Thirteen

TIA CROSSED FROM the bed to the window for the countless time. Mr. Dragovich had left over a half hour ago, but Dallas had still not come upstairs or sent for her. She was sure that this “Drago” was another vampire. He had too much of the same look about him that Dallas and St. James had. The killer aura, the world-weary eyes in the young faces, and the fluidity and grace of every move they made were part of all three men. She was glad not to have had to speak with Drago. She was sure she wouldn’t like him.

Wouldn’t like him. She had to fight a wide smile. What kind of reaction was that to a bloodsucking monster with Hannibal Lecter eyes? For that matter, was her reaction to Dallas any better? Any more reasonable? This time she couldn’t stop the smile from bursting into a quick belly laugh. None of it made any sense, including her reactions. She should be shocked by everything that had happened. Perhaps she was, and it just hadn’t truly hit her yet. During her years as a cop, she had been dispatched to numerous “dead on entry” complaints—people who had died of natural causes. Every time the surviving family member on the scene had been calm, answering her questions and even offering her coffee. No doubt the reality of the situation set in long after she was gone. Perhaps she was in such a stage.

She also should be frightened. In Rodney, there had been no time for fear. Everything had transpired so quickly she had barely had time to think. All her movements had been dictated by her long-ago training and her instinct to survive. Now that it was over, the fear should have set in. But strangely it hadn’t. What was there to be afraid of? That she would be killed? She had lived with that fear every day of her life as a street cop. But somehow in Dallas’ presence that fear was always allayed. Besides, he could have killed her on a number of occasions and hadn’t.

Dallas had said something about the life of a vampire being the reversal of everything human. She supposed she should be worried that her life would never again be normal, but that was the most ludicrous worry of all. Her life had been far from normal for many years. A cop’s life was about the most abnormal life she could envision. What other profession was not only privy to the range of human drama that cops were, but to the private slices of life that no one else was allowed to see? Who else could knock on your door in the middle of the night and ask to have your home and life laid bare for inspection? Even the past two years as a photographer had been anything but normal with the constant traveling.

She looked at her watch again and, worried now, decided to make sure for herself that Dallas was all right. She almost laughed again. Making sure a vampire was all right. Oh well, it made as much sense as anything else she had experienced the past few days.

She found Gillie, and he directed her to the library. She rapped at the closed door.

“Come in, Tia.”

She peered around the door. “How did you know it was me and not Gillie?”

He gazed at her with haggard eyes. “Your scent is different.”

“Sorry I asked,” she mumbled under her breath. “Are you okay?” she asked in a measurably louder voice.

“No.”

She stood still a moment, caught off guard by the utterance of the simple word. This was a being who had never exuded anything but confidence and power. For him to admit to a need was something she thought she’d never hear. Without thinking, she slid onto his lap and put her arms around his neck. He held her, and when she tucked her feet up beneath her, he cradled her and stroked her hair. The strength of his body wrapped around her, his heat sealed her in, and she was content to huddle against his chest and listen to the beat of his heart. That he was anything less, or more, than human was the last thing on her mind.

IT HAD BEEN A long, long time since Dallas had held a woman like this. A strong woman, with hair like a raven’s wing. He gathered a handful of black waves and brought it to his face. He buried his senses in the rich silkiness, smelling even the lingering fragrance of the shampoo she had used, and the weight of two hundred years fell away in a second.

Sabra, Sabra . . . what happened to you, love?

Sabra awakened with such a jolt that Dalys knew something was wrong. “What is it, love? A nightmare?”

She was slow to answer, as if still locked in another world. Moonlight sifted through the window, reflecting a strange light in her dark eyes. Her skin glowed pale and translucent, like a polished moonstone.

“Sabra, wake up, love. It’s all right. You’re all right now.” He stroked her face with the back of his hand, and softened his voice to the sultry bass tones he knew could soothe the most high-strung of horseflesh.

Her too-bright eyes finally focused on him, and she wound her arms around his neck.

“Oh, Dal. I had the strangest dream. I was lost in the bush.”

He raised his brows, like a father would to a child telling a fantastic story. “You, lost in the bush? What were you doing there?”

“I don’t know. I was wandering and I came upon some bushmen. They were holding a ceremony. A death ceremony.”

Dalys shivered, colder now that he held her in his arms than before.

“They all sat around a dead man, and each of them had a small knife. They all cut the dead man, and he bled all over the ground.”

He rocked her in his arms, his hands brushing the tangled hair from her face. “The dead don’t bleed, silly.”

