“Who was it, Brigit?”

Some of the fight went out of her, but the voice was still bitter. “You know who it was. He told me. He told me it was your fault. He would have let me live, but he needed to show you.”

“Show me what?”

A shimmer of blood-red tears built in her eyes. Her desperation to see me dead had begun to drain away, but beneath the killing urge was a blind rage I couldn’t ignore. “He said he needed you to know you wouldn’t be able to save us.” She swallowed her rage. I could feel her throat contract under my palm. “Them,” she corrected, removing herself from among their ranks. “Every human you try to save he will turn personally. So you would know.”

I fought back my own tears and violently turned her head to the side in my haste to check the skin. There it was, as sure as I knew it would be. The uneven, broken-toothed bite of a psychopath.

“Oh, Brigit.” There was only sadness in my voice now.

“Secret?”

Brigit and I were not alone on the sidewalk anymore. Without budging from my place on top of her, I looked to find Desmond standing a few feet from us. The scene must have been quite alarming to an outsider. I was still wearing my gold hot pants, hooker shirt and four-inch heels. My eyes were done with a heavy dose of black makeup to complete the effect. I was kneeling on the chest of a cute blonde girl whose face was covered in blood from her tears and busted nose.

I would have liked to tell him it wasn’t what it looked like, but I really didn’t know what he was thinking.

“Please help me,” I pleaded.

“Of course.” Without hesitation or questions he was beside me, waiting for me to tell him what I wanted next. I wondered, had it been Lucas in my apartment rather than Desmond, if he would have been so compliant.

“Is that your car?” I nodded in the direction of the Challenger.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Brigit choked out sobs, making a pretty pathetic new vampire now that the urge for revenge had gone out of her.

“No,” I said. She and Desmond both looked shocked by the response. “I’m going to take you to someone who can help you.” I held Desmond’s gaze this time and hoped he knew enough about the paranormal to understand who I meant.

“The Oracle?” His tone was hushed.

“Yes.”

“But we can’t go to her. It’s against her laws.”

“Please.” I pulled Brigit to her feet, still holding her arms in case she was a better actress than I gave her credit for. “Do you know how to get to her?”

“Of course. It’s just down the block, but I’m telling you we won’t get in.”

My mouth was set in a tight, determined line. I couldn’t explain it to him, especially not in front of Brigit. “Just trust me.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

My apartment on West 52nd was walking distance to the coffee shop, but with a bloodied vampire in tow, driving made things a little less complicated. I was thankful the busiest hour for coffee lovers had passed and the Starbucks was relatively vacant. When Brigit and I vanished in the doorway, Desmond was left alone, but with so few patrons it was unlikely any of them noticed there had been two girls with him. I felt bad leaving him there without any answers, but Brigit’s docile state wouldn’t last long. The hunger would take her before the night was through. We were lucky Peyton had thought to feed her before sending her after me, otherwise she wouldn’t have made it to me. She would have gone after the first available blood source instead and another innocent would have been dead.

Rather than finding ourselves in front of the cash counter at Starbucks, we were standing in the foyer of a majestic house. House wasn’t the right word to describe where Calliope lived. Mansion would have been much closer to the truth, but even that didn’t really fit. Her estate transcended the laws of physics binding other homes to a fixed size. It had a limitless number of rooms that could expand and recede to accommodate guests as necessary. Whether it was used to heal those who were injured or safeguard new vampires too unstable to be among the public, Calliope’s home was whatever it needed to be.

The foyer was larger than my entire apartment and probably larger than Lucas’s mammoth bedroom. The floor was covered from end to end in overlapping Persian rugs Calliope had acquired at bargain prices when there’d still been a Persia.

An immense variety of portraits all depicting hauntingly beautiful women hung from the walls. It wasn’t until my fourth or fifth visit that I realized every painting in the room was of Calliope. Done by the most famous artists in the world, she was portrayed in every era and style, from Renaissance to Impressionist to Pop. The crown jewel of the group was a Warhol painting of one of the women Calliope had claimed to be in her many lives.

The room was dimly lit in colorful jeweled splendor by dangling Tiffany lamps casting kaleidoscope shadows over the floor. Color was a mainstay of Calliope’s world. The rugs, lamps, paintings—all a dizzying array of red, blue, green and pink. Scattered along the walls were large, plush leather armchairs that made the ones in Keaty’s office look like they were for children.

