I laughed out loud, tossing my hair—then honey blond and curly—over one shoulder.

He flushed angrily. He had dark eyes and hair and a perennially brooding look. "Is that funny?"

"Only because you hate me in one breath and love me in the other." I smiled as I laced up my undergarments. "I suppose there are a lot of marriages like that."

"Not everything's a joke," he said.

"Maybe not," I agreed. "But this comes pretty close."

"Are you turning me down?"

I pulled my dress over my head. "Of course I am. You have no idea what you're asking. It's ridiculous."

"You treat me like I'm a child sometimes," he declared, sitting up straighten "You're not that much older than me. You have no right to act so wise…especially since you're a…"

I grinned at him. "A whore?" He had the grace to look embarrassed. "And that, sweeting, is the problem. Never mind your family's scandalized reaction. Even if we managed to pull it off, you'd never get over that. You'd spend the rest of our marriage—which would probably be short-lived—obsessing about all the men I'd been with. Wondering if one of them had been better. Wondering if I'd done something with them that you thought was new and novel with you."

Angry, he stood up and pulled on his pants. "I would have thought you'd be grateful."

"Flattered," I said coldly, "but nothing more."

That wasn't entirely true. The truth was, despite his youthful certainty and mood swings, I liked Etienne. A lot. Something about him appealed to me. Maybe it was because all that emotionality and pride came from an artistic nature. He painted as a hobby. There it was again, my unfortunate obsession with creative men. Luckily, at that time in my life, I had enough sense to avoid deep entanglements with humans.

"I wish you could choose who you love," he said bitterly. "Because I wouldn't choose you, you know. But, here we are. I can't stop thinking about you. I feel like there's some pull to you I can't fight."

"I'm sorry," I said gently, surprised at the small ache in my heart. "Wait until you're married. Your wife will make you forget all about me."

"No. She doesn't even compare."

"Plain?" Egotistical of me, perhaps, but I heard it a lot.

"Boring," he replied.

Then I'd heard a scream, a bloodcurdling, horror-filled scream. I forgot all about Etienne and tore out of the small, dank room. Down the hall I ran until I found a congregation of people and the source of distress.

It was Dominique. She sprawled over a narrow pallet, lying in blood. "My God," I gasped, kneeling beside her. "What happened?"

But I already knew. I didn't need the forthcoming explanation from the other dancers. I had neglected her pleas for help a couple weeks ago, caught up in my own whirlwind romance. So she had sought her own solution, as so many lower-class women often did. Unfortunately, there were no machines or sanitizing in those days. An abortion was a dangerous, often deadly, business.

"Oh God," I said again. I had never lost the need to appeal to my creator, despite my theoretical renouncement.

I clutched her hand, not knowing what to do. A half-dressed Etienne appeared in the crowd. I looked up at him desperately.

"You have to go get a doctor. Please."

Whatever injured pride he harbored over my rejection, he couldn't refuse me in that moment. I saw him make motions to leave, but Bastien grabbed his arm. "No, it doesn't matter." To me he said: "She's gone,  Fleur ."

I looked at Dominique's young face. Her skin was pale, eyes blank and glazed over as they stared at nothing. I knew I should close them, but suddenly I didn't want to touch her. I dropped her hand, slowly backing up, staring in horror.

It was by no means the first time I'd seen a dead body, but something struck me about it then I'd never really considered with such shocking clarity. One moment she was here, the next she wasn't. Oh, the difference one heartbeat could make.

The stink of mortality hung in the air, painting the awful truth about humans. How short their lives were. And fragile. They were like paper dolls among us, turning to ash in the blink of an eye. How many had I seen come and go in over a millennium? How many had I seen pass from infancy to a gray-haired death? The stink of mortality. It threatened to overwhelm the room. How could no one else sense it? I hated it…and I feared it. Feeling suffocated, I backed up further.

Both Bastien and Etienne reached for me in some fumbling attempt at comfort, but I wanted none of it. Dominique, barely out of childhood, had just bled her life away in front of me. What fragile things humans were. I had to get out of there before I became sick. I turned from those who would console me and ran away.

"What fragile things humans are," I murmured to Doug.

The feeling that welled up within me now as I sat beside him was not sorrow or despair. It was anger. White-hot anger. Humans were fragile, but some of them were still in my care. And whether that was foolish or not on my part, I could not shirk my duty. Doug was one of my humans. And someone had nearly cut his time short.

I stood up, gave his hand a last squeeze, and strode out of the room. From the shocked glances Corey, Min, and Wyatt gave me, I must have looked terrifying. I hit the pause button on my righteous fury when I noticed something. "Where's Seth?"

"He said he had to go," said Corey. "He left you this."

He handed me a scrap of paper with Seth's scrawled writing.

Thetis, I'll talk to you later.

I stared at it, suddenly feeling nothing. I went numb. My mind would not allow me to focus on Seth just then. I crumpled the paper up, said good-bye to the band, and left the hospital. When I reached the lobby, I took out my cell phone and dialed.

"Alec? This is Georgina."

"Hey, Georgina!" I heard the anxious note in his voice. Almost desperate.

"You were right," I began, hoping I sounded anxious too. "You were right. I need more. Now. Tonight. Can you do it?"

"Yes," he said. There was palpable relief in his voice. "Absolutely I can do it."

We set up a meeting spot immediately. It couldn't be too soon for me. I'd been on an emotional roller coaster in the last twenty-four hours, and I was about to take it out on Alec. I couldn't wait. The fact that he seemed so eager for it was icing on the cake.

"Oh, hey, Georgina?" he asked, just before we disconnected.

"Yeah?"

His voice sounded strange; I couldn't decipher the emotion. "You have no idea how glad I am you called."

The dealer's house sat away from the road, just like all sinister houses should, I suppose. My biased perceptions aside, there was actually little else about the house that was all that creepy. It was big and expensive-looking, spreading out lazily on beautifully manicured lawns, visible to me even at night. In a region where yards were at a premium, that much land signified a great deal of money. Unlike Bastien's place, this house had no similarly well-to-do neighbors. This house was in a class of its own; it could not be part of a mere suburban neighborhood.

"Where are we?" I asked, because it seemed like the kind of naive, starry-eyed question I should be asking. Alec had met me downtown and then driven me out to this place in his own car. We were about twenty minutes outside the city.

"This is where the guy lives," he told me happily. His mood improved as we got closer to the house. "He'll hook you up."

The car followed the long, sinuous driveway and came to a stop by the garage. In an oddly chivalrous way, he opened the car door for me and gestured that I follow him inside. Glancing back at his beat-up Ford Topaz, I couldn't help thinking that being an immortal drug lord's lackey should pay better.