to know the hell Simon has already gone through over Mikal. If you withdraw from him now, when he most needs your love and support, he will have nothing to sustain him when he battles Mikal to save you and Elizabeth. Look carefully, Banrion, and tell me if this is what you want for it is what you will bring to pass if you allow Simon to fight Mikal alone."

"Alcuin?" Meghann called, suddenly alone and in a dark, cold place she thought might be familiar though she couldn't be sure she'd ever been here before.

Silence greeted her repeated calls and Meghann inched forward, determined to find her body and leave this bleak netherworld. Her foot hit a solid barrier and Meghann looked down, screaming at what she saw.

"No," she moaned. "No, no." Lying at her feet was Simon Baldevar, a broad sword lodged in the center of his heart and a large pool of blood rapidly forming around his body. His eyes were shut, his face ashen and still with his bright chestnut hair standing out in ghasdy relief against the pallor of his skin.

Is this what you want, Banrion?

"No!" Meghann screamed at the invisible voice and its unspeakable portents. "No, no!"

Meghann fell on her knees by Simon and the hideous vision was so real she not only heard the dull splat as herjcnees hit the crimson puddle of blood surrounding her lover's body but also smelled the thick odor of iron and copper permeating the darkness around them. Frantically, Meghann pulled at his death sword with all her strength, even though she knew the weapon had already done its work and removing it from his heart would not bring Simon back.

"Please don't die," Meghann pleaded with the unresponsive body, her tears mixing with the dark, stagnant blood that soaked her clothes and stained the stone floor. "Please don't be dead. I couldn't stand it if you leave me, too. Oh, please come back. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean any of those horrible things I said. Come back, Simon. You can't leave me ... no, not you, too! No!"

Meghann, she thought someone called out from the thick darkness and peered hopefully into the shadows but there was no one here except the corpse of a man she'd realized too late she loved and needed.

"I don't know what happened," Lee Winslow's fretful voice said, his voice sounding weak and thin as though it was coming to her from a great distance. "She ... she brought Charles here and we were ... we were saying goodbye. Then the lights came back on and she's screaming and carrying on and she can't hear me ..."

Meghann screamed again when the mists surrounding her became so thick she could no longer see Simon's body at her feet. Frantically, she crawled around in the thick fog, crying from fear at the mist she couldn't penetrate and desolation at no longer even having the poor comfort of claiming her dead lover's body.

A stinging pain spread over her cheek and Meghann raised her hand, bewildered by the attacker she couldn't see. She spun around in the fog while more blows rained down on her face.

"Stop it!" she screamed at the harsh, open palm slaps that were snapping her head backward. "Stop hitting me, stop it!"

"Open your eyes, girl," a voice she knew as well as her own ordered her curtly. "Open your eyes and come back to me."

"Simon!" Meghann gasped and found herself back where she belonged, in her body with the mundane comfort of the physical world surrounding her and the horror she'd just witnessed banished by the bright amber eyes fixed unwaveringly on hers.

"Simon," Meghann said again, glancing up at him and thinking he seemed ten feet tall as he towered over her. Then she saw her outstretched feet, felt the leather cushion pillowing her head and realized she was lying on the sofa while he stood over her.

Wordlessly, Meghann held out her hands and she felt fresh tears form when his warm, blessedly alive hands reached out to take hers.

"I thought you were dead," Meghann sobbed as he gathered her up, cradling her close to him. "It was so real... I saw you there ... dead. Simon, I don't want you to die, you can't leave me . .."

"Hush," Simon said and smiled at the restless hands roving over the planes of his cheek and jaw to reassure herself of his presence. "I will never leave you, little one—neither by choice nor by death. We shall be together always, I promise you."

"But Alcuin ... my vision. Simon, my visions always come true—"

"If nothing is done to alter the future," Simon broke in and pulled her closer, smoothing her hair. "Did Alcuin never teach you what a premonition is?"

"A warning," Meghann said and Simon smiled at her response, the. grin, turning to a puzzled frown when Meghann started crying again.

"What is it, sweet? Don't grieve so, I will avenge your fine friend ..."

"No," Meghann sniffled and glanced up from the shirt she'd soaked. "I just don't understand . . . how can you come in here and hold me like this, love me after all those horrible things I said ..."

"Do you think me a fool, Meghann," Simon questioned tenderly, "that I would hate you for words spoken in utter grief and misery? I know you so well, too well to take offense when you behave like always— going off to lick your wounds in privacy instead of allowing someone else to pluck the thorn from your paw."