Slumped in one of those chairs was a small, pale teenaged boy wearing a Pizza Hut uniform. His eyes were hazy and unfocused, but he was alive. And judging by the smell of him, completely human.

I wasn’t the only one to smell his true nature. Brigit’s eyes widened and darkened to the oily black of a hungry vampire. Her nostrils flared and her fangs were out before I could yell, “Calliope!” It was lucky I was still holding Brigit by the hair, so when she lunged for the boy, she was yanked back to me by the leash of her own body.

On cue, Calliope entered the room.

As entrances go, Calliope rarely did things subtly. She swished through the door in a flourish of red material. Her hair was done in tumbling black waves held back by ruby stickpins. She was barefoot, and trailing behind her was a snow-white tiger. Seriously.

“Secret!” Her voice sounded like a song, and she never seemed unhappy to see anyone, regardless of how they came to be in her presence. “You’ve brought me something. I was expecting you.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Of course you were.” She was the Oracle, after all.

Brigit turned her attention from the boy to the woman who had just walked in. To a vampire’s heightened senses, Calliope was a confusing jumble of fragrance. She smelled intoxicating and alluring, but there was a pungent edge of warning to her blood. Something in the fiber of her being warded off potential predators.

“Who is this you’ve brought me?”

The tiger smelled my legs and then the hem of Brigit’s dress. It bared its teeth at her, growling, and she knew enough to stop struggling against me.

“Brigit is new. Unsanctioned. Alexandre Peyton turned her to make a bit of an overly dramatic point.” My voice wavered as I spoke.

“You feel responsible for her?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t need to hear more. She came to us and put one arm around Brigit, releasing her from my hold.

“We’ll get her settled in no time, don’t you worry. Then you can get back to that handsome wolf of yours. No sense in leaving him there too long. Wolves and caffeine are a terrible combination.”

The tiger preceded us out of the room, and before exiting I remembered the pizza boy.

“Uh, Cal?”

“Yes, love?”

“Is the boy okay there? I mean…he just heard all that, and—”

“He didn’t hear a thing. He’s busy forgetting some things before he goes home alive and well-tipped.” She wore a devious little grin, which on her was far too beguiling.

I was often curious if one of her forms had been Helen of Troy, because it didn’t take much to imagine an entire war occurring for the right to love her.

We left the boy in the room alone and began our long walk down a very dark hall.

In the room where we settled Brigit, unnatural sunlight dappled behind the curtains. It made my chest constrict from panic and longing. The sun was an illusion, a kindness she provided to those who would never see it again in the real world.

Judging by the tan coloring Brigit’s features, she had been a bit of a sun worshiper in her human life. From my chair in the corner of the room, I wondered how many other parts of her life she wouldn’t be allowed to enjoy now because of me.

I felt as guilty for Brigit’s current situation as I would have if I’d turned her myself. It made me sick to know she would never see her family again. She could no longer enjoy whatever macrobiotic food lifestyle had kept her so thin. She couldn’t go to the beach in the Hamptons this summer or date a normal human boy.

Her life had ended, but in more ways than it would with a normal death. With human passing you lost everything, but you weren’t there afterward to know it. When you became a vampire, you had to mourn your own losses.

It was that awareness of the missing parts of one’s life which often drove new vampires mad, turning them into killing machines. Coupled with the strength and power inherited from their master’s blood, it was difficult to combat the initial reaction to vampirism.

I was genuinely grateful I had never had to experience it.

Calliope had chained Brigit to the bed with satin-covered silver. It wouldn’t burn her, but it held her in place. I was pretty sure it was fairy-wrought silver too, so the extra enchantment helped.

The Oracle was standing next to the bed, humming a strange song while she unpacked bags of blood from a small red cooler. My stomach growled.

Without batting an eyelash she threw one of the bags to me. I took it with thanks and bit into the bag, drinking its contents like a juice box. The blood was cold, but I wasn’t going to pick nits when I was being fed for the first time that night.

“So, tell me about this man of yours.”

“You’re the Oracle, Cal, I was hoping you’d tell me.”

She was holding one of the bags to Brigit’s mouth. The girl ripped it open with her teeth and shook it like a wild dog, spraying blood all over the bed and herself. Calliope sighed and threw the bag into a wastebasket, then took Brigit firmly by the chin and looked her right in the eyes.