Her soft voice floated up from the safety of his embrace. “This one did. Then they saw me and came to me. They spoke to me, and I understood them.”

“What did they say, love?”

“‘The blood is the life. It is so for both the living and the dead. We help our brother on his journey by providing a road of blood.’”

He felt chills scratch their way down his spine, and he tried to hold her closer, one hand encircling her neck.

She jerked her head away. “Dalys, you’re hurting me.”

He frowned, releasing her. He lifted the curtain of her hair and saw the black marks on her neck. “Did you hurt yourself today?” He gently touched the wound, but she pulled back again.

“Don’t. I don’t know. I don’t remember anything.”

He held her closely, and she had no more nightmares that night.

Dalys kept a worried vigilance over her for the next week. Sabra seemed listless, uninterested in the concerns of the household, but more to the point, his attentions. Her thin face took on a gaunt look, and she had no appetite at all. When he suggested she see MacArthur’s physician, she laughed. “I’m not one of your bloody brood mares, Dalys. I’m just tired, nothing more. And Adeline can see to the master’s table. She does little enough around here as ’tis.”

He ignored the barb about treating her like one of his animals. She had always been a lusty bed partner, as eager as he. “Adeline has her hands full helping Elizabeth. You know that.”

“Oh, Dal, just let me sleep. I’ll be better tomorrow, and then you’ll have your arms full.” A poke to his ribs and a sly wink accompanied her plea, and he let her sleep.

The following night, she was true to her word. He had obligingly left her alone, his late night partner a tankard of ale instead. He dozed, and was surprised and pleased to awaken to the feel of her body pressed against his, her mouth searching for his.

“Sabra . . . ”

“Shhh, love. Just relax. I’m going to take you with me. You’ll have everything you ever wanted.”

He fell back against the bed and accepted the depth of her kiss with a strange yearning. Her legs straddled him, and her hands stole possessively over his face, as though they couldn’t get enough of the feel of him. Like rays of sunlight, they warmed him wherever they touched, but her mouth burned hot on him, like a brand searing flesh. Yet the more her touch demanded of him, the colder he felt, until a paralysis gripped him. Her tongue painted a line of fire to a spot below one ear, and one hand raked his neck and chest to rest over his heart. He tried to press himself up to her, but she pushed him back down.

“Don’t be scared, love. Your life has always been about journeys. Isn’t that what you told me? This is but one more journey . . . ” she whispered in his ear, and a sadness crept into her voice.

Scared? He had never been afraid of anything in his life. Had never feared any man, nor the future, not even death itself. Images of his past flashed behind his eyelids like a lightning storm. Newgate Prison. The courtroom. And eyes. Dozens of eyes, from the bored blue orbs of the magistrate to the haughty gray gaze of Christian St. James, they were all fixed on him. And yet the eyes weren’t what scared him. What was in his heart did. He felt his chest would burst with the longing he now felt. But longing for . . . what?

“I’ve never been so scared . . . like my heart will stop beating.” He heard the words float above him, and realized he had given them voice, but her melancholy laugh absorbed the words quickly. She bent her head to his chest, and he felt her tears and her reply soft and wet against his heart.

“No, don’t let it stop. Not yet, love, not yet . . . ”

He felt the quick sting of her teeth tearing his flesh, then a slow rapture that drained him of strength as she suckled the lifeblood from him. He closed his eyes and surrendered to the fear and longing he had never realized he carried. Like old friends, they walked with him, supporting him until he came to stand before a wall of mirrors. He saw his reflection like he had never seen it before. A damned man stood before him, naked and vulnerable. Damned by his country and his fellow man, still his soul fought for life.

“That’s it, love, step through now to the other side. Life awaits you.” Her words resounded around him, and he embraced the mirror, feeling not hard glass, but his mouth pressed against hot skin. He drew on her neck with a hunger, and as he filled his mouth with her sweet blood, he felt the dread and yearning fall aside. He became one with the reflection, and all he had known changed in an instant. Matter became shadow, night became day, and death became life. He fed as an infant would, not understanding, not caring, just needing and taking, until he was sated. At last, the roaring in his ears eased, and he fell back, exhausted.

“Welcome, my love. You’ve crossed the threshold.”

Her words were as incomprehensible to him as soothing sounds to a baby, and he slept, knowing nothing, feeling nothing. When at last he awoke, the boundaries of time and dimension had sloughed off like an old skin, and a new perception governed all he saw and felt. Everything was possible, life was eternal, and power yet unknown and unexplored was his for the taking. Only one thing was out of reach forevermore.

