“I know the truth,” he snaps. “Deveraux took advantage of an innocent young girl. He corrupted her. Turned her into a demon. Our family has lived in the shadow of the scandal for as long as I can remember.”

 Leticia throws her head back and laughs. “Oh my god,” she says when she’s caught her breath. “You are delusional.” She turns to Sophie. “Where did you find this clown?”

Prendergast bristles, tripping over his words in his fervor to object. “It’s true. My grandmother wrote it all in a journal. We should have been heir to a mining fortune. Your fortune. But it was stolen and the family name disgraced. I’m here to get our money back. And to set the record straight. You should be grateful.”

Leticia’s face darkens with anger. I recognize vampire close to the surface and my defenses are immediately on alert.

She flashes bared teeth. “Your money? Would you like to know how I made your money?”

Prendergast nods, a nervous, jerky head bob that is more acquiescence to a command then willing assent.

Leticia moves to stand at the middle of the bar. “It was here. In this building. There was no family mining operation. My family disowned me. Took my son. I was run out of town, all right, but it was Boston, not Cloud City. All because I fell in love with a handsome man who promised me the world. He gave it to me, too.”

“Deveraux,” Prendergast says.

“Not Deveraux,” Leticia counters. “Another. And he brought me to Cloud City and we set up business. Want to know what kind of business, great-grandson? I ran a whorehouse. The best in the county. I sold whiskey and girls and business was good. I made more money than the miners who came stinking of dirt and sweat. They came to fuck pretty young things who smelled of lavender and rose blossoms and to drop their week’s wages into my willing hands. That’s how I made my fortune. My fortune. Deveraux had nothing to do with it.”

Prendergast isn’t ready to let go of a hundred-fifty years of family legend. “I don’t believe you. Why would everyone lie?”

Leticia laughs again, this time it’s cold, hard and completely without mirth. “Because they were ashamed of the way they treated me. Why do you think I turned to the only man in town who didn’t treat me like a soiled dove because I had a child and no husband?”

“But you were a widow,” he says.

“A grass widow,” she corrects. “Do you know what that means?”

He looks confused so she continues. “I was engaged to a man, a wealthy farmer on the outskirts of town. We intended to marry. He died before we could. But I was already pregnant. That just wasn’t done in those days. Neither his family nor mine accepted the child.”

“Your mother raised him,” Prendergast reminds her.

“After they kicked me out. And only because she hoped someday his father’s family would come around. Make him heir to his father’s land. They didn’t.”

“So you turned to a vampire?” He spits the word.

Leticia moves faster than human eyes can follow. She grabs his shirt and pulls his face close to hers, close to her vampire face. “A vampire worth a hundred of you, worm.”

Flashing teeth and yellow eyes burn with the desire to end this discussion once and for all, to end the life of this long-lost relative, to sever the ties that bound her to a human family who caused her so much pain a lifetime ago and still lies about her.

I read her intentions. She’s opened her mind to me. She’s issuing an invitation.

Inviting me to join in the kill.

Don’t, Leticia. He’s not worth it.

She pulls a whimpering Prendergast closer, nuzzling his neck. What difference does that make? He’s a meat puppet. A stupid one at that.

It’s Sophie who breaks the tension. “Don’t kill him yet, Leticia,” she says. “Tell him about Jonathan Deveraux.”

Leticia releases her grip on Prendergast and sends him crashing against the bar. He slithers down and lands on his ass with an undignified jolt. He’s so relieved to be free, he doesn’t protest.

Leticia turns her wrath on Sophie. “Listen, witch, Jonathan Deveraux is none of your business. You’ve had your fun. Impressed your friends with your little parlor trick. Now send me home or it will be the last spell you ever cast.”

“You’re wrong,” Sophie says calmly. “He is my business. In fact, would you like to speak with him?”

Leticia stares at her. “That’s not possible. He was killed. A year ago. Murdered by his wife. If I hadn’t heard that she disappeared soon after, I would have gone after her myself.”

“All true,” Sophie says. “By the way, you haven’t asked my name.”

“Why would I care what your name is?”

“You should care. I’m the one who helped Jonathan get rid of his wife—his widow. You might say Jonathan and I have been together ever since.”

Leticia shakes her head. “If he was alive, I’d know it. We had a special bond.”

“Because you were his sire?”

Prendergast groans from his place on the floor. “No.”

Leticia ignores him, eyes locked on Sophie. “You wouldn’t know that unless Jonathan told you. Where is he?”

Sophie touches the middle of her chest with a closed fist. “He’s here.”

The room is suddenly colder as Leticia moves to stand in front of Sophie. “Explain yourself, witch.”

Sophie is not intimidated. “The name is Sophie,” she says, looking directly into Leticia’s eyes. “Sophie Deveraux.”

Leticia frowns. “You and Jonathan were married?”

“Not exactly.” Sophie closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. “Come on out, Jonathan,” she says. “We have company.”

Silence. I don’t feel Jonathan’s presence and wonder if Sophie is having trouble bringing him back but then…

Company? Sophie, what do you mean? What did you do?

Jonathan’s voice is muted, his speech slurred as if he’d just awakened from a drug-induced sleep.

Leticia’s shoulders jump, startled eyes widening as she recognizes the voice. “Jonathan?”

There’s a moment when the very air in the room begins to vibrate with the intensity of her confusion. “Where are you?”

“I told you,” Sophie says, repeating her fist to chest gesture. “He’s in here. He’s a part of me.”

Leticia grabs her shoulders. “How did you do it? Can you get him back?”

Leticia? This time the thickness in Jonathan’s voice is more than being dragged to consciousness. How is this possible? How are you here?

“The witch brought me. She says her name is Sophie Deveraux. I don’t understand.”

I feel Jonathan’s mystification as he tries to puzzle out Sophie’s motivation for bringing Leticia to Leadville. It’s more than Prendergast, he’s sure of it. He reaches out to me.

What is she doing, Anna?

Before I can respond, Sophie does. “Don’t ask Anna,” she says, breaking into his cloaked thought. “Ask me.”

Jonathan is startled by the intrusion into what he assumed was a private exchange. It doesn’t take him more than a heartbeat to understand. How long--?

“Long enough. It’s not so hard once you understand which part of the mind to open and which part to close.”

Leticia’s impatience grows with her confusion. She’s fighting to control the vampire’s natural inclination to tear the information out of Sophie. I see her jaw tense, hear her teeth gnash.

“Sophie, you’d better tell Leticia what she wants to know,” I say, trying to ward off trouble. Leticia doesn’t know that harming Sophie will harm Jonathan.

Sophie turns to Leticia. “You and Jonathan want to know why I brought you here? It’s simple really. I want to reunite lovers. I want you to take Jonathan with you when I send you back.”

My spidey sense starts to tingle with alarm. “Sophie, how do you expect to do that?”

Jonathan must be feeling the same panic. It’s not possible, he says. You know it’s not possible, Sophie.