“Well, no….”

“He doesn’t have a clue about anything, because he hasn’t cared enough to try and stop it before.” I angrily took the brush and began detangling my hair. “Where was he for the fifty years that you and Garvin were in the care of that crazy bitch that he calls his maker?  When he can say he has followed us, and taken out some of the evil that we’ve destroyed, then he can make judgment calls on what we should, or should not, be doing.”

“Why are you so angry with me?” she asked in a timid voice.

“Because you’re the only one standing here right now,” I smiled, placing my hand under her chin. “I’m sorry. You know it’s not you that has me so tied up on the inside.”

“Martin may not understand what we have been trying to do, but he loves you none the less.”

“How can you sound so wise and look so young?” I asked, kissing her on the forehead. “As bad as I hate to admit this…I love him too, but this isn’t the time for him to be thinking that we should leave things be.”

“May I come in?” Martin asked as he opened the door as I tied the sash around my waist making sure I had little flesh showing.

“Please don’t, we need to get the others together, and make plans about what we’re going to do about the crime here in London,” I politely said, then walked over and tried to close the door on him, only succeeding after the hard stare I gave him.

“They already wait for you in the study,” he called back through the closed door.

“Then go wait with them, and we’ll be down when I’m finished,” I called back as I started putting on the same dirty pants that I had been wearing.

“Did you not see all of those beautiful gowns?” Tanda asked, shocked at my choice of clothing.

“I would be so pleased if you could find me a clean shirt, but there is no way that I’m ever putting one of those things on again.” I looked out the bathroom door making sure we were alone, then hurried Tanda out.

Tanda smiled, giving me a little curtsey, and then dashed out of the bedroom in search of a top for me, giving me enough time to braid my hair down my back, and smooth some sweet smelling cream on my face and hands. It was the first time that I had looked at myself in a full-length mirror in a long time. I looked boy-like with my hair pulled so tightly back, but my body showed that I was all woman. I touched the scars above my left shoulder, running my hand down over my breast, following the scar on the side of my ribs, scars that I could barely remember getting; all but the scar that clearly showed on my throat. Yvette was at least giving when she offered her blade across my flesh. It was then that I placed my fingers in the indention that her blade had made on my lower right side as I drained her of her eternal life.

I turned, looking at my full view, wondering at the back of my mind what ‘he’ would think of me now if he knew all and, in the same thought, wondered if I really cared. I wanted nothing more than to have him take me in his arms and never let me go, but only if he accepted our plight, which I feared, after hearing Tanda, that he never would. However, the deep feelings that I had bursting into my mind every time I heard him speak was driving me mad. It went from hate to love in swirls, neither able to agree with the other.  It wasn’t until a vision of him and Yvette making love floated across the mirror that I knew why the anger lived inside. She had had him in ways that I could only have dreamed of. I knew a great deal of what they had done just by merely thinking in the fog of my own visions.

“Give her air…move back, all of you,” Jacob said in a distant dream. “Renee, can you hear me?”

“He speaks with her now. Beware the golden hair, for she will not be as easy a kill as I.” Then I collapsed back into unconsciousness.

I woke to the sounds of Martin and Jacob arguing about something that they were saying that I had said, but the last thing that I remembered was leaning closer to the mirror. “You cannot be serious to believe the words of a trickster like Angelica,” Jacob said, sounding clearer.

“She wishes to have a meeting and come to an understanding with no loss of life. How could that in anyway be wrong?” Martin proclaimed.

“You have lived in this world long enough to know the ways of a fearful woman, and yet you still fall for the beauty that lies before the beast,” Jacob growled.

“Can I ask why you two are arguing?” I asked, trying to sit up but falling back with a horrid pain in my head.

“You are awake,” Martin replied, rushing to my bedside.

“What happened?”

“You had one of your spells,” Jacob said, coming to stand at the end of the bed. “You spoke in the tongue of the ancient. It was he that warned of the golden hair, and this man wishes for us to meet with her on what he calls ‘equal ground’…her place of choosing.”

“He does not understand that she wishes to make peace, and stop what she has been doing,” Martin replied, raising my hand to kiss it, but I gently pulled it away.

“I want to see the rest,” I said, pulling myself up, grabbing my head from the pounding headache that hit as soon as I moved.

“You need to stay down,” Martin replied, beginning to push on my shoulders.

“This has nothing to do with you, and I can take care of myself.”

“And if she cannot…we will take care of her,” Jacob added, coming around to the other side of the bed to help me up.

I looked down and saw the sparkly, dark pink dress shirt that someone had placed on my body while I was out, and the soft pale pink sleeper bottoms, that I didn’t recall putting on myself. The first thing I did was pull the top over my head and lean down to grab my old shirt, looking back, seeing pure shock on Martin’s face as I showed no shame in showing my nude breasts. “I just wanted a shirt to wear with my jeans, not some frilly ball top that, more than likely, belonged to one of your past lovers,” I sarcastically glared at him, while I pulled off the soft pink sleeper bottoms. Jacob went into the bathroom and found my pants and handed them to me, allowing me to dress myself, showing Martin that we stood as equals, not one who answered to the other. “I do hope it was Tanda that took my jeans back off and dressed me while I was out.”

“Your honor is intact, I assure you. It was Tammy who helped Tanda while you were in your state of recalling.”

“Recalling,” I snorted out a laugh. “That’s one way of putting it, Jacob.”

We left Martin standing near the foot of my bed, as Jacob and I walked out. I could tell that he was having a hard time with the new me, and I wasn’t about to let that change. We had all sacrificed greatly in making it this far and we weren’t going to stop now. If this country was like the one we had just left then they, too, would have our mark on their scent, even if it meant losing the one thing that I truly thought that I had been seeking. When we walked into the study everyone got to their feet, as if given the order to do so, which made me smile. It was the look on Tammy’s face that made me burst out laughing.

“You would think I was at my own wake. Why do you look so sad?” I asked as I walked up and gave her a hug.

“We don’t want you to hurt, in here or…in here,” she replied touching first my head, then my chest over my heart. “This woman that your maker wishes us to meet with is said to be worse than the one that you carry inside.”

“I have no plans of meeting with this woman, for any reason other than to do what we came here to do. How stupid does she think we are? Surely they know about the elders?” I asked, turning to look at Jacob.

“It is well known, and anyone ready to break away from them would be hunted just like us. I say it’s a trap to get us in a place where she will have the power to hold us until the elders arrive. Or worse, take all of us out but the ones the elders would want. Namely, those who carry a medallion and the Red Devil.”