The darkness would begin to seep back in.

And yet, what choice did she have? As much as she’d ever had, Lily thought bitterly as she slowly opened her eyes. Tynan crouched over her, closer than he’d been since the night they’d met, silvery eyes full of concern and… something else. Something wild, feral. Something completely inhuman. His mouth was set in a thin, hard line. No fangs were visible. But Lily was certain they were there just the same.

“Vampire.” She whispered the word hoarsely, as much a statement as an accusation.

He nodded, his eyes never leaving hers. “Yes. Me and the other. I did warn you.” He frowned, and the ferocity of it might have frightened her if she’d had any emotion left to give.

“Why?” she asked dully. “Why couldn’t you have just left me alone?”

The unshakable conviction she saw on his face made her want to scream. He would not be leaving her here, and with that realization came helpless despair. She would have destroyed her house a hundred times over if it meant he’d leave her in peace.

“My queen needs your help.”

“I don’t have any help to give anybody.”

He glanced around, at what Lily was sure was the complete mess she’d made out of her pretty little house. His voice was dead calm when he replied.

“You have something, woman. That much is certain.” Then his eyes dropped to her tattoo—the snake, the star. She waited, even hoped, for the same horrified look she’d seen on the other vampire’s face, waited for it to drive him off. Instead, he focused on it with intense interest.

“What do you know about this mark?” he asked. “Where did you get it?”

She glared up at him, hating the disadvantage her prone position put her in. “It’s just some stupid tattoo my parents put on me before they died, when I was a baby. Apparently, they were freaks. I’m not one. And if you’re going to try killing me now, too, you should probably just get it over with.”

He continued to study the tattoo. “Green,” he murmured. “And see how it catches the light, how it shimmers. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s just a stupid tattoo,” Lily muttered, turning her head away as embarrassment bloomed. So she had a glittery, green tattoo. She assumed the artist had been some sort of psychedelic genius. And she wished he’d plied his trade on someone, anyone, else.

She sucked in a breath at the shock of Tynan’s thumb, his skin cool against her warmth, as he rubbed slowly across the tattoo.

“It’s not a tattoo,” he murmured. “And Damien knew what it meant.”

He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to her, but still his words reignited one of her deepest fears: that the glittering green symbol inked into her skin meant more trouble in her life, when she’d done everything she could to insulate herself from it.

“That’s not—” she began, but stopped short before the word possible. If tonight was really happening, if Tynan was what he professed to be, then nothing was impossible.

Lily gritted her teeth and turned her head away from the searching gray eyes that lifted to look into her own. “Whoever you are—whatever you are—you need to call off the other creeps and get out of my life. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. And I repeat, I can’t help you. I’m not going anywhere.”

“The one creep, as you so accurately describe him, won’t be bothering us again. The other will return before long.” He shook his head. “There’s no deterring a Shade.”

The word sent an icy chill down Lily’s back. “Shade?”

“Shade is an old word for ‘ghost’ or ‘spirit,’ and the ones coming after you are just as difficult to spot when they don’t want to be seen. Shades are the most elite group of criminals in the vampire world. The most talented ones are filthy rich, and they’re all a bit taken with themselves. Damien certainly is. The highbloods, our nobles, use them for all sorts of dirty work.” He paused. “Like this.”

The thought made her feel ill. Someone had gone to that much trouble… over her? “Well, since you’re chasing me around, I doubt you’re much better,” she said flatly.

Tynan breathed out an exasperated hiss of air. “Do you really want to be here when Damien gets back?”

“What are my choices? Get eaten now or eaten later?” Lily asked, feeling as miserable and helpless as she ever had in her life. “Maybe sooner is better.”

She heard him sigh, a hollow, unhappy sound that almost made her look at him. Almost. But Lily knew that if she did, she’d just get sucked in again, unable to think, unable to resist him. She could feel him studying her, those odd eyes searching her face for clues about her thoughts. She could actually feel him, lurking at the periphery of her mind, trying to get in.

All of the vampire pop culture garbage she’d ever ingested—movies and books, some bloody and all a hell of a lot more romantic than her own bleak reality—came flooding back to Lily as she lay there. She wondered which bits of it were true, what she might be able to use to get out of this mess. She suddenly wished she had some garlic. Or some holy water.