Like the vestiges of his humanity, his soul had not passed through the mirror.

Sabra, Sabra . . . where did you go, my love?

Tia twisted in his arms, and the movement stirred him. Could he do it? Could he lose Tia to Midexistence the way he had lost Sabra? Sabra had left him and MacArthur’s employ soon after his transformation. She had other needs then, ones he couldn’t fill. He had remained, foolishly thinking he still needed MacArthur, but nothing was ever the same. Given his pick of women convicts, he had tried to find another like Sabra, but most had been slovenly and too easy. The things they saw reflected in his eyes frightened a few, but most were only too happy to be invited into his bed at night. Their misfortune and his pleasure, but too short-lived.

“Ummm. Dallas?”

“Yes, love?”

She squirmed in his embrace and pulled away so that she could see his face. “Why did you call me that?”

He couldn’t lie. He couldn’t tell her he loved her. As much as he didn’t want to lose her, love was a human emotion. She would know the lie. “An old habit. A very old habit.”

“Sabra.” It was no question. The truth swam in her liquid blue eyes.

It was all he could do to nod.

“You never told me about her.”

“Are you sure it’s something you want to hear?”

“No, but . . . ” All her conflicting emotions warred in her eyes, and her thoughts laid themselves bare to him at the surface of her mind. Her reason fought the reality of what he was, yet the rest of her itched to be led deeper into the mystery of what he had been. She was almost ready. It was the point in the relationship that vampires savored most, the point at which the victim has completed the journey from appearance to reality. All outward attitudes have been peeled away, all facades knocked down, and all masks ripped off. The victim, stripped to the core, revealed only their most basic desires. Tia was almost there. The time was approaching. The time the vampire’s destruction of its victim was most satisfying.

His vampiric lust stirred, awakened by her nearness and the distress of her eyes. And her blood. Always the blood.

Maybe he shouldn’t wait. Maybe he should just put an end to the dilemma right now. He couldn’t let her go back north. Drago would follow and kill her. And yet he didn’t want to lose her the way he had lost Sabra. That had been a lingering agony that had never had an ending. This was the only path left. A quick end to her pain, and a resolution to his problem.

“Dallas . . . ”

Plea or protest, it didn’t matter. He pulled her higher on his lap and took her face in his hands, his eyes lowered to the white column framed by his forearms. Better he do this than Drago. He couldn’t bear the thought of that ancient creature holding her like this. He leaned his head forward, and his lips sampled hers, reveling in the sweetness that greeted him.

She managed to whisper his name again in between kisses, but he neither stopped nor answered her.

He could already taste her energy, her life force, in the warmth and passion of her mouth. Soon he’d taste her blood again, and that, combined with her energy, comprised her very essence. Last night when he was injured was need. This final time would be the perfect harmony of need and desire.

A sound broke through the roaring of his own blood in his ears and her blood under his hands and mouth, so close. In the next instant Tia was pushing away from him and slithering off his lap. Someone was knocking insistently on the door.

“Sir?”

Damn Gillie. He gave Tia another few seconds to adjust her clothes and smooth her hair before he told the man to enter.

Gillie swung open the door and stepped inside. If the old man wondered just what he and Tia had been doing in the library with the door closed, Gillie gave no indication, not even his customary eyebrow quirk.

“Sorry to bother you, sir. I suppose it could have waited, but Miss Angie’s on the phone and wants to know if you’ll be coming to the inn tonight. She says the paperwork is starting to pile up.”

Dallas laughed. Even for the Undead, the dictates of daily living never ceased. “I’ll take it in the kitchen, Gillie. Tia, I’ll be right back.”

But as soon as he was out of the library, all mirth slid from his face. Did Tia have any idea how close he had just come to killing her? No, of course not. The mirror, now more than ever, would show her only what she wanted to see. And what did he want? He didn’t have the excuse of a false image to explain his own behavior. The monster that he was had demanded her death, but even as his lust had called for it, something in him was glad that Angie and Gillie had intervened. He wanted her with him, alive, not cold in the ground or wandering the earth like the damned creature he was. The preservation of life. It was a strange concept for him to grasp.