Simon smiled wryly at Meghann's wide-eyed astonishment, firmly tucking her head against his shoulder as she ruminated that Simon did know her, far better than she'd ever imagined. Meghann had friends, but Simon was right. . . she did prefer to deal with grief on her own, never allowing anyone to see her pain if she could help it.

For as long as she could remember, Meghann had resented Simon's way of shutting her out, never making her privy to his innermost thoughts. Now she discovered the same secretiveness in her own soul. She too kept a certain distance from others and that reserved quality made her and Simon more alike than she'd ever guessed.

Meghann leaned her head against Simon's chest, feeling the old peace and security wash over her. Nowhere else did she feel as safe and comforted as she did in Simon's arms. Here she felt the bitterness and choking fear start to ease, here was her place to catch her breath, to heal. Even Alcuin couldn't shelter her like this, Meghann thought, snuggling against the heat of his skin.

Had a part of her known all along Simon was nearby as she rushed to Lee, felt him shadow her steps and only come close when she needed him? And had that knowing given her the strength to rise above her grief and perform for Lee the magic that reunited him with Charles? Meghann felt guilt and shame nip at her when she thought of how easily she'd discarded this love, preferring to lash Simon with her misery and grief as Alcuin had accused her of doing.

I'm sorry, Meghann said, the harrowing events of the night leaving her limp and weak as Simon cradled her and rubbed his lips against her hair. I had no right to hurt you like that.

Simon buried his hands deep in her hair and leaned down to graze her lips. There was nothing sexual in his touch; it was just Simon's way of telling her he'd forgiven her, that there was no need for apologies.

"Did you have to hit her so hard?" Lee questioned reproachfully and Meghann broke off the kiss, feeling it was rude, as well as shameful, to flaunt her lover before Lee in his grief. "I can see your hand prints all over her face."

"She's lucid again, isn't she?" Simon didn't set her down on one of the leather cushions but kept her on his lap. Though Meghann was glad for the contact, she worried that their closeness could only remind Lee of his terrible loss.

Now is no time to worry over propriety and I have no intention of letting you move so much as a centimeter from me ever again.

"How did this happen?" she demanded and saw Simon needed no clarification of what she meant.

"Dawn will start soon and I need time to explain our son to you, Meghann. We'll retire now and discuss him tomorrow night on our journey home."

"We will not!" Meghann protested heatedly. "We'll discuss it right now, there's nearly an hour ..."

"Meghann!" The low timbered sharpness in Simon's voice and narrow gold eyes made her subside immediately, reflexively shrinking away before his arm clamped around her waist to keep her in place. "I planned to talk to you and Elizabeth of Mikal this evening. But between you wasting time soothing that imbecile Delacroix's histrionics and then ... this .. .there simply wasn't time. Now you will wait until tomorrow evening when we have the time and cool heads to discuss this situation properly. Do you understand?"

If she lived to be a thousand, she'd never completely understand Simon Baldevar. She could all but flagellate him with her words, maul his face, and he'd forgive her immediately, but let her disagree with the creature or contradict him and he sat there glaring icy disapproval. Meghann shook her head and sighed, thinking it would take a far more adept psychologist than she to crack Simon Baldevar and his baffling psyche.

Simon was just lucky she felt bad enough about the way she'd behaved earlier to give in to his highhanded orders gracefully. On any other night, she'd spend any time remaining until dawn telling him exactly what she thought of his behavior.

If you want to give in gracefully, wipe that sulky frown off your face, Simon smirked at the red-gold eyebrows drawn together over her nose.

Meghann started to scowl even more fiercely when he spoke again: I knew temper would lighten your grief.

Meghann leaned back, almost smiling when she thought how well Simon knew her, to trick her into an anger that had done more to heal her than any soothing words.

"Shall we retire?" Simon asked, giving her a lazy grin and Meghann nodded but Lee spoke up before they could rise.

"Not yet. There's something I have to discuss with you both." Lee cleared his throat and stood up, his eyes steady and full of resolve as he addressed them. "I want you to transform me. Now, tonight."

"What?" Stunned, Meghann turned to Simon, fully willing to allow him to handle this bombshell development. What had bought this on? Meghann hadn't thought Lee would want to transform now that Charles was gone.