Or a nice, sharp stake.

“Killing me wouldn’t do any good, even if you could manage it, which you can’t,” Tynan said.

She glared at him. “Even if you can read my mind,” she bit out, “don’t.”

Tynan’s smile was grim. “It would be easier if I could. I’ve tried that already, though, and no dice. Your thoughts are locked up tight. Your expressions, however, are another story.”

Silently, Lily cursed herself for having such a readable face, though she did take some consolation in the fact that he hadn’t been poking into her thoughts, even though he’d tried.

“Why don’t you think I could manage it?” Lily asked. “You saw what I can do. You don’t know me at all. Maybe I like killing.”

His faint, mocking smirk let her know that her statement sounded as ridiculous to him as it did to her.

“You’re also a terrible liar. Anyway, even if you managed to get rid of me, which you can’t, they’d just send another after you. Though with me gone, the Shades would get you first anyway. They’ll be wanting their money. And shaking them off once is only going to make it uglier for you the next time.” He paused. “Very ugly, knowing Damien. Someone’s gone and paid for the best if he’s involved.”

She stared up at him, full of impotent rage. Even now, with her house in shambles and her deepest-buried secret completely exposed, she couldn’t ignore her simmering attraction to him. Having him this close, braced above her, completely focused, Lily saw that he felt it, too; she could see it in the way his breathing changed ever so slightly, the way his eyes, already intense, went to hot silver. So much of her wanted to stretch beneath him, to arch and invite him to put his hands on her, to melt under a touch she knew instinctively would be even hotter than his gaze.

Lily had to look away again. This was insane, and she needed to get a handle on it. Now.

“I’m going to sit up now,” she said firmly. She might be a quiet girl, but she’d been taking care of herself for a long time. Growing a spine hadn’t been an option, and she was glad to find hers intact in spite of everything. “You’re going to need to back off.”

Thankfully, he didn’t ask why or argue with her about it. She tried to be glad of it as Tynan shifted and moved back from her with the liquid grace of a cat.

A cat… he had been a cat….

Lily struggled up to a sitting position, still feeling like little more than a hollow vessel from which all the contents had just been emptied. She glanced at Tynan, now crouching only a few feet away and watching her with guarded interest.

“I thought vampires were supposed to turn into bats, not big black cats,” she muttered resentfully, lifting her hands to examine them for any cuts from the flying glass. Satisfied that there were none, she got her feet beneath her and began the arduous process of standing up without letting Tynan know how much it was costing her to manage it.

“Not all of us can turn into something else. It depends on the bloodline,” he said, frowning as he watched her. And damned if he didn’t get to his own feet and start to move toward her again, as though he wanted to help her up. Lily shot him a withering glare, and it must have conveyed what she wanted it to, because Ty quickly shifted back and stuck his hands in the pockets of his long black coat.

“Cats. Smoke. Bit of this and that. There are even a few who can turn into lions and jungle cats and things, though they’ve about gone extinct. And yes, bats. But turning into animals is usually sort of… frowned upon.”

“Because?”

“Too much like werewolves. And vampires hate werewolves.”

“I… oh.” Lily tried to digest that, then just decided to pretend she hadn’t heard it. The existence of vampires was enough for tonight.

“And that man who was here to kill me? Damien, I think you called him?” Lily asked, wrapping her arms protectively around herself as she made sure she was steady, then surveyed the damage she’d done. “Can he turn into anything else that I should be looking for?”

Tynan shook his head. “Another cat, I’m sorry to say, though you’ll have to believe me that he’s gone, at least for the moment. It’s a shame that he’s a Cait Sith,” he said, pronouncing it cat-SHEE, a word that sounded Gaelic and mysterious as it rolled off his tongue. “He’s a slippery enough bastard in his human form. All the Shades are, but he’s special, even for them. The services of the House of Shadows are astronomically expensive for a reason. Theft, espionage, extortion—assassination. The Shades offer it all. And they’re very, very good.” He paused. “But Damien is in a class by himself. Easy to admire, when he’s not being paid to kill you.”

The sheer awfulness of what he’d just described to her was too much to take in, so Lily turned away from it, ignored the whole, and concentrated on the superficial.