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This was not the time to ponder Christopher’s guilt or Nikolas’s innocence. This was the reason hunters knew better than to mix with their prey It created shades of gray where there had once been just black and white.

She didn’t know what she would do when Nissa and Christopher hunted her down. She refused to kill them. But she also refused to run; hiding until she died, old and lonely, seemed worse by far than dying the quick death every hunter knew marked the end.

She didn’t bother to hide her knives when she left, but instead put on a black tank top and black shorts; over everything she threw her leather jacket, so the weapons wouldn’t be quite so obvious while she was still in the human world.

After taking the keys to her Jaguar from the dresser, she went outside and started the car.

The clock read 11:59 as she pulled into the driveway at Nikolas’s house.

CHAPTER 27

NIKOLAS TOOK HER COAT as she entered. The house was empty except for the two of them.

Three of us, she realized, as Nikolas led her into the living room, where Christopher was pacing.

“Are you losing your resolve, Sarah?” Nikolas asked, and Christopher halted in his pacing. “You’ve been near enough to kill me for a whole two minutes, and you haven’t even drawn a knife.”

“Is Christine okay?” Sarah asked, not acknowledging Nikolas’s question.

Nikolas sighed. “Christine is fine. Even Kaleo is still alive. In fact, I haven’t had a chance to kill anyone noteworthy in the ten hours since I last spoke with you. Does that settle your curiosity?”

Sarah ignored the taunt. “Christopher, what are you doing here?”

Christopher shrugged. “My brother asked me to come.”

He looked much the same physically as he had the last time she had seen him, but there was an energy about him that was different.

Christopher had fed. Though she could read his aura easily enough to know he had not killed, he had obviously taken human blood, probably just after their fight, when his bloodlust had been so overwhelming.

Sarah examined his face for a sign of whether he was going to help her or hurt her, but though his expression showed no anger, it showed no compassion either.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Nikolas offered, and Sarah laughed.

Sure, she thought sarcastically, wondering what vampires served to drink. A Bloody Mary — shaken, not sliced.

“What are you up to, Nikolas?” she asked instead.

“I invited you to my home. I can at least be a gracious host before you try to kill me.”

He was going to wait for her to move? That could make this a very long evening indeed, because she had been planning to wait for his attack. If she killed Nikolas now, unprovoked, she had no illusions that she would not need to kill Christopher, too.

“I’ll have something.”

Sarah turned to see a girl no older than sixteen. She was wearing a white cotton dress with silver embroidery, and her skin was fair, but not ghostly. Her hair was dark brown.

“Christine?” Sarah whispered, hardly able to believe it. Could this girl be the same wraith Sarah had seen earlier that day, huddled in a corner? She had obviously been cleaned up, dressed, fed … the change was so amazing, it seemed impossible.

“Yes,” the girl said lightly. “I never caught your name, though.”

“Sarah,” she answered. She shook Christine’s hand as if this were a normal situation, though it was absurd to be introducing herself to this girl now, in the midst of a den of monsters.

She views her world through the eyes of others./Black and white; there are no colors,/As she looks down upon a shattered youth./A shattered mirror shows a shattered truth.

Sarah had never doubted herself before, but this nymph in white caused her hatred of Nikolas to fade a bit. Christine stood on tiptoe to open a tin that was sitting on the mantel above the fireplace.

“Chocolate?” she offered, but Sarah shook her head.

“No, thank you.”

Christine glided out of the room again and Sarah watched her go, entranced.

“Nikolas, what do you want?” Christopher finally asked once Christine was out