"I'm tired of being useless," Lee said and Meghann saw fury and determination light up his normally tranquil eyes. "Mikal killed Charles but I can surmise that Charles is far from his last victim. Simon, he's going to go after Ellie and Meghann, isn't he? That's why you were so sad this evening ... you have to protect your wife and daughter from your own son."

Simon merely nodded, grasping Meghann's wrist to warn her to keep quiet until Lee was done speaking.

"I wasn't able to help Charles." Lee swallowed and Meghann saw his fists clenched tightly in his trouser pockets. "But I'll be damned if I stand on the sidelines while Mikal goes after Ellie. She's my daughter as much as yours and I'm going to do everything I can to protect her. That means being a vampire, for once having the strength to fight for the people I love instead of being shunted into the background, a useless mortal everyone has to protect. No more! From now on I fight back."

"It will be as you wish," Simon said and the vise on Meghann's wrist tightened. "But I cannot stand by and let you demean all you've done to protect Elizabeth, who you rightfully point out is your child, as well as ours."

"I want to do more than be your mortal babysitter," Lee insisted and Meghann sprang at him, twisting out of Simon's grip.

"Ellie would never have been born if it wasn't for your skill and I would have died with her," Meghann said, taking his hands. "You saved me from hemorrhaging, from bleeding my baby away. You gave up your career to raise and shape Ellie, not merely babysit her, as you put it You didn't need to be a vampire to do all those things, Lee. Are you so sure you have to become one now?" What she didn't say was she wasn't sure how much a novice vampire could help against the apparently formidable creature Mikal was.

"As a vampire, I can whack the head off anyone that tries to hurt her," Lee said firmly and Meghann floundered, not sure how or even if she should pursue the argument.

Simon made the decision for her. "Dr. Winslow is right, Meghann. As an immortal, he can protect Elizabeth and avenge his lover, which is his right. And you are right to respect Mikal's power, Doctor. He is a powerful adversary and that is why I do not want anyone left at his mercy simply because they are mortal. Do you understand now why I insisted Elizabeth transform, Meghann?"

Meghann did understand, though it broke her heart to think of her daughter giving up the sun and taking on the burdens of immortality at such a young age. To see Ellie struggle with the blood lust...

Better than seeing her dead, Simon said harshly and then addressed Lee. "We can start tonight. You will be bled to the point of death to trigger transformation. Tomorrow, you will feel weak and lisdess. Remain in bed and attempt to digest nothing but cool water. You may notice a certain transparency to your reflection— that happened to Meghann before I completed her transformation. Tomorrow night, you drink our blood to complete the process."

Meghann shuddered, knowing full well how many complications could arise after Lee drank their blood—transformation induced psychosis like Jimmy had suffered, severe physical deformities. Even death in the worst case scenario. Then she relaxed, remembering Simon's incomparable skill in the art/science of transformation. If anyone could guide Lee safely into immortality, it was he.

"Which of us do you want to bleed you?" Simon asked Lee and Meghann saw the mortal doctor's star- tied gaze shift from her to Simon and back again to her.

"Let's go to your sleeping quarters," Simon said after Lee made his choice.

In a masculine bedroom of leather and dark wood, Lee dressed for bed and lay on his back against the taupe bed sheets, suddenly looking uncertain and scared.

"It's all right," Meghann said into his ear and sat beside him, holding his hand. "It doesn't hurt that much. Did Charles ever bite you?"

"Sometimes," Lee whispered, his face flaming as Meghann uncomfortably shifted, wishing she hadn't had to ask for this detail of their private life together.

"Then you know what it feels like," she said shortly to cover up her embarrassment. She leaned down and kissed Lee on the lips, her emotions maternal and caring as she brought his wrist to her mouth and gently punctured the skin with her blood teeth.

As Meghann drank, she focused less on the blood filling her and more on the images of Charles she received from Lee's thoughts. With Lee supine and dreaming beneath her, Meghann saw her best friend and the impressions were so crisp and sharp she almost thought them reality.

This feeding was giving Charles back to her! Meghann drank thirstily, her heart aching as Charles rose up before her, smiling and laughing in Lee's memories. She saw Charles bouncing the baby Ellie in his arms, holding his arms out as she took shaky steps toward him. She saw Charles and Lee hand in hand in some dark park, stopping by a bench to sit and breathe in a balmy summer night. She saw them having a snowball fight outside the Southampton house, her best friend's cheeks red with cold and his black hair falling sloppily into his eyes as he laughed and fired the harmless snowballs at Lee.

