I swallowed a surge of denial, remembering the misery of high school and my history with bad boyfriends. Not to mention my idiotic decision to join the I.S., and then my even more idiotic attempt to quit when Denon started giving me crap runs and the thrill was taken away. I knew I liked dangerous men, but saying it was because I was equally dangerous was ludicrous…or would have been if I hadn't just spent yesterday as a wolf/witch hybrid courtesy of a demon curse that my blood kindled, and I now sat in a brand-new Rachel skin with no freckles or wrinkles.

"So you're a threat," Ivy said, the scent of cocoa rising between us as she sat on the boxes across from me. "So you need the rush of possible death to keep your soul awake and turn you on. That's not bad. It just says you're one powerful bitch, whether you know it or not." Tilting forward, she handed me the chipped mug. "Dangerous doesn't always equal untrustworthy. Drink your cocoa and get over it. Then find someone to trust who's worth trusting you back."

Jaw clenched, I looked at the mug in my grip. It was for me? I had made her cocoa the night Piscary had raped her: mind, body, and soul. I pulled my eyes up her tight jeans and her long shapeless black sweater that hung mid-thigh.

"That's why I wait," she whispered when our eyes met.

I took a hasty breath when I realized the unseen scar beneath my new skin was tingling.

Ivy must have sensed it, for she stood. "I'm sorry," she said, reaching for the door.

"Ivy, wait." What she'd told me scared me, and I didn't want to be alone. I had to figure this out. Maybe she was right. Oh God, was I really that screwed up?

Her long fingers gripped the handle, ready to pull the door open. "The van stinks of us both," she said, not looking at me. "I should be good for a few days more, but the stress…I've got to get out of here. I'm sorry—damn it." She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, but I can't comfort you without my blood lust getting in the way." She looked up at me, her smile faint and carrying old pain. "Not much of a friend, am I?"

Without getting up, I fumbled my fingers past the curtain of the window above me and pushed the bottom out to open it. My heart pounded, and I took in the pine-scented air and hush of the passing traffic. "You're a good friend. Does that help?" I asked in a small voice.

Ivy shook her head. "Come back to the room. Jenks will drag Nick in soon. We can all watch a movie and pretend nothing happened. It should be tremendously awkward. Tons of fun. I'll be fine as long as I don't sit next to you."

Her expression was calm, but she sounded bitter. My face scrunched up and I curved my fingers around the warmth of the cocoa. I didn't know what to think, but I was very sure I didn't want Nick to know he had made me cry. "You go. I'll come in when my eyes aren't so red."

I felt a sense of loss when Ivy stepped out of the van and then turned with her arms about her in the chill. It was obvious she knew the longer I stayed out here, the harder it was going to be for me to find the courage to come in. "Don't you have a complexion charm?" she asked.

"They don't work on bloodshot eyes," I hedged. Damn it, what was wrong with me?

Ivy squinted in the glare and sharp breeze, then her face brightened. "I know…" she said, coming back in and slamming the door shut behind her to seal out the cold. I watched her push aside the front curtain and rummage in the console. Her eyes had returned to normal, the fresh air doing as much as the shift in topics. "Kisten probably has one in here," she muttered, then turned with a tube of what looked like lipstick. "Ta-da!"

Ta-da, huh? I pulled myself straighter as she maneuvered around the clutter and sat on the cot beside me. "Lipstick?" I said, not used to having her that close.

"No. You put it under your eyes and the vapors keep the pupil constricted. It'll take the red out too. Kist uses it for hangovers—among other things."

"Oh!" I abruptly felt twice as unsure, not having known there was such a thing. I had always trusted a vampire's pupils to give away their mood.

Legs crossed at the knees, she uncapped it and twisted until a column of opaque gel rose. "Close your eyes and look up."

My lips parted. "I can put it on."

A puff of annoyance came from her. "If you put on too much or get it too close to your eye, you can damage your vision before it wears off."

I told myself I was being stupid. She looked okay; she wouldn't have come back in if she wasn't. Ivy wanted to do something for me, and if she couldn't give me a hug without her blood lust tainting it, then by God I would let her put that gunk under my eye. "Okay," I said, resettling myself and looking up. You need the thrill of danger flitted through my mind, and I quashed it.

Ivy shifted closer, and I felt a light touch under my right eye. "Close your eyes," she said softly, her breath stirring a curl.

My pulse quickened, but I did, and my other senses kicked in stronger. The gel smelled like clean laundry, and I stifled a shudder when a cold sensation moved under my eye. "You, ah, don't use this a lot, do you?" I asked, starting when her finger touched my nose.

"Kisten uses it when he works," she said shortly. She sounded fine—distracted and calm. "I don't. I think it's cheating."

"Oh." I seemed to be saying that a lot today. The cot shifted when she moved back and away from me. I lowered my head and blinked several times, the vapors leaving a stinging sensation that I couldn't imagine was making my eyes any less red.

"It's working," she said with a small, contented smile, answering my question before I asked it. "I thought it would on witches, but I wasn't sure." She motioned me to look at the ceiling again so she could finish, and I lifted my chin and closed my eyes.

"Thank you," I said softly, my thoughts becoming more conflicted and confused. Ivy had said vampires only bothered to get to know people as powerful as themselves. It sounded lonely. And dangerous. And it made perfect sense. She was looking for that mix of danger and trustworthiness. Was that why she put up with my crap? She was looking to find that in me?

A ribbon of angst pulled through me, and I held my breath so Ivy wouldn't sense it in my exhalation. That I needed danger to feel passion was ridiculous. It wasn't true. But what if she was right?

Ivy had once said that sharing blood was a way to show deep affection, loyalty, and friendship. I felt that way about her, but what she wanted from me was so far from what I understood that I was afraid. She wanted to share with me something so complex and intangible that the shallow emotional vocabulary of human and witch didn't have the words or cultural background to define it. She was waiting for me to figure it out. And I lumped it all with sex because I didn't understand.

A tear slipped from under my eyelid at Ivy's loneliness, her need for emotional reassurance, and her frustrations that though I could understand what she wanted, I was afraid to find out if I had the capacity to meet her halfway, to trust her. And my breath caught when she wiped the moisture away with a careful finger, unaware that it was for her.

My heart pounded. The underside of my other eye grew cold, and she leaned away. Breath shallow with the thoughts pinging through me, I looked down, blinking profusely. There was the click of Ivy putting the top on the tube, and she gave me a guarded smile. I felt poised on the chance to make tomorrow vastly different from today, and a pulse of emotion struck through me, unexpected and heady. Maybe I should listen to those who were my closest kin in terms of my soul, I thought. Maybe I should trust those willing to trust me back.

"There you go," Ivy said, not knowing that lightning was falling through my thoughts, realigning them to make space for something new.