TIA EXHALED A long sigh after Dallas left the library. One thing she couldn’t debate in her mind was the undeniable attraction his body held for hers, and that attraction hadn’t lessened one little bit with the knowledge he wasn’t human. Perhaps if he had displayed the cold skin, red eyes, and fangs she had seen on the movie screen she wouldn’t want him so much, but aside from the centuries that played in his eyes and the grace of one who didn’t have to worry about tired muscles or arthritis, he looked human. In spite of her body’s disappointment, though, she had been glad for Gillie’s interruption. Her emotions were too unstable to risk getting too close to Dallas again.

Her eyes were caught by the “Trail of Tears” print. Evil. Now that had been evil. Soldiers dragging women and children from their homes and driving them halfway across the country in the dead of winter. Thousands had died, Dallas had told her. And that had been human against human. Was one being who wanted nothing more than to survive truly evil, when this was the kind of thing that man did to man, and continued to do all around the world, even today?

She thought about St. James. Had even he been evil? He had wanted nothing but revenge. How many shootings had she been dispatched to that had been perpetrated for that reason or something even less? St. James had killed innocent people. So did humans every day in the city. Innocent people shot in drive-bys or in armed robberies happened all the time. Were those suspects evil? Not according to the defense attorneys and social workers. People were just “misunderstood” or had been exposed to “bad influences.”

It was all so confusing. But Dallas and St. James weren’t “people.” Society would dictate she should think of them as evil, regardless of their actions, but could she? Were their motives any different from human motives?

Tia looked again at the “Trail of Tears.” It seemed a strange picture for a vampire to have hanging in his house. She would have expected some dark and gloomy landscape, or an animal print depicting a pack of wolves at a kill, or even some lurid portrait of a nude, but soldiers herding Indians? It was strange indeed.

When Tia turned, Dallas was standing in the doorway, his arms crossed and his head tilted to one side, as if he were studying her as closely as she was studying the painting on the wall. As usual, she hadn’t heard him approach.

“I have some work to do at the inn. I think it best you come along.”

Something in that didn’t sound quite right to her. “Umm, you want me to come, or it’s a good idea if I come?”

The hooded eyes blinked but once. “St. James isn’t dead.”

“What?”

“Drago was kind enough to inform me that St. James was able to pull himself from the fire before it consumed him.”

Dallas’ low voice had a dry edge Tia couldn’t miss. Dislike for Drago or self-directed irritation? “I don’t understand. I thought you said . . . ”

He cut her off. “I underestimated the bastard. It won’t happen again. If the cur has any brains he’ll heed Drago’s warning and slink back to wherever he came from with his tail between his legs. But just in case . . . I’m not taking any chances.”

“But what about Gillie and your other men? Aren’t they in danger if St. James comes back?”

Dallas lifted his brows. “I think I’ll suggest to Mac he go on an impromptu all-expenses paid vacation, but Gillie won’t leave. He’s a stubborn old man.” He jerked his head. “Come on, you can have a drink and a late supper while I get some work done.”

Ten minutes later she sat at the small bar at the rear of Bishop’s Inn nursing a drink while Angie brought Dallas up to date on news.

“How’s The Lady been?” asked Dallas.

“She’s bad off over something. All week she’s been cryin’ and throwin’ tantrums. Ever since that accident happened outside and that poor man was killed. Rachel up and quit last night. Said she could take the windows rattlin’ but not the cryin’ from upstairs. Can’t say I blame her. I’ve never seen The Lady so worked up.”

Dallas nodded. “That accident bothered all of us. All right, put an ad in the paper for a new waitress. I’ll be upstairs with Miss Martell.”

He extended a hand toward Tia, and she took it, following him up the narrow stairs to the third floor. Tia could feel the eyes of Angie and Jaz glued to her back. Tia supposed she couldn’t blame the women for wondering just who she was to be trailing after Dallas like she owned him. She wondered if they were jealous, then had to stifle a laugh. If they only knew. Once on the third floor, however, a thump from behind a wall shifted her thoughts from the living and breathing women to the one who wasn’t.

“Then it’s true? Veilina is real?” Real didn’t seem the right word. “I mean, her ghost really exists?”

“Of course. You doubted it?”

“Silly me. I didn’t think that ghosts were any more real than . . . well, you know. Is Veilina upset because of me?”

Dallas sank into the chair behind the desk with an ease and familiarity Tia wished she felt. “No, I don’t think so. I think it’s more likely she’s bothered by Flynne and St. James having been here.”

“Oh.” Tia pulled up one of the empty chairs and settled in, squirming to get comfortable on the hard seat. “So, do your superhuman abilities extend to talking and working at the same time?”

He smiled, a rare beam of pleasure, not sadness, and the deep smile line that ran almost the entire length of his face popped into view. “Naturally. What would you like to hear?”