Charles! Meghann's soul screamed out and she plunged into Lee recklessly, wanting him to give her more of his memories, not able to let her dear friend go away from her again . ..

A violent tug on her hair yanked her off Lee and when Meghann spun around to hiss at the interruption, Simon pinioned her arms by her side to keep her still and said mildly, "No more. You'll kill him."

"Charles ..." she began helplessly and fell into Simon's arms, weeping and crying out, "It doesn't stop hurting."

"The pain won't always be so strong, little one. Someday it will subside and you'll be able to experience happiness again, even while you mourn your friend."

"Is Lee okay?" she asked a few minutes later and wiped her mouth clean with the silk handkerchief Simon gave her.

"As well as his current state will allow," Simon said and gestured to the shivering, fever-stricken mortal tossing in and out of an uneasy sleep.

Meghann tucked Lee under the sheets and planted another kiss on his clammy, perspiring brow. She knew there was nothing she could do to stop his fever—he must suffer through this misery to transform. But what would it be like to see Ellie lie like this, hurting and weak, knowing she could do nothing to ease her daughter's distress?

"Call Elizabeth," Simon said, either sharing her concern or nosing around her mind with his usual intrusiveness. "She'll worry if she doesn't hear from you."

"Did I scare her?" Meghann was ashamed of herself, falling apart and carrying on like that when Ellie needed her to be calm, to support her through this first tragedy of her life.

"Meghann." Simon knelt by the edge of the bed and ran his fingers along her jaw, smiling up at her with love and admiration. "You do not have to be perfect to be a good mother to your daughter. Do you think Elizabeth considers you some emotionless mannequin, incapable of experiencing sorrow and pain? Elizabeth isn't frightened or disappointed in you because you had a strong reaction to Charles Tarleton's death. But she is concerned and you should call her."

"I don't need a phone to talk to Ellie."

"Show-off," Simon teased and tickled under her chin, like she was the cat he sometimes compared her with. "Don't sap your strength or our daughter's when there is a perfectly good phone available."

Nodding her compliance, Meghann led Simon to the guest bedroom and used the phone on the night- stand, yawning hugely as she waited for Ellie to pick up. Dawn was approaching; she could feel it in her bones now. What was taking so long, Meghann wondered when the phone rang for the sixth time. It was five o'clock in Chicago, close to six in New York. Even if Ellie was asleep, Jimmy might still be awake to answer the phone but it was just ringing and ringing. Anxiety clutched her heart—had something happened to Ellie and Jimmy?

Then Ellie picked up the phone, her breathing labored and voice rushed, and Meghann felt the nasty spurt of panic subside. "Sweetheart, where were you? Were you sleeping? Then why didn't you pick up right away? And where's Jimmy, he should have gotten the phone—you were on the terrace and didn't think to bring the cordless with you? Yes, honey, I'm . . . well, I'm better. Lee's okay, considering. We'll talk about Lee tomorrow, when your father and I. . . yes, Ellie, he found me and I'm thoroughly sorry for everything I said to him and I'm sorrier you saw me like that." Meghann's eyes misted and she clutched the phone tighter before she spoke again. "Thank you, sweetheart. Anyway, we should be back around eleven tomorrow. I know that's late but your father doesn't want anyone handling our bodies during the day. Promise me you'll do like your father asked and stay at the house all day tomorrow. Don't pick up the phone; don't leave the estate for any reason. No, I'm not nagging ... okay, maybe a little. Just stay put... I love you, too. Yes, I'll tell him. Good night."

Frowning, Meghann hung up the phone and turned to Simon. "Something's wrong with Ellie."

"She's not harmed?" Simon demanded, his face pale and lips set in a narrow line.

"No, nothing like that. But I get the feeling she's hiding something from me . . . maybe she doesn't want me to know how frightened she is." Meghann decided not to tell Simon that her hackles had been raised because Ellie didn't sound frightened or even all that sad. Instead, her voice was remarkably light and happy... the furtive, sneaky happiness that came from doing something your mother didn't know about and likely wouldn't approve of. The last time Meghann caught that tone, Ellie tried to sneak off to Fort Lauderdale for spring break with friends from school after Meghann and Lee vetoed the trip on the grounds that Ellie was too young at fifteen to travel alone and they worried about her being unprotected at night. Meghann intercepted Ellie because of that furtive tone when she insisted she was merely going to the library instead of leaving for Florida. Naturally, Meghann put a stop to Ellie's plans and grounded her for the first and only time in her life.

