"Caliban?" she said from the door.

My eyes still on the street, I didn't look, but she knew she had my attention. She was a psychic after all.

"I won't wait forever." Then the door shut on me, just as I'd once shut it on her. It wasn't a good feeling … no matter what side you were on.

It was two hours later, six a.m., and my turn to open the bar. Sleep—who needed it? The Ninth Circle kept irregular hours. Some patrons like the night, some the early morning, some all damn day long. Ishiah switched it around enough that everyone could find what they needed on one day or another. It made for weird hours, a weirder schedule, and no damn dental either. Figured.

Delilah showed up barely twenty minutes after I unlocked the door. She looked the same as when she'd healed me…goddamn amazing. Wild and exotic, polished and lethal as a sword. She sat on one of the stools, picking up a feather from the bar. No matter how often you cleaned the place, there were always feathers. This one was Cambriel's—Cam's, cream and copper. He had the same copper hair in a long plait and a scowl that could clear the bar in a second. He also molted like an ostrich with mange. Considering the peri temper, I didn't mention it … much.

"Pretty boy." Funny that I minded Sawney calling me a boy, but with her I didn't mind so much. She twirled the feather and smiled at me. Delilah's smile wasn't your usual smile. It was more that of the cat that ate the canary or the fox that ate the henhouse— then had the farmer for dessert. It was satisfied and more than a little wicked.

"Delilah." I was surprised. I hadn't been sure I'd see her after the subway fight. Not that I hadn't seen a lot of her then. A whole lot. "Come to give me my jacket back?"

"No. I like the jacket. I keep it," she announced.

I'd liked it too, but what are you going to do? She liked it, I'd seen her naked … it was a fair trade.

I shrugged. "It did look good on you." And damn, had it. "You want a drink?" Six a.m.. It was late for the vamps, early for the wolves, but you never knew.

"No. Want this." She dropped the feather, reached across the bar, pulled me closer, and kissed me. It wasn't like George. That kiss had been warmth and sun and the gentle silk of tongue. This was hot, with teeth and a taste like night under a bloodred moon. It was enough that when we broke apart I didn't have a clue how much time had passed. I didn't much care either.

Okay, now I was in the deep end of the pool. Auphe rug rat phobia and all, I hadn't had much experience in this area. Well, being hunted, and Delilah was definitely a hunter—that I had plenty of experience in. But this … it definitely wasn't a comforting warmth and a red and gold girl on a pedestal. It wasn't the clover and sweet songs of a nymph either. It seemed like I should've said something; I know I should've said something, but "holy shit" didn't seem appropriate. I said it anyway—with feeling and a stinging lower lip that I suspected had the faint dents of sharp teeth in it.

She smiled again. "You smell of her. One who could not run with you in the dark places." She slid off the stool. "You smell like her but now you taste like me."

And with that she left. There was the swing of the long silver ponytail as she moved and the shutting of a door. If you could say one thing about Delilah, it was that she said what she had to say, did what she had to do, and then she was done. Boom. Gone.

I said it again. "Holy shit." The kiss combined with the still very vivid mental picture of her nude in the tunnels had me glad there were only two customers so far and that the bar came up waist high. By the time Promise came in an hour had passed. Luckily.

Delilah and now Promise. I was Mr. Popularity this morning.

Promise came into the place dressed in a snug scoop-necked sweater, sleek pants, boots, and a matching hooded cloak to protect from the sun. Gray, violet, and black, it all had reminded me of her rug I'd sat on, the one under her piano. Also the one that was probably being cleaned quite thoroughly at this very moment.

She smiled, sat on the same stool Delilah had, carefully arranged her cloak on the one beside her, and started in on me about George before I could get a word out. Not that my word-slinging ability was so hot at the moment. It'd been one helluva morning.

"So." She tilted her head slightly. "What of Georgina? What did she tell you?"

I shifted my shoulders. "Nothing." The bar was filling up a bit and I handed off a drink to a vodyanoi in a trench coat, scarf, and hat that had him passable on the street, just barely.

"She wouldn't tell you a single thing?"

Running on absolutely no sleep, I gave Promise a weary glance over the bar. I was beginning to slouch, as you could be while still technically being counted as upright. "George isn't big on hints. Robin did something bad. Karma is kicking his ass. Lessons to be learned. Embrace the whatever. In other words, we get squat in the way of help. Why are you here anyway?" I asked curiously. "Nik is usually the one who likes to point out my tactical errors. You know, the where and why of how I fucked up. You're depriving him."

"I'm sure he'll discuss that with you later," she said with amusement and absolutely no pity. "Right now he's playing nursemaid to Goodfellow. Those pity-me eyes of Robin's." She cast her own upward in vexation. "He doesn't know how to stop, I swear. It's pathetic. I refuse to suffer any longer." She rested pearl-colored nails on the bar surface. "And I nursed in the war. I have put in my service several times over. I am done with that."

"Which war?" I straightened up a few inches with interest. Long enough ago and Promise could've drained as many soldiers as she tried to save. I didn't know when the vampires had started living hunt-free lives. It involved human-style nutrition, four food groups and all, combined with massive supplements of iron and several other elements. It worked…now. It wasn't something available over a hundred years ago. I would've liked to think that if the war had been before the nineteen hundreds, Promise had only taken the lives of those who would've died anyway. I liked to think, but what did I know really? Besides that, it was none of my business. "World War Two? The Civil War?"

"Asking a woman her age. You shame your gender. And, Caliban?" Sable lashes dropped over languid eyes. "There is not enough wine in this establishment," she said with an inscrutable smile. "Perhaps not in the entire city."

I thought about asking her of the little girl in the picture that had been placed so carefully on the piano, but I had a feeling the question wouldn't be any better received than the other. "Okay," I gave in, "no wine, then. You want some fancy morning thing with champagne?"

"Yes, a Bellini would suit, if you would be so kind." The bar had few windows and they were covered with blinds and curtains for the sun-intolerant among the clientele. Promise had used the opportunity to remove her cloak and shake her hair free. It wasn't often I saw it loose and unbound. It was something to see. The stripes poured and rippled down her back to past her hips as she sat … a tiger on a wooden perch.

By the time I returned with her drink, she was ready to reveal why she was really at the bar. "So"— she took the smallest of sips—"you got what you wanted, then. Niko told me where you were going, and once Georgina saw you, she would know." She studied me over the glass filled with sun and champagne. "And she did, didn't she? Does that make you happy, getting what you wanted?"

The words were uncompromising, but behind them I heard a reluctant sympathy. Promise knew my reasoning, but she also thought I was a twenty-year-old idiot hanging on to past teen angst for all I was worth—like a baby with a pacifier. She knew my reasons were valid, but she, like the others, thought there were ways around them. Vasectomy, contraception, cross your fingers and hope for a bouncing baby non-flesh-eater. Let's say I didn't trust any of the three. No one knew what the Auphe body was capable of regeneration-wise; condoms broke— as Sophia had once carelessly said, Niko was proof of that; and as for the last option: No. No way.