“You didn’t finish telling me about Sabra.”

The smile line vanished as if it had never been there at all, and Dallas’ eyes studied the papers in front of him. “Sabra was my woman. I was very much in love with her.” He shuffled a few papers. “She made those years of being a convict bearable. But in 1801 I lost her.”

“Lost her? She died?”

She saw a muscle twitch in his face, but he didn’t look up. “She went into the bush. I’m not sure why. Apparently she came across some sort of death ceremony. I was never able to find out what she stumbled on. Secrets in the bush are guarded more closely than those anywhere else on earth. She died, yes, and was reborn into the realm of Midexistence.”

“She became a vampire?” Tia whispered the question, immediately feeling silly. Who did she think was going to overhear?

Dallas nodded. “I was her first conquest and creation. I’m not sure why she did it. Maybe she thought we could remain together in eternity, but it doesn’t work that way. More likely it was just vampiric aggressiveness or envy that she was no longer among the living and I still was.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“How does it work? Vampirism, I mean.”

He finally looked up at her. “I couldn’t explain it any more than you could explain to me what it is that gives you life. All I can tell you is that the human body dies, and a kind of anti-life, a negative energy, reanimates the body.”

“I thought it was the blood.”

“The blood is the catalyst,” he said softly.

“What you did to me . . . ”

“Was not enough for you to become one of the Undead, don’t worry. For that to happen, you’d have to take a substantial amount of my blood.”

Tia fidgeted with the hem of her shirt, her eyes glued to the errant button thread that needed trimming. “Did you ever mean to do that to me?” She raised her eyes only when she heard him answer.

“No. I didn’t want you to become like Sabra.”

His eyes were steady on hers, and he displayed none of the obvious signs of a liar, but how could she know for sure? She couldn’t. It hit her that she was trusting an inhuman creature with her life. For the first time it really hit her, and she was scared. After Rodney, on the drive back to Natchez and on the veranda, there hadn’t been time to think. Later, when she had thought about it, she had tried to hold her emotions at bay by logically addressing the issue, putting him and her and everything that had happened into neat, color-coded little boxes. In the library, her body’s messages had drowned out anything her mind could try to voice.

But now, at the inn, she felt trapped. With St. James still out there, she knew Dallas wouldn’t let her leave even if she wanted to. There was a chain around her, and the being that held the other end was a thing she didn’t think she’d ever be able to truly understand. No matter how many questions she asked, how would she know he’d answer them with the truth?

“Last night you said there’d be consequences to . . . what I did. What did you mean?”

Dallas didn’t answer right away, and his attention, for all appearances, was on his work, but Tia knew he had heard her.

“It’s a blood tie.”

That wasn’t much of an answer. “Meaning?”

He sighed. “Meaning I can sense your presence and feelings even more than I could before. As for you, it should inspire a measure of the same kind of trust in me that Gillie feels. And it should provide a kind of protection against other vampires. My scent is on you now. That should make you . . . unattractive to others.”

She nodded, but suspected at the very best he was embellishing the truth, and at the worse, lying. She strongly doubted that a vampire mark was beneficial to the human half in any shape or form, but she kept her skepticism to herself.

He coaxed her into ordering a prime rib and salad from the kitchen, but she could only finish half of it, still full from her early evening “breakfast.” Still, the food made her drowsy, and she curled on the couch for a nap while Dallas worked. She couldn’t get comfortable, though, no matter how she twisted and squirmed. She felt cold in the evening summer heat, and every time she opened her eyes, shadows teased her peripheral vision. Finally, though, her uneasiness sank into a restless sleep.

A long hallway stretched before her, not a narrow corridor, but the wide hall of the grandest mansion she had ever been in. She journeyed down the hallway, passing elaborately carved tables, monstrously large chairs, and cabinets that nearly reached to the high ceiling. She pressed on, coming upon no doors or entranceways, until the hall ended in a dead-end wall. Mounted upon the end wall was the largest oval mirror she had ever seen, the gilt frame wider than her hand. She saw her reflection in the mirror, but where there should have been one face staring back, there were two. Not quite superimposed, it was a double image, the nose of one face about six inches from that of the other. One face was healthy and tanned from the exposure of the Mississippi sun, but the other was pale and faded, an imitation of life.

An abrupt noise awakened Tia, and sealed the dream fresh in her memory. She blinked her eyes, and saw Dallas staring at her. The room was quiet. “What was that?”