But what kind of mischief could Ellie have gotten up to in the five hours since Meghann had last seen her? Meghann shrugged and decided her imagination was running away with her. Most likely, Jimmy had somehow managed to get Ellie's mind off the trouble and she felt guilty for being diverted.

"Ellie sends her love," Meghann smiled at Simon, watching him strip off his oxford-cloth shirt with a stray pang of desire she was too heart sore and tired to do anything about.

"There's always tomorrow night," Simon smiled back, reading the implicit message in her hungry eyes. "And every other night for the rest of our lives."

"Will there be a rest of our lives?" Meghann asked, removing her own clothes and climbing into bed beside him. Soon, she found her favorite sleeping position, sprawled on top of Simon with his chin resting comfortably on her head.

"I want an eternity with you, Meghann, and I will not settle for anything less. I won't be cheated out of all the time I lost with you and Elizabeth. We'll deal with this adversity and then there will be all the time in the world to love and play." Absently, Simon kissed the top of her head. "Sometimes; little one, I think I missed this—knowing you lie beside me through the day—more than anything else."

She'd missed this tqo, going to sleep with her arms locked firmly around Simon instead of confronting the seemingly endless expanse of a bed no one shared with her. She'd hated going to sleep on cold sheets, her arms empty and heart filled with a hollow feeling of loneliness. How she'd missed Simon's presence making her feel protected as she slept through the day. .. protected . . .

"Simon!" Meghann's head popped up and she scanned his eyes anxiously. "Mikal might know we're here. He could try to ... to do to us what he did to Charles..."

"No, Meghann," Simon said and returned her head to the hollow in his throat. "Even if Mikal knows where we are, he would never attack my resting place."

"Why?" Meghann asked and felt the coming dawn, impervious to her fear, force her mind and body into the vampires' daylight stupor.

"Because he's already tried and failed," was the last thing she heard Simon say as his arms tightened around her.

She didn't hear Simon sigh, "My poor little love," as he gazed down at her or know he thought her pale, tired face with its tear streaks made her resemble a battered rag doll, used and tossed away by a careless child.

And Meghann never felt the quick brush to her lips or heard Simon vow, "I'll keep you safe, Meghann ... you and our daughter. I swear I will."

Eight

After Baldevar left, Jimmy put Ellie to bed in her old room and took a shower. He scrubbed his legs, which had turned blue from the wet denim bleeding onto his skin, and wished he could rinse the leaden sadness and worry from his mind as easily as he attacked the indigo stain on his thighs.

Showering quickly so Ellie wouldn't be left alone too long, Jimmy toweled off and emerged from the steamy bathroom ten minutes later, wrapped in a terry cloth robe.

He knocked softly on Ellie's door, not wanting to wake her if she'd fallen asleep but at the same time warning her of his entry.

"Ellie?" His heart in his throat, Jimmy stared at the empty sleigh bed in dread. Where was she? Jimmy didn't care that Baldevar insisted he'd enchanted the beach house against immortal trespassers; Jimmy couldn't shake off the irrational feeling something awful had happened to Ellie while he showered. "Ellie, where the hell are you?"

"Over here, Jimmy," her voice floated out from Charles and Lee's suite and Jimmy sagged against the walnut bedpost in relief. If he weren't so distracted, his senses would have detected the whisper of her heartbeat coming from the other end of the house even before he stepped into the empty bedroom.

"What are you doing in here?" Jimmy asked, running into the room. "I thought you were going to sleep."

"I wasn't tired," Ellie shrugged and her dull, grieving eyes flicked over him.

"What are you doing?" Jimmy repeated gently, noticing the shambles the room was in and the large black trash bags at Ellie's feet. Why was she taking Charles and Lee's room apart?

"Someone has to do this," Ellie said and gestured to the clothes. "I... I thought Uncle Lee shouldn't have to come home and confront Charles's clothes, all neat and hung up, like ... like they were waiting for Uncle Charles to come home and wear them again ..."

"Honey, no," Jimmy said and hugged her tightly, pushing aside some heavy wool sweaters so he could sit down on the bed with Ellie, sobbing against his shoulder. "You don't have to do this. I'll take care of it. Don't cry. Come on, let me help you back to your room."

"No," Ellie protested even while he walked her into the hallway. "This has to be done before Mom and Uncle Lee get back."

