“I’ll pick you up in an hour and a half. Be ready.” The phone went dead before I could demand more answers from her. I stared down at the phone in my hand, my thoughts speeding through my brain at a reckless pace.

Mira had the ability to be awake before the setting sun. I had run across some Ancients that could awaken an hour or two before sunset, but Mira wasn’t an Ancient. Had she somehow escaped the boundaries set on her by the sun? James had said that she had been walking around during the daylight hours at Themis and I had seen her during the day in my hotel room. While she loathed it, being trapped and helpless during the daylight hours gave humans the only edge they had against vampires. What kind of deal had she struck with Ryan?

But I had no answers and I had no doubt that Mira wouldn’t volunteer any for me. Overall, it didn’t matter. Judging by her behavior at the hotel, she was still vulnerable to the sunlight. She was conscious, but she couldn’t leave the protection of her home until after the sun completely set. I had a feeling getting here in an hour and a half might even be pushing it unless some thick cloud cover moved in.

Slipping the phone in my front pocket, I returned to the kitchen where I sipped a cup of coffee before grabbing a shower. The reason behind Mira’s new ability would be revealed in time. After living for more than one thousand years, patience I had in abundance, which proved to be the key to hunting nightwalkers. The long-lived creatures learned to move slowly when it was necessary, limited only by the hours in a night. What was one night when eternity stretched out before you? Hunting vampires had taught me to move as slowly and cautiously as my prey.

Yet Mira continued to elude me. First, as my prey, she seemed to remain one step ahead of me, just beyond my grasp. Her behavior was erratic, bouncing from killer to protector in the same breath.

And now as allies, I struggled to keep pace with her. I hated to admit it, but I didn’t think she was the evil creature I had once believed. Even in her coldest moments, she still clung to a tattered sense of honor. She protected those whom she believed needed her protection, even at the risk of her own neck. But I would catch her in time.

Less than two hours after Mira’s call, I stretched out my powers, allowing my extra sense to crawl over the city like a spider dragging its web behind it. The sun had set just twenty minutes earlier and I could feel no vampires in the immediate vicinity. It brought up the interesting question of whether any of them actually kept a lair in the downtown area. Of course, Mira’s admonishment came ringing back in my head. Never eat where you sleep. And the downtown region was a massive feeding ground for nightwalkers.

I caught my first faint touch of Mira several blocks away, but steadily drawing closer. Judging by her speed, she was in her car. Something inside of me seemed to relax when I was suddenly aware of her presence, as if a hidden ball of tension began to unwind. I couldn’t read her thoughts, but brief touches of her emotions brushed against my mind. She was calm, but neither happy nor sad. Beneath it, there was a red haze clouding everything. For a moment, I thought it was a deep, simmering anger, possibly her hatred for the naturi or Jabari, but it didn’t fit.

When she was only a couple blocks away, the feeling grew more intense and clear—she was hungry. No, Mira was starving. Her hunger was clawing away at her insides. She needed to feed.

I pulled my powers back into myself and drew in a deep, cleansing breath. Thick walls went up around my thoughts, blocking out all outside influences, but it was another full minute before the same red haze faded from my mind. I looked down to find my hands were shaking.

It had been like that when I had seen my first vampire so many centuries ago. It was several hours before sunrise, and I had walked into an empty square that was quiet except for the splash of water from a nearby fountain. A pale man in deep burgundy robes had stepped from an alley, and I was immediately hit with this red wave of hunger. My knees nearly buckled beneath me and I stumbled backward a couple steps. Stretching out his hand, he beckoned to a woman, who approached him as if she were in a trance. Her face held no expressions, her eyes wide and vacant. Before taking her back into the dark shadows of the alley he had stepped out of, he turned and smiled at me.

I knew when he bit into her neck. I knew when he drew blood from her body, filling his own cold frame because I could feel it. It was the same liquid warmth that swept over my frame when I was at the First Communion with Mira. However, this heat held no seductive allure, but a horror as I came to realize that such a creature existed and that I was somehow linked to them. I could sense them, feel their differentness. In a crowded room, I could locate the one nightwalker with my eyes closed. Their emotions drifted to me like a woman’s perfume on the breeze.

But their hunger came through the clearest. I could feel the pain, the driving need, the unrelenting fixation that could force out all other thought. I could drown in that feeling until it became my own. It was a dual-edged blade. I could not only feel the mindless pain, but also the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction when the starved creature finally fed. Yet, it wasn’t until the First Communion that I began to understand how deep that feeling ran.

Getting a grip on reality once again, I shrugged into my jacket and quickly locked the door to the town house. I was standing on the edge of the porch when Mira pulled up to the curb in front of the house.

“Aren’t you full of tricks?” she teased as I slid into the passenger seat. “You were watching for me.”

I had purposefully met Mira on the street. She would have picked up Peter’s scent in the town house, and I wasn’t sure how she would react. My gut said she would be upset, but then again, I had seen her laugh off bigger problems. Regardless, it was a distraction we didn’t have time for.

“I’ve got a few tricks,” I said as I pulled on the seat belt.

I looked over to find Mira’s full lips quirked in a small smile as she turned the car back away from the town house. “I know you do,” she whispered. “I underestimated you once. Never again.”

“Only once?”

Mira’s smile widened so that her right fang poked slightly against her lower lip. “How did you sleep?”

“Fine. You?”

“My day was just fine,” she replied, now secretive and close-lipped.

I let the silence sink in as we wove our way around the square and through the historic district. Mira deftly drove us along a road that followed the Savannah River like a lover’s hand in a long, slow caress. Night sank in, the darkness filling the car so that we were bathed in the pale blue glow of the interior lights.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Dark Room. It’s the best place to find Gregor.”

“We’ve got another meeting first,” I said, inwardly cringing at her reaction to this unexpected development. “I scheduled an appointment with Barrett Rainer at Bella Luna.”

“You spoke with the alpha?” she demanded, coming to an abrupt stop at a red light.

“The lycans need to know what’s going on. Fingers are going to start pointing in their direction if it gets out how the Bradford girl died,” I explained.

Mira stiffly nodded, her hands tightening slightly on the steering wheel. “I agree. Does Barrett know why we are coming?”

“I told him that it’s in relation to our investigation.”

When the light turned green, Mira swiftly changed lanes and abruptly turned left, heading around another square. “I wish you would have told me a little sooner,” she said, sounding a little irritated, but nowhere near as angry as I had expected her to be. The nightwalker was long used to being in control of every situation, particularly within her domain. However, I was afraid she would put off or completely avoid the meeting due to their strained relationship. Ever since the naturi had come to Savannah, tension had been running high between the shifters and the vampires.