Moments later, they were standing in front of apartment 2-A. The hallway smelled stale and brown paint peeled in flakes off the outer frame. Eleisha raised her hand to knock and then suddenly lost her nerve. With no phone number, she hadn't been able to call. How would Rose feel about the three of them just… arriving here.

Another thought occurred to her. "Wade, don't try to reach out telepathically yet. If she doesn't know about our abilities, you'll just frighten her."

Philip reached past her head and pounded on the door.

"Philip!" she said. "Stop it." Then she leaned closer to the door. "Rose, it's me. We've come to get you."

Nothing happened for almost a minute. What if she had gone out? She wasn't expecting them.

Then a calm voice, with the hint of a Scottish accent, said, "What is your name?"

"It's me. Eleisha."

The door cracked and then opened.

And Eleisha was finally face-to-face with Rose. After all their letters, they were standing two feet apart. The first thing she felt was surprise. She did not know why, but she had pictured Rose as petite with gray hair. The woman before her was slender but nearly as tall as Philip. She had long brown hair with a few silver streaks. Her eyes were deep brown with flecks of yellow. She wore a white sleeveless rayon dress that reached the floor and silver hoops in her ears.

"Eleisha?"

The second that word left her mouth, Eleisha knew everything was as it should be. Rose was wise and truthful and needed their help.

Rose looked out past Eleisha to the two men.

"This is Philip and that is Wade. I told you all about them," Eleisha said quickly.

"Yes."

Stepping to the right, Rose allowed them inside her home. Eleisha glanced back to make sure her companions weren't going to do anything stupid. But Wade's tense caution seemed to have vanished. His eyes followed Rose with an expression of astonishment.

Philip looked puzzled but not dangerous.

"You are real," he said.

Rose closed the door as Eleisha took in the sight of the apartment. Although the walls were badly in need of paint, the main room was filled with polished antiques: low tables, porcelain lamps, and several Victorian couches with wooden arms and burgundy upholstery. The lampshades were covered with sheer pieces of silk materials. Small crystals hung down the walls, creating prisms of colored light. A small television sat upon a 1930s radio cabinet in one corner.

The living room ran directly into the kitchen, separated only by an archway, but the counters sported brightly colored pots of every herb Eleisha could remember from her youth in Wales: lavender, oregano, basil, parsley, thyme, sage, valerian, yarrow… She lost count of the pots.

"I am real," Rose answered Philip, "and we must make plans."

Again, Eleisha was hit anew by the certainty that anything Rose suggested would be the correct decision.

Wade reached out to steady himself on the arm of a Victorian couch, but Philip shook his head-hard-and snarled. "Turn it off!"

"Philip?" Eleisha asked. What did he mean?

"Now!" Philip ordered Rose.

Rose watched him for a long moment and then took a step back. The feeling of absolute certainty inside Eleisha faded, and she found herself looking at nothing more than a handsome woman with long brown hair.

"Wisdom," Wade whispered. "Her gift is wisdom." He studied Rose. "Your victims have faith in your judgment?"

Philip shook his head in what seemed to be derision.

But Rose flinched at the word "victims," and Eleisha hurried toward her. Many of her feelings over the past few weeks were beginning to make more sense now, but she didn't care if Rose instilled false faith. They all wielded their gifts like weapons. Philip was no one to judge.

"Eleisha, stay back," he ordered.

She froze in place, fearing he would take action if she ignored him. This was not going at all as she'd hoped.

"You are working for Julian," Philip told Rose. "I know it."

For just a blink, Rose's serene composure flickered. "Working for… How dare you?"

"Then how did you know of Maggie's address in Seattle?" Philip demanded. "How did you know Eleisha was living at that house? How did you escape Julian in the first place? I don't know you, and I have never heard of you." He moved closer, his eyes narrowing. "You serve Julian, don't you? You are his slave."

"Philip!" Eleisha gasped. Is that what he'd been thinking all this time?

Without answering him, Rose looked down at Eleisha. "I was not expecting an interrogation." Her voice was calm, but her eyes gave away her fear. Truly, after the letters they shared, she had not expected Eleisha to bring a hostile male vampire inside the apartment.

Eleisha did not know what to say, and so she fell back upon honesty. "He's only trying to protect me and Wade. Just tell him how you found us… how you found me. Then everything will be all right. He'll be on your side, and trust me, you want Philip on your side."

Rose blinked. If she'd been living alone since Julian's killing spree in the mid-nineteenth century, this whole scene must feel like foreign ground.

But she seemed taken back by Eleisha's blunt outburst. "You have shown trust in me," she said. "I will show trust in you."

Then she looked upward and said, "Seamus, show yourself."

The room grew cold. The air near Wade shimmered, and a transparent young man appeared from nowhere. Wade jumped backward in alarm. But the young man was glaring in open hatred at Philip.

"You bastard," he said in a thick Scottish accent.

He had the look of someone from the distant past, like a painting in a museum, with shoulder-length brown hair and wearing a loose hand-stitched shirt over black breeches. But he also wore a plaid blanket over one shoulder, held fast by a belt. His knife sheath was empty.

A ghost?

Wade's mouth hung open in shock, and Eleisha stumbled backward. A real ghost? She had come to view the reality of vampires as a fact of life, but it had never occurred to her that other forms of the dead might exist here as well.

"Seamus is my nephew. He found you," Rose said, her serene composure returning. "It is a long story… hours in the telling, but I can swear that neither one of us has ever even seen Julian, much less done his bidding."

Philip wavered, watching the ghost. He did not seem stunned by this revelation. He looked back at Rose. "Who made you?" His voice was not so threatening.

She drew herself up to full height. "Edward Claymore."

Eleisha grabbed the back of a couch, her head spinning. "Edward? No, that isn't… He would have told me."

Regret colored Rose's pale face. "Oh, my dear, I did not mean for any of this to spill out on the floor tonight. I did not expect… I was not prepared to…" She trailed off.

Then Wade finally said something. "You don't have to talk at all." He appeared to still be recovering from the sight of Seamus.

Philip glanced over at Wade. "Too soon."

"No," Wade answered. "I don't think you'll trust her until you've seen her past."

Rose was watching them both in cautious puzzlement. "My past?"

"Whatever they want, don't do it. We don't need them," Seamus said. "Any of them."

Eleisha was shaken by Rose's claim about Edward. It couldn't be true, but why would Rose lie?

"What are you suggesting?" Rose asked Wade.

Eleisha agreed with Philip that it was much too soon to expose Rose to telepathy, but she also agreed with Wade that this standoff would not end until some foundation of mutual trust was established-and she had to know about Edward. He could not have kept such a great secret, not from her. Could he?

She reached out and grasped Rose's hand. "Come and sit on the carpet with us. If you think back, all the way back, and then begin remembering your own life, we'll be able to see your memories. No, don't be scared! It's all right. Just sit here." She drew Rose over to an open space in the center of the room. "Philip, come sit down. Wade, can you act as her guide?"