"Look, your mother's in Chicago and you know the astral plane only works for thirty miles," Jimmy reasoned. "She has to wait for sunset tomorrow before she can go anywhere. That means she's not getting back here until ten at the earliest. We'll have plenty of time tomorrow to do this ... together. Don't you dare try and do this during the day by yourself. It's not a job for one person." Carefully, Jimmy tucked Ellie back into bed, pulling the cotton sheets and comforter up to her chin. "Now get some rest, would you? You must be exhausted."

"Don't go," Ellie pleaded as Jimmy stood up. "Stay with me."

"Sure,"Jimmy said and perched on the edge of the bed. "Scoot over a little, would you?"

Obligingly, Ellie moved toward the center of the huge bed and Jimmy leaned against the headboard, thinking he'd remain here until Ellie finally fell asleep.

But Ellie had other ideas. 'Jimmy, do you think you could sleep here? My room has shutters to protect you during the day. I don't want to wake up by myself."

Jimmy wondered how Maggie would feel about him sharing a room with her seventeen-year-old daughter. Naturally Jimmy would rest on the floor and give Ellie the bed. Still, Ellie wasn't a child anymore, and Jimmy didn't know if they should sleep in the same room.

Get a grip, Jimmy told himself disgustedly. He was being a prude of the worst sort, putting some kind of half-assed morality ahead of Ellie's obvious distress. She just wanted someone to watch over her—was that so bad? Jimmy had no doubt if Maggie were here, Ellie would probably stay with her tonight.

"Okay," Jimmy said and something loosened in his chest at Ellie's sudden, grateful smile. He thought he should tell Ellie it was her doing him a favor, relieving his loneliness. He hadn't fallen asleep with someone else in the room for decades, not since he met Maggie. When he'd been mortal, she absolutely refused to let him spend the day in her bed . . . Maggie didn't want anyone to see her in her resting state. Actually, Jimmy wasn't that crazy about Ellie seeing him in his waxen, embalmed-looking daytime slumber but he figured she had to be used to it by now. Jimmy knew Maggie had let Ellie sleep in her room when she was little though she continued to bar the door to Jimmy even after he was immortal—no doubt thinking scumbag Lord Baldevar wouldn't approve.

"You want some of that Valium?" Jimmy asked but

Ellie shook her head, curling up into such a ball of misery the only thing Jimmy could do was reach over and pull her against him, stroking her bright caramel hair like he'd done when she was a litde girl. Poor kid, it wasn't enough a man she looked up to like a father was murdered—he'd been murdered by her own twin and now that twisted sibling was looking to hurt Ellie as well. Jimmy couldn't even guess what she was going through ... no wonder she didn't want to sleep alone.

"I know," Jimmy murmured while Ellie wept. "I know, honey. It's terrible what happened . . . you go right ahead and cry. Try and get it all out."

"I'm scared," Ellie cried and looked up at him beseechingly. "Jimmy, I'm so scared for Mom. What if Mikal gets her?"

Gritting his teeth, Jimmy forced himself to say words that only a day before he'd have sworn on his life would never come out of his mouth. "Maggie will be fine. Your . . . father will protect her. He's very strong, Ellie ... he's managed to destroy everyone that ever went up against him. He won't let anyone harm your mom."

As he spoke, Jimmy knew he was telling Ellie the truth. Much as he despised Lord Baldevar, the fiend did have a great deal of power and Jimmy knew he'd use every bit of it to ensure Maggie's safety. Still, it galled Jimmy to have to say anything even vaguely complimentary about Simon Baldevar, to have to invoke his name to soothe Ellie. How did the rotten sonofabitch do it? Even when he wasn't here, Baldevar managed to move Jimmy into untenable positions.

"Why is Mikal doing this?" Ellie asked, her big green eyes fastened on Jimmy's like he had all the answers, making him feel absurdly smart and protective. "Why?"

"I don't know, baby," Jimmy answered and continued petting her hair. "I don't know." Of course Jimmy knew. They were suffering through this nightmare because Simon Baldevar had spawned a son as eager to revel in the pain of others as he was. That Ellie had turned out as sweet and perfect as she was, was a testament to the good in the mother that raised her and the absence of her loathsome father while she was growing up.

But Jimmy couldn't run Simon Baldevar down in front of Ellie. Right now, she needed to believe he was invincible, that he'd keep her and her mother safe. Soon enough Ellie would have to face what Simon Baldevar truly was, but tonight wasn't the time for that.

