She didn't believe a bit of their story, Trond realized. Why would she? It was too fantastical for anyone to believe. So he and Zeb did the only thing they could. They flashed their fangs at her.

Swaying on her feet, she held up a halting hand when Trond reached to help her. "Forget the beer and wine, I need a whiskey. Straight up. Make that a double."

On those words, she did in fact faint. He caught her just in time and carried her to the bathroom. If he was lucky, he might get a chance to take a bath with her in what turned out to be a very inviting blue-tiled Jacuzzi with a panoramic view of the tropical sea. Holy hot wings! Where did that idea come from?

Her eyes blinked open as he set her on her feet, and she got her first look at herself in the one mirrored wall. Letting out a little yelp of shock, she glared at him, putting her hands to her head. "You could have told me my hair looked like a haystack that went through a wind tunnel."

"Huh?" He hadn't even noticed her hair, which, now that she mentioned it, was a little mussed up and tangly.

Then she put both hands on her hips and gave him what Cage was wont to call the stink eye, according to his Cajun mawmaw. "You are in such trouble, buster. Are you even a member of the Norwegian Jaegers?"

"Not exactly," he admitted.

From the open doorway he heard Zeb chuckle at his discomfort.

Then she narrowed her eyes at him. "More importantly, are you or are you not gay?"

Nineteen.

The news was not good . . .

Two hours later, Nicole sat on the edge of the bed in a room at the far end of the hallway that she'd picked for her own. She would have to come out sometime and face the two bozos who kept knocking every five minutes to see if she was okay.

No, she was not okay.

Aside from being in bizzaro-land with the two woo-woo princes, she didn't know how she'd gotten here, or how she would get out. She'd tried going out one of the back doors and found there was some kind of invisible force field surrounding the property. Almost like one of those electrical fences they bought for dogs. Every time she tried to jump through, she got a shock and was jolted back inside the perimeter.

Then there was the mission, and her job as a WEALS back in Coronado.

Most of all, there was Trond. If he was not gay, he had a lot to answer for, and she already suspected why he'd told her that particular lie. His secret . . . if it could be believed . . . was out. The one he'd used gayness to cover. The black belt liar! He was dead, so to speak. A freakin' vampire angel. Putting that unbelievable story aside, if he was not gay, how was she going to be able to resist him?

Then, too, there was the issue of her sister and her ex-husband. Time was ticking for her to be able to help. If she could.

"Nicole, come out and eat," Zeb urged her. "I made seafood paella."

Nicole's stomach rumbled with hunger. She couldn't remember when she'd eaten last. Plus, the aromas wafting through the air were scrumptious. "A demon gourmet cook?" she said on a laugh. Why that would surprise her on top of all the other surprises boggled the mind.

"I watch a lot of Food Network in between . . ."

When he didn't finish, she finished for him, " . . . in between fanging people?"

"And other things." The tone of his voice bespoke some unpleasant things. In fact, unpleasant was probably too mild a word.

She heard footsteps and it was Trond who spoke now. "Stop being so childish and come out now before I break the damn door down."

"Oh, that's charming," Zeb said to Trond. "She'll never come out now."

The two of them whispered together and then Trond said, "Never mind. Zeb and I will just be watching CNN to see what they're saying about the mission."

She had to leave her room then, of course. When she entered the kitchen, she found the two nitwits sitting on stools at the counter serving themselves from platters of paella swimming with shrimp, scallops, and lobster, a green salad, and fresh-baked bread. Bottles of beer sat next to their plates. From this vantage point, they could see the TV screen in the living room-in fact, the big-ass man toy of a TV could probably be seen in Chicago-which was set to CNN, but a commercial was on at the moment.

Helping herself to the food, she sat down and said to Zeb, "Where did you get fresh lettuce out here?" She assumed the bread and everything else had been frozen.

"I have a little garden on the side. Salad greens, carrots, tomatoes, herbs, just a few things. And grapes, lots of grapes. I like to garden."

"A garden?" Trond choked on a sprig of lettuce and rolled his eyes.

"I could tell the tomatoes were fresh-picked. My grandmother always had the best plum tomatoes. We would eat them right off the vine with nothing but salt." She hadn't thought of her grandmother in ages, one of her early good memories she seemed to have buried along with Cyndee and so many other things under the weight of those harsh three years of marriage.

"I like tomatoes," Trond said.

She just ignored him.

Trond did not like being ignored. Not one bit. "Do you feel better since your bath?" he asked. Although he preferred her normal brown hair to this blonde, she looked fresh and healthy with a ponytail and no makeup, wearing Zeb's sweatpants rolled up to the calves, a short-sleeved T-shirt hanging down to her elbows and the bottom knotted at her waist. The toes of her bare feet curled around the side rungs of her stool.

He was wearing a pair of Zeb's jeans and a T-shirt, following his own shower, but he didn't look half as good as she did. And that wasn't vanity, either. It was a fact. Vikings were uncommonly handsome men.

When she didn't answer his question but instead conversed with Zeb about his recipe for paella, ignoring him, he found himself getting annoyed. "Why is it you talk with Zeb but not me?"

"Because I'm mad at you."

"What did I do?"

"You told me you were gay."

"Oh." Of all the things that had happened today, that seemed the most unimportant. Still, he had to say, "How do you know I'm not gay?"

She gave him a not-very-complimentary head-to-toe scan before disclosing, "Because Zeb told me you weren't."

He flashed Zeb a wait-till-I-get-you-alone, you'll-be-sorry glare.

"Busted!" Zeb hooted, but then he put both hands in the air. "She asked, and I couldn't lie."

"It wouldn't be the first time."

"Just out of curiosity, what lamebrain reason did you have for telling her you were gay to begin with?" Zeb wanted to know.

"Yeah," Nicole agreed. "Tell us what your lamