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  I stared at her, dumbfounded. I tried, desperately, to process what she’d just revealed to me, but I couldn’t. It was too horrific. It had turned from something I had heard of to something I couldn’t even comprehend.

  “She locked you up,” I whispered. “In a coffin.”

  Elle’s eyes stared deep into my own. They were dark and deep, but I could make out nothing in their depths. She did not answer me, only turned away, one brow raised.

  “She kept you in a coffin for years? Elle, how did you…” I spluttered, trying to make sense of what she was telling me. “How did you survive it?”

  Elle glanced back, made a single elegant shrug. “She gave me a poison that would keep me alive, that would shut down my need for blood. I survived it.”

  “But…but…” That wasn’t what I’d meant. How could anyone survive for four years in a coffin without going…insane.

  Could I really believe that this is what Magdalena had done to her? But as I stared at this proud, beautiful vampire, this vampire who stood before me without a single shred of shame, her shirt fluttering around her cold skin as she stared down at me without a word, I knew she was telling the truth.

  Just because I couldn’t imagine it didn’t mean that it wasn’t real.

  Elle sighed for a long moment, her face going hard again as she shook her head. “You are a distraction to me,” said Elle then, clipping the words. “I marked you so that I could keep an eye on you. There is something between us, though I do not know what, and I would understand it. But then Magdalena’s henchmen sniffed it out, and this means that, regrettably, they will destroy you if they catch you. But keeping you here, apart from keeping you alive, has certain…advantages—”

  “So you can have me,” I whispered, trying to mask my hurt. And failing.

  She actually looked surprised as she gazed back at me. For a heartbeat, her gaze softened before the hardness came back.

  “No, Cassandra,” she said mildly. “The advantage is that Magdalena’s men want you. And I want Magdalena’s men and Magdalena. With you here, I don’t even have to hunt them down. The men will come to me, and when I have killed the men, Magdalena will come to me. And then it will all be over.”

  Somehow, that stung more than if she’d agreed that all I was there for was to be one of “her girls.”

  “I’m bait in a trap,” I whispered.

  Her eyes flashed in the near dark. “But what lovely bait you are,” she whispered.

  A thrill ran through me, a shiver that shook me to my core. Her words, her velvet words, drifted over me like her mouth or her fingers, and I wanted to cave to her, to pull her down beside me again, crawl on top of her and silence her with my kisses.

  But I was too upset to do anything but stare up at her, the hurt roaring through me, followed closely and hotly by anger.

  “Cassandra,” said Elle quietly, reasonably, as she spread her hands to me, her head bent, her eyes trained on me, the edges of her shirt fluttering around her thighs. “I could have let you die.”

  “You wouldn’t have,” I challenged, my voice sharp, “because I’m no use to you dead.”

  She shrugged with one single, long motion, like a cat, and turned away from me. “You are safe. You are taken care of. What more could you possibly want?” she asked, then, her head to the side as she glanced back at me over her shoulder.

  “Are you kidding me?” I slid off the bed, standing up with my hands curled into fists. “For starters? I want my life back. I want my freedom back. I don’t want to be taken care of…” I was spluttering, but I didn’t even care. “I’m basically a prisoner,” I told her. And then, in the smallest voice, the fight leaving me as exhaustion set in, I whispered again: “I want my life back.”

  She wavered for a moment. She ran long fingers through her hair in agitation. She opened and shut her mouth, like she was going to say something to me. But then she made her way across the room, taking graceful strides, and then she was out the door and it was sliding shut behind her.

  I growled and turned and hit the comforter with my fists. I was frustrated in a million ways, but deep, deep down inside of me, there was a hurt, fluttering ache.

  Yes, I wanted my life back. I didn’t want to be a prisoner. I wanted to be free, which, apparently, I was no longer.

  But I also didn’t want to be bait to Elle.

  She’d even said that she felt something between us. That, somehow, she’d felt that I was in danger, and she’d been compelled to save me. That might be normal for vampires, but I highly doubted it. They hadn’t gotten their mythical reputation as killers for nothing—they didn’t randomly go around and save people from dangerous situations. So Elle had felt something between us, and I felt something between us, and she could just somehow ignore that?

  But as I sat there, my heart pounding, I considered what Elle had told me, so cool and clipped, how she’d spent years in a pine box. What had happened to her? What horror must that have been? How had she survived it?

  I should have been angry at Elle for admitting that I was nothing more than lovely bait. And I was. A very large part of me was furious at this charming, seductive, beautiful vampire for even saving my life, because she was using me.

  But there was something strong and thrumming through my entire body, too.

  Elle was captivating. I wanted to know more about her story, wanted to learn every part of her, her past, her present, herself. I wanted to learn more about the woman who could spend four years in a pine box without breaking.

  But how was it possible to draw her true self out of the revenge-seeking, cold vampire she’d become?

  Chapter 7: Immortal

  I woke up to yelling.