"Shhh," Jimmy soothed and felt the wire-tight tension in Ellie start to ease as she slumped against him. He used the sleeve of his robe to dry her eyes, silently marveling at how right it felt to hold Ellie, how her long, slender body was the perfect complement to his own rangy form. Funny that he couldn't seem to remember any other woman ever fitting into him so well.

It didn't take long for other parts of Jimmy to agree with his assessment of the situation, parts that to his utter mortification were starting to lengthen and swell against the cool curve of Ellie's thigh.

Embarrassed by his erection, Jimmy started to push Ellie away, stammer out an apology but, to his amazement, she pressed herself against the hard flesh and looked up at him with the same eager expectation she'd had when they ate dinner together and he almost kissed her.

She wants me, Jimmy thought and that knowledge only made him grow harder as he fell into a delicious trap of flushed cheeks, long-lidded, sleepy looking eyes and full, pouting pink lips pursed together as Ellie stared up at him in mute entreaty.

"Kiss me, Jimmy," she whispered and Jimmy needed no more persuasion than that breathy little plea. Desire blotted out all other thoughts until it seemed there was no past or future but only a present where Jimmy couldn't battle the gnawing ache inside him that screamed for him to take her. He forgot Ellie's youth, forgot she was Maggie O'Neill's daughter, forgot everything but the ripe, eager body arching beneath him impatiently.

With no thought but seduction, Jimmy gently pushed her down onto the bed and settled his weight on top of her, feeling a dizzying throb at the way she melted beneath him. He caressed her breasts through the thin cotton T-shirt she wore and kissed her, actually moaning at the unexpected heat of her moist mouth and cool little tongue boldly darting out to meet his own.

He'd never enjoyed kissing anyone this much. Ellie molded her mouth to his like she'd been made for him and her earnest attempts to copy his movements excited him to a fever pitch of desire utterly new to him.

Then she started to arch her pelvis against his heaving, twitching cock and Jimmy almost buried himself at that moment but reminded himself he wasn't some college boy or animal to just ram it in. Using the never-fail trick of recalling batting averages to calm down, Jimmy wrested free of her lips and stripped Ellie free of her T-shirt while he threw off his robe to enjoy the sensation of his naked skin against hers.

He smiled at the golden honey color of her tanned skin contrasting against the marble white of his own. Jimmy wanted to know every inch of that sun-kissed skin, rubbing his lips against the warmth of her was nearly as good as feeling the sun warm his own skin again.

Ellie trembled as Jimmy breathed in her unique scent, tart, fresh and uncomplicated by artificial perfumes. Ellie undressed was a surprise to him. Despite her queenly height, she had a small bone structure that made her seem fragile and delicate as his hands explored her.

Jimmy's lips moved past her flat stomach and waspy waist to take in her breasts, wonderfully high and conical shaped with tempting strawberry colored nipples that beckoned him to come closer.

Jimmy fastened his mouth to the aureole of her right breast while his hand swirled around the bounty of her left breast. Ellie came to life beneath him immediately, her body buckling while the nipple puckered and tightened beneath his eager tongue and teeth.

"Jimmy," he heard her moan and he felt the passion start to rush through her bloodstream. Jimmy forced his blood teeth, roused by the heady fragrance he detected beneath her golden skin, back by sheer force of will. Damned if he'd let blood lust destroy the good, simple pleasure of sex.

When he had the trenchant need for blood firmly under control, Jimmy grabbed the thick, pulsating organ between his legs, ready to drive it between Ellie's exquisitely curved thighs.

But then he made the mistake of looking into Ellie's eyes, cloudy green eyes that reminded him of another emerald-eyed lover he'd once had—one that would kill him if she knew what he was doing with her daughter.

With a sharp cry, Jimmy threw himself off the bed and grabbed his robe, fleeing the bed before he did something even worse than what had already transpired between him and Ellie. Walking was difficult since his cock had not gone down one centimeter, impervious to guilt and demanding that he go back to Ellie or use his hand at once.

Limping to the hallway, Jimmy sagged against the wall, asking himself when he'd turned into some kind of child molesting, low-riding, Woody Allen motherfucker that attacked the daughter of his former lover.

