Raising the knitting needle shoulder-high in her fist, she moved cautiously toward the French doors, the gauzy white curtains obscuring her view of what was on the balcony. Behind her, Jack Bauer jumped off the bed and followed along, still growling, even though Meena hissed, “Jack! Bad dog! Stay!”

Jack, as usual, paid absolutely no attention to her whatsoever.

Laying a hand on the door handle, Meena took a deep breath and pulled.

A sudden gust of wind helped push the door toward her, and Jack, excited, ran out onto the balcony. Meena, her heart in her throat, whispered, “Jack! No!” and tore out onto the terrace to stop him before he got hurt.

Except that there was no one-nothing-there.

Meena, shivering, stood in the rising wind. Above her head, the sky was a wildly patterned mosaic of dark clouds, behind which lightning continued to flash every few seconds. She could barely see the moon anymore. Thunder sounded, so loudly she seemed to feel it reverberating inside her chest.

Maybe that’s why she didn’t hear her name at first. The voice calling it was as wild and as deep as the thunder.

But then she noticed that Jack was growling again, his head turned in the direction of the Antonescus’ terrace, his nose poking through the wrought iron rails as he bared his teeth.

And when Meena turned, she saw it.

1:15 A.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B

New York, New York

Lucien.

He was there, standing on his cousin Emil’s terrace, his long black trench coat whipping around him in the wind like a cape…

What was he doing standing there, staring at her like that?

It was the middle of the night. The clouds overhead fairly throbbed with rain.

She laid a hand to her thumping heart.

“Meena.”

His voice was like liquid silk. She could almost feel it, licking her skin like the smooth white cotton of her nightgown.

He was calling to her. Calling to her the way the lightning was calling to the thunder.

What was she going to do? What was she going to say to him?

Meena moved to the terrace wall and, leaning against it, said, across the eight-foot-wide plunge that separated them, “I can’t really talk right now, Lucien.”

Her voice was shaking as much as her fingers, but she still managed to clutch her wooden knitting needle. She hoped he didn’t notice.

“Why not, Meena?” Lucien asked, the concern in his voice a caress. “Are you upset because I had to cancel our evening together? Didn’t you get my note?”

His voice curled and coiled along her heartstrings, the way his trench coat was wrapping against his legs every time the wind blew.

“I got your note,” she said. “Thank you very much for the bag. But now just isn’t a very good time.”

“Perhaps I could come over,” he said. “I tried calling earlier, but you didn’t seem to be picking up the phone.”

“I know,” Meena said, swallowing hard. If he truly was the prince of darkness, he was going to find out sometime. So she might as well tell the truth. “I couldn’t pick up my phone. There’s a Palatine Guard in my living room. He destroyed all my phones.”

Lucien grew very still. In fact, it seemed to Meena as if everything grew still. The sky above their heads froze. The lightning, the thunder, her heartbeat…even the wind died down. The clouds, which had been moving so swiftly overhead just seconds before, seemed to pile up on top of one another. The thick black storm clouds shut out the glow from the moon, concealing Lucien’s expression.

“Meena,” she heard him say.

The word-just those two syllables-told her everything she needed to know, as if the sudden meteorological display hadn’t been enough to convince her. They held a world of pathos.

And danger.

Some small part of her-the romantic in her, she supposed-had been holding out hope that Lucien would deny it. A vampire? Of course not! How ridiculous. Everyone knew there was no such thing as vampires.

But she’d heard the truth of it just now in his voice.

“I tried to tell you,” he said. His voice sounded as broken as her heart. “In the museum…”

“Go away.” She was whispering so that they wouldn’t be overheard by anyone in her living room. But it was as hard to keep the horror from her tone as it was the pain. “Go away, Lucien. And never come back.”

“Meena.” The moon was still lost behind the skidding clouds.

But now she could hear that he sounded less wounded and more impatient. Like he had any right to be impatient with her.

“I can’t believe what an idiot I was.” Meena felt as if she were choking. She was clutching the knitting needle to her chest like some kind of talisman to ward off evil. “Here I thought we had this incredible bond. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was the part where you saved my life in front of that cathedral. Except I didn’t know it was you those bats were attacking! I didn’t know you were a…a…”

She couldn’t even say the word.

“Meena,” he said. “I can explain.”

Was he serious? He could explain? “Who were they, Lucien?” she demanded. “You knew them, didn’t you?”

Lucien’s tone was rueful. “In a way…”

“And the whole time”-Meena’s voice sounded ragged, even to her own ears-“you were just reading my mind, weren’t you? That’s how you knew where I lived! And that purse!” She shook her head. “That stupid purse! I should have told him to throw it out the window instead of my phone. You have slain the dragon. God, I can’t believe I ever fell for that! Have you ever considered writing dialogue for an American soap opera, Lucien? Because I could get you a job where I work.”

“Meena,” Lucien said. Now his tone was sharp…as sharp as his teeth, she thought, which she’d never even felt sinking into her skin. “Is he still there? The guard from the Palatine?”

“Oh, what’s wrong?” She knew she probably sounded more hysterical than sarcastic. “Can’t you read my mind to find out?”

An extremely strong gust of wind that seemed to appear from nowhere suddenly swept across her terrace and would have knocked her off her feet if she hadn’t dropped the knitting needle and reached out to grab the balcony railing with one hand while shielding her eyes with the other.

For a few seconds she couldn’t see, there was so much dust and debris-some of it was the dried petals from the dead geraniums on her balcony, swirling in a sudden springtime tornado, from out of nowhere.

But she was quite sure she saw the blurry outline of a large, bat-like object hovering between her terrace and the Antonescus’, blocking out what little light still shone from the night sky and the windows of the apartments around hers. It was like the time the bats had swooped down to attack her and Jack Bauer…

Except that now she knew they hadn’t been coming after her at all. It had been Lucien they’d wanted.

And the reason they’d had no effect on him whatsoever was that he wasn’t human. Their teeth and claws couldn’t harm him because nothing could. Nothing except chopping off his head with a sword-at least according to Alaric Wulf-or stabbing a pointed piece of wood into his heart.

And she had foolishly just dropped the single piece of pointed wood she owned.

When the wind died down and Meena was able to open her eyes, she saw Lucien standing in front of her, on her own balcony, just a foot or two away from her.

Meena, her heart now feeling as if it might slam out of her chest, tilted her chin to look into his face-that incredibly sensitive, handsome face-and saw that he was wearing an expression of extreme displeasure.

For the first time, she recognized the surging of her pulse for what it really was: fear.

And not just for Jon and that Palatine Guard inside her apartment: fear for her own life.