  It was muffled and echoing in my room, but it sounded like it was coming from the corridor right outside my door. I sat up in bed and listened to it for a long moment, my heart pounding as everything that had just happened to me in the past twenty-four hours came stampeding back into my head. I’d left the bedside table lamp on, but the bulb had burned out sometime while I slept (if it was the same light bulb from roughly fifty years ago, I was kind of horrified that I’d left it on in the first place). I switched the lamp on and off, on and off, and it didn’t respond.

  I got up, cursing and fumbling in the dark as I made my way across the room toward where I’d remembered Alec switching on a lamp earlier. I found it (actually, I ran into it and caught it from falling with a quick and accurate fumble), and switched it on, tugging on its little brass chain and watching the light bulb flare to life beneath the dusty fabric lampshade that was a shade of pink that only the fifties could have loved. Then I walked to the door quietly, stood very still and listened.

  I couldn’t make out any words in this argument, but the voices were more heated now, and louder. One of the voices sounded, to me, like Elle. The other belonged to a guy. Alec?

  What time was it? I’d been carrying my purse when I’d come into the house, but when Elle and I had our…ah…moment in that big room earlier, I’d set it on the floor next to the chair, and I’d been too preoccupied to pick it up when Alec had gestured for me to follow him. So there it probably still sat, with my cell phone and my lip balm and the candy bar that I’d purchased at our office vending machine and had been saving for an “occasion,” that I really could have used right then.

  Well. I could kill two birds with one stone by opening that door—I could see who was shouting and why, and I could go get my purse.

  It didn’t occur to me, at that moment, that if it was, in fact, two vampires shouting angrily at one another, as a human I should have not wanted to go anywhere near that situation since being around two angry vampires was probably very unsafe. But I didn’t realize that. I pressed my hand against the odd, square doorknob, and I pushed it.

  And it didn’t budge.

  I stared down at it with a frown. It hadn’t been a difficult maneuver, what Alec had shown me to do to open it. You just pressed the square bit and turned it and the
door itself would slide into the wall. But when I pressed down against the door, there was no give whatsoever, and it didn’t budge, not even a little, no matter which way I tried to press it. There was no other small raised portion of the door, but I still felt the metal surface, trying to find something else, some other mechanism that would let me open it. But there was nothing but smooth, cold metal.

  I stood there for a long moment, my breathing increasing, my heart starting to pound louder. Was I locked in?

  “Excuse me?” I said then, loudly, knocking on the metal door.

  The voices on the other side went quiet.

  I bit my lip and listened intently. They’d heard me. I knew they’d heard me.

  “Excuse me, can you open the door?” I said then, sarcasm making my tone sharp.

  There was muffled speech from the other side of the door, and then a few sharp clicks, like someone’s high heeled shoes were striking against the concrete floor.

  And then there was one last click, like a key turning in a lock. And the door slid back and opened.

  Elle was there. She was wearing the same black slacks as before, but a different cream-colored blouse this time, the buttons done up tightly to the neck. Her hair was tousled and wild-looking, and her eyes were wide and flashing, her mouth drawn into an angry frown.

  “I’m telling you, you’re not in your right mind to be deciding things like that right now,” Alec hissed as Elle strode into the room, and Alec stalked in right after her. Alec, I sadly noted, had still not bothered to put a shirt on. They came in, and I stepped out of the way hurriedly, but not before Elle had brushed past me.

  This close to her, there was not a single atom in my body that had not been ignited with need.

  “Elle, no. Listen to reason,” said Alec hurriedly.

  I realized, just then, that he’d come to stand between Elle and me. His back was to me, and his hands were spread in front of him, beseeching as he stared Elle down.

  Elle, I realized, didn’t look exactly…right.

  Her eyes were darker now, darker with the same need I was feeling, I’d thought, but that wasn’t exactly it. Her shoulders sloped forward toward me, like she was a predator stalking prey, and she watched me with an unwavering, unblinking stare.

  “Out of the way, Alec,” she whispered, her low voice husky with desire. “I know what I want.”

  Alec glanced over his shoulder quickly at me with an apologetic grimace. “Sorry to, ah…wake you, Cassandra—”

  “Casey,” I said automatically, before I realized that this was probably not the best time or place to be telling a vampire he could call me by a friendly nickname. “What’s going on?” I asked as I peered past his shoulder at Elle, Elle who had not taken her gaze off of me since she’d entered the room, the intensity to her eyes causing a shiver to move through me.

  Alec rolled his eyes skyward, shaking his head. “Elle needs to…she needs to feed,” he said haltingly, “and she has to go do that. But she doesn’t want to leave here…” He trailed off and flicked his eyes to me. “Because of you.”

  Elle and I stared at one another.

  “I thought over everything, after I left your room last night,” she whispered, then. The whisper was so soft, so quiet—it was meant only for me. It seemed like we were the only two people in the world at that moment, the thrum of attraction between us reaching a fevered pitch. “And I think we were meant to find one another, Cassandra,” she whispered, taking a step forward, close enough to touch me, but she did not. The electricity crackled between us, but neither of us reached out to the other. We stayed, our gazes locked, my body trembling from how much I wanted to reach up and drag her to me, from how desperately I wanted to kiss her, touch her, taste her. “I think,” she murmured softly, her voice low, “that you are the key.”