What was the matter with him? All Jimmy knew was he'd been waylaid since that foamy mug of beer appeared in his hand and he turned around to scope out a possible lay and found himself seriously interested in the willowy brunette it actually took him a few seconds to recognize as Ellie. What the hell had happened to the long-legged, coltish teenager she'd been only a year ago? When had Ellie turned into a woman ... a very desirable one at that?

Desirable or not, Ellie Winslow was one woman Jimmy could never have. It wasn't right to lust after a young girl you'd known since she was a toddler scampering around the house. It made no difference that Ellie hadn't seemed reluctant, indeed had encouraged his advances. That would cut no ice with Maggie if she found out what had happened ... she'd put all the blame on Jimmy and rightfully so.

Ellie couldn't be held responsible; she was just indulging in some teenaged fantasy about an older man she'd known all her life. Her grief for Charles and worry for Maggie had put Ellie in a vulnerable state and Jimmy was a lowlife snake for taking advantage of it. The one thing he'd done right was leaving the room before things went further.

If Ellie hadn't needed his protection so badly, Jimmy would have slunk out of the house right then, never to return. What he was feeling for Ellie was wrong and he knew it. But Jimmy didn't know if he could turn it off, so he thought it best to just avoid being alone with Ellie until Maggie got back to look after her.

His sharp ears picked up a pair of feet rushing along plush carpet and Jimmy briefly thought of taking off but told himself to stop being such a coward. Was he not only a pervert but also a wimp that he couldn't face Ellie and tell her they had to forget tonight?

So Jimmy remained slumped by the wall and waited for Ellie to emerge from her bedroom, wearing nothing but the skimpy little shirt that barely covered her long, exquisitely molded thighs.

"Why do you keep running away from me, Jimmy?" Ellie demanded, crossing her arms beneath her breasts so the hemline of her shirt was raised perilously high on her thighs. "You have some nerve, not finishing what you started."

"Huh?" Had she come out of the room with a stake in her hand, Jimmy couldn't be more flummoxed. Ellie wasn't like Maggie, blurting out whatever came to mind in anger. Ellie usually hid her feelings behind a wall of nonchalance, a quality Jimmy privately thought she must have inherited from Lord Baldevar.

"How dare you just walk out on me like that," Ellie steamed, her face mottled red with anger and scorned pride. 'There were two of us in that bed, you don't call all the shots ... you could have at least had the common decency to talk to me ..."

"Talk to you about what?" Jimmy demanded, determined to nip this in the bud. Ellie was talking as though there was no history between them but a possible sexual encounter. She'd conveniently forgotten he was her mother's ex-boyfriend, that Ellie could very well have been his daughter instead of Simon Baldevar's. "There's nothing to discuss. What happened in there was a mistake."

Ellie's eyes narrowed into tiny green slits and her fists lashed out to attack his chest, not with the dainty outrage of a petulant movie heroine but solid jabs and punches any prize fighter would envy.

"Mistake?" Ellie screamed while Jimmy grabbed her hands and pushed her against the wall to keep her still. "Fuck you, Jimmy! How dare you call me a mistake ..."

"Not you,"Jimmy broke in, thankful for the vampiric strength that enabled him to hold Ellie still without exerting too much force on her wrists. "What we almost did. For Christ's sake, Ellie, you're only seventeen. I had no business touching you."

"I'll be eighteen in December," Ellie replied, as though that solved everything. "And I want you. Don't you want me?"

Jimmy almost laughed. Lucky Ellie couldn't see how much he wanted her, wanted nothing more than to throw her over his shoulder and take her back into the bedroom. "Ellie, it's not just a question of want..."

"Oh, yes it is," she cried, trying to wrench out of his grip. "Answer my question, Jimmy. Do you want me?"

"So what if I do?" he yelled into her stubborn, angry face. "I'm not gonna have you, you can be sure of that! I'm not some sleazy asshole that hits on children!"

"I am not a child!" Ellie screamed back and Jimmy felt like even more of an asshole when he saw her stung expression. "I haven't been a child for a long time ... you can't be a child and keep the secrets I've had to keep. Did you have a degree by the time you were seventeen? Child! How dare you minimize me like that!"

"Okay," Jimmy said and held up his hands for silence. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have called you a child. But there's one fact you can't argue with—you're

Maggie's child. Ellie, can't you see how wrong that makes all this?"

"Only if you still want my mother," Ellie said, her eyes not moving an inch from his. "If you ... if you still want my mother and I'm just some substitute, then I ... I don't want to do this. I don't want you comparing me with her, thinking of her when ..."