We also hunted that week—revenants, mostly. They were easy to find, only moderately difficult to kill, and so disgustingly fond of eating human flesh that chopping the head off one didn’t bother me at all.

We fought too. We sparred in Washington Square Park, me cursing the cold. We sparred in dojos. We sparred anywhere you could swing a wooden sword or throw a human body, but not at the apartment. We didn’t spend much time there at all. I was already checking Craigslist for a new place. Nik would never be able to walk into that apartment again without seeing me dead at his feet.

Toward the middle of the week I scooped up the mala beads that were lying carelessly on the coffee table and handed them to him. His lips had tightened. “I’m not sure those are for me anymore.”

“They better be, because you have to teach me more about this meditation crap.” I held back one bracelet for myself. “Now that the Auphe are gone, I need to deal with this gate shit. I need to be at peace and one with the whatever. You know, less of the creepy blood-licking homicidal monster thing.” I half grinned, half grimaced. “It seems to put people off.”

“You didn’t lick the ccoa blood off your hand,” he pointed out.

No, but I’d damned sure thought about it when I’d opened the gate to the river. “I did worse in the warehouse,” I responded honestly. And I had. The Auphe weren’t gone, no matter what I said or what the Vigil thought. As long as I was around, the race lived on. There was a different race going on inside me, and right now the human half wasn’t too damn far in the lead. By a nose, maybe, and I was hoping for better than a photo finish. I might not want to rain on my own parade, but denial takes you only so far.

So we meditated. He might not have been moved to do it for himself, but he did it for me. I only fell asleep fifty percent of the time, which put me in the A-for-effort column. We also did the meditating in the park. Talk about being at one with the world. Sit on the frozen ground long enough and you’ll be one all right—practically need a crowbar to separate your icy butt from the packed snow.

Niko talked to Promise daily on the phone, but she didn’t come to our place and he didn’t go to hers. I didn’t know if it was just understood or they’d talked about it. As Nik had thought, Cherish had disappeared nearly thirty minutes after he’d left the New Jersey house. Gave her confused mother a malicious smile and spat at her feet, saying, “Seamus was a better parent and a better vampire than you. And I was a far better lover to him than you ever were.” Death, vengeance, and betrayal weren’t enough—she had to toss in a gothic soap opera too. Then with gloating laughter, she had taken Xolo into the night. Gone. And with Xolo holding her back, Promise hadn’t been able to do a thing to stop her. Although Cherish had manipulated us so well that she’d barely needed the chupa up until the end. Robin was humiliated he hadn’t spotted it, and jealous that he might not have been able to pull it off half as well.

I only heard snatches of those phone conversations, but I could tell Promise was ashamed. . . . No, that wasn’t the right word. It was worse than that. She felt disgraced by her daughter. Ashamed, dishonored, guilty—as guilty, I thought, as if she’d been the one to shred Nik’s mind herself. It wasn’t her fault, though—as much as I’d wanted to think it was.

Because her I could reach. Cherish was gone.

But Promise had warned us in the beginning about her bitch of a daughter. It hadn’t mattered. We’d been pulled in by our ties to Promise, and the fact Cherish had apparently changed. Our loyalty to her mother had led us into the trap, and Xolo had closed the door on it. Not intentional on Promise’s part, no, but it had happened all the same. Sucks, but there you go.

Then at the end of the week I’d come back from the deli, counting myself lucky Nik let me out after dark by myself, and stopped at the top of our stairwell to see them standing in our doorway. Niko had taken her hand. I slid back out of sight to give them privacy.

“I think,” I heard him say after a brief hesitation, “that I can’t be with you for a while.” There was nothing but solemn silence from Promise. “When I see you,” he continued, “I see her. And when I see her, I see Cal. I see him dead.” The calm in his voice sheered sideways—an earthquake sliding the side of a mountain into fragments far below. “More than that,” he managed roughly, “I see him butchered like a piece of meat. I feel his head on my shoulder as I pull him up, trying to hold him together. I could barely hold him together, Promise. He was all but in pieces.”

I leaned against the wall of the landing and didn’t slam my fist into the concrete block wall. I didn’t, but God, I wanted to. I wanted to. Over and over again.

The mountain firmed. The ground settled as he went on. I don’t know how he went on, but he did. “When the memory fades some. When I don’t see it every time I close my eyes to sleep or when I open our apartment door.” Fuck finding a no-fee apartment. Robin’s pricey real estate friends could get us a new place. Next week. Tomorrow.

“I don’t expect you to wait,” he added somberly. “It could be weeks or months.”

Or never.

“I will.” I heard the sad smile in the next words. “Who knew after the lies there could come something so much worse? I told you she was a liar and a thief with a care for no one—and so charming she made us forget that, I think, even without Xolo’s help.”

“You had to help her. From what you knew at the time, you had to help your daughter.”

“No,” she answered Niko. “I could’ve remembered a hundred times in the past. I could’ve remembered that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. But I didn’t. I trusted her and I trusted Seamus. I was such a fool. Niko . . .” Tears don’t have to be tangible to be real. They could be something you hear rather than salt and water you can touch. I went back downstairs and came back fifteen minutes later. Good-byes, permanent or temporary, shouldn’t be said in front of others, especially those sneaking in the stairwell.

That weekend we moved. Unheard of in New York, right? Found a place in a day. Where there’s a will . . . or where there’s a will, a handful of pearls, and one of Robin’s more unscrupulous pals, and we had a new place. It reminded me a little of the one we’d had the year before, only fit for human beings this time—half-human ones too. A SoHo loft with a wall full of windows, a polished wood floor, and a bathroom you could actually turn around in. Amazing what a difference having money makes in your life. The one job that had actually made us successful, and the Auphe had done it for us. I shook my head.

“What?” Niko asked as he dropped a box on the floor and took a look around at walls painted an oddly, some might say hideously, butterscotch yellow-orange. Very trendy, though, I’d bet.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Some place, huh?

Still eyeing the orange, he gave a nod. “It will do.”

“Do? We never had it so good. That one place we lived in when we first moved here didn’t even have a stove.”

“Cooking food robs them of most of their nutrients anyway,” he said, unperturbed.

I opened the refrigerator door. It was bright, shiny, and new. Unbelievable. “And the fridge didn’t work, not to mention the homeless guy that was living in there.”

“We paid him fifty bucks to leave, I made you fix the refrigerator, and all was well.” He looked at me, mildly smug. “It took you only one DIY book and three months. It was a learning experience and a trade to fall back on when you forget to practice.”

Yep, this was home. From crappy to better than we’d ever had, the snark moved with us.

We painted the walls a cool, restful green—Zen green, knowing Nik. I eventually stopped looking for giant mutated roaches in the toilet and learned ice came from refrigerators. Water, too. Who knew?