  “You,” said Alec spluttering, “are being ridiculous—”

  Elle didn’t even cast a glance his way. She took one more step forward moving smoothly around Alec like he wasn’t even there. But now he was no longer between us as she reached up her hand, tracing one, long finger over and down my cheek, along my jaw. I shivered against that touch, the tremor moving through my body powerfully, even as I held her gaze.

  “The key to what?” I asked, my voice calm and steady, surprising me. I felt anything but calm and steady.

  Elle’s smile curled her lips up at the corners, but again, the smile did not reach her eyes.

  I could never have predicted the next word that came out of her mouth. Which was this:

  “Immortality,” she breathed.

  I stared at her. She stared at me. Alec stared at both of us, shaking his head adamantly, his arms crossed in front of him tightly so that his muscles bulged with tension.

  “It’s crazy,” he muttered, half to himself, shaking his head over and over. “Just crazy.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, glancing from Elle to Alec and back to Elle again. “Immortality? But you’re a vampire! Isn’t that the whole vampire thing—aren’t you already immortal?”

  Alec shook his head again, chewing at his lower lip. “No, no—we’re not immortal. We live for a long time, but we eventually die, and we can definitely be killed. And there’s nothing in the world that can change that,” he said in a hiss that was directed at Elle.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Alec,” she said then, her voice strong and unwavering as she kept her eyes pinned to me, her graceful form half leaning toward me, half standing at ease. She licked her lips and lifted her chin. “There is…one thing.”

  Alec threw his hands up in the air, rolling his eyes hard. “God. Great—just great! So you’re basing your elaborate plot for revenge on a story—”

  Elle stiffened at that, ripping her gaze from me finally to rest it angrily on Alec. She leaned forward at the hips, all glowering energy as she growled out: “You can believe it or not, but I know the ‘story,’ as you call it, to be true. Kane Sullivan did it—”

  “It’s rumored that Kane Sullivan did it,” said Alec with a shake of his head, his voice now losing some of its momentum as he visibly sagged in front of us. He spread his hands helplessly. “Elle, when’s the last time you paid the Sullivans a visit to see if that was really the case? Or if, like so much other shit in our nice, big vampire community, it was all an elaborate rumor?”

  “Um…excuse me,” I said, holding up my hands with a frown. I felt so in over my head. “But what, exactly, are you talking about?”

  Alec blew out a sigh through his nose and puffed up his cheeks as he threw his arms into the air. “What we’re talking about? Only the stupidest, most foolhardy thing that Elle has ever thought of doing in her entire lifetime, that’s what we’re talking about. And I can tell you that after spending so much God damn time with her, she’s thought up a lot of stupid, foolhardy things.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Elle gave him a toothsome grin, and ignoring his sounds of protest, turned her attentions back to me. “Regardless of what Alec says, I know that there is a way,” she murmured softly then, “for a vampire to not need human blood. To have no more desire to drink it. It is a painful process, but once it has been undergone—”

  “What process?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry.

  Elle straightened at that, and now she wouldn’t look at me. She cast her gaze just a little past my shoulder, her dark eyes flickering. She breathed out in a deep sigh. “If a a vampire does not drink blood for a set period of time, they no longer feel a need for blood. And a vampire who no longer needs blood is invincible. She has no more weaknesses. She could, in theory, live forever without needing sustenance ever again.”

  “A living being—and I assure you,” said Alec to me with a groan, “we are living beings—requires some form of sustenance. It’s the rule of energy and entropy for Christ’s sake. A living creature needs energy to survive, or it uses up its own energy and dies. It’s the rule of the universe.”

  “But never the less,” said Elle,
shaking her head, “I believe the stories are true. I believe that if you’re strong enough to overpower the need for blood, you can survive the withdrawal that follows. You can go through the withdrawal, and emerge on the other side…triumphant, powerful beyond measure…immortal.” The syllables slid off her tongue like she was caressing me with them, her velvet voice low and hypnotic as she stared me down.

  “Human blood is more than food to us,” said Alec quietly to me. “Much more. It’s like a drug. We crave it utterly. Technically, we could subsist on the same food that humans eat, but we can’t, really. There’s something deep inside of us that cries out for blood, and it must be satiated, or we go…mad.” The last word was very small, and he looked dejected as he cast a glance at Elle. “We can’t survive without blood because, at our very core, a vampire must drink it to survive because he believes he can’t survive without it. Think about—” said Alec, holding up his hand as I began to ask another question, “think about a drug addict,” he murmured meaningfully then, his eyes wide and his mouth in a small, hard line. “They survived without drugs for a long time before they became addicted, right? Now they know they can’t survive without them.”

  A thought came into my head and I frowned a little as I watched Elle. “But didn’t you already do this? Go through withdrawal from blood,” I said, stumbling over the words. “Didn’t you survive in the coffin for a couple of years without blood?” I asked her. I tried to be as tactful as possible, but I’m pretty sure I failed. Alec winced as he began to chew on a thumbnail, but Elle simply regarded me with a steely gaze, her chin up, her arms folded loosely in front of her.