Dallas’ eyes flicked to the ceiling. “My Lady, I suppose, reminding me that it’s time I got back home.”

Tia sat up and ran her hands through her hair. “Your Lady?” Her gaze lapped the room and came to rest again on Dallas. “My God. ‘The Vampar of Natchez.’ When you said it on the way back from Rodney it didn’t hit me. You’re Veilina’s Devon, the rich planter. The jilted fiancé who conspired to kill her lover.”

“Devon Alexander. One of my aliases over the years.”

“I don’t care what your name was! How could you do that to her? She once loved you, and you destroyed her!”

His vampire eyes were cool and glassy in the dim light. “I have no explanation you’d either understand or find satisfaction in,” he replied, his voice as low as the lamplight. “Come. It’s time to go.”

Tia remained seated, gripping the leather cushion. “No. I want to hear it.”

“Without your judgmental interruptions?”

This was one story she badly wanted to hear. She exhaled a sigh that was more a huff, but nodded.

He leaned back in his chair, and his eyes seemed focused on a point somewhere above and beyond her. “I was still a very young vampire then. I hadn’t yet found a way to control my thirst for revenge or my aggression against humans. Veilina was the first human female I played at being in love with. It was a difficult relationship for a novice like myself to master.”

She conceded him that. If her situation was any indication, the vampire-human relationship seemed no easier to manage even now.

She let him continue. “At first I thought Veilina was playing games with me, trying to make me jealous by feigning love for the stable boy. One night we had a terrible fight, and she told me she had never really loved me—that it was only my wealth she was interested in. The betrayal was something the vampire wasn’t prepared to deal with. I conspired with Veilina’s father to kill Rowan. I thought . . . I thought with the stable boy out of the way that I could make Veilina mine.”

Tia curled on the sofa and wrapped her arms around her, suddenly chilled. She forced herself to wait for the rest.

“After Veilina died I found a letter she had left for me. In the letter she said she had really loved me once—that her denial of that love during our fight was made in anger. She said she felt partially responsible for Rowan’s death. She felt I might never have carried out my plan to kill him had she not infuriated me so much with her lie.”

Tia glanced around the room. “So how does The Lady feel about you now? I would think she would hate you, but . . . ”

“Deciphering The Lady’s motives isn’t always easy, not even for me after all this time. Sometimes it’s hate. She seems to relish torturing me with her very presence, reminding me of what I did. On the other hand, she’s very protective of me, almost as though she still loved me. As though I am hers alone to torment. Come. It’s late.”

This time she obediently went with him, having no choice, but was glad for the silence of the ride back to the townhouse. She tried to digest what he had told her. They were just excuses for violence, just like all the excuses she had heard so many times on the job. Youth . . . misunderstanding . . . anger. None of them justified killing. She hadn’t bought into the excuses as a cop, and she couldn’t now.

This time not even the nearness of his body a foot from hers distracted her from her feelings of disgust. She had done her best to convince herself that the creature next to her wasn’t evil, but the fact remained that destruction and revenge were a part of his life he neither turned away from nor lamented. When they arrived at the townhouse, Tia was equally glad that he didn’t suggest she sleep with him. Instead, he pointed out the intercom button in her bedroom that connected directly to the cellar, and gave her back the Colt, fully reloaded with silver bullets.

“I don’t think St. James will try anything in my own backyard, and he’s probably not yet recuperated from his injuries, but I won’t assume anything this time around. If you need me, call. I can function well enough inside the house during daylight hours.”

She nodded, having no intention of calling him. Gillie knocked on her door soon after Dallas took his leave, and she invited him in.

“Gillie, have you ever had a dream that was more like a vision?”

His expression was as solemn as ever. “A presentment? I have. Why? Did you have one?”

“Earlier this evening.” She described the strange dream of the double vision to him. “It was so strong, I can’t help thinking it means something. I’m just not sure what. That I’m going to die? Or that I’m going to live a second life as one of the Undead? What else could it mean, do you think? Did you ever have a dream like that?”

Gillie’s brows knitted together in thought. “I don’t recall a vision exactly like that one. It might mean those things, of course, but not necessarily. It could mean simply that your life has arrived at a fork, and that two futures stand before you. You must decide which to make reality.” He turned sad eyes to her and took her hand. “I can’t help you make your decision, Tia.”

“No. I understand. But thanks, Gillie.” Somehow, looking at the old man’s face, she knew he’d support her in whatever decision she made.

Blood wasn’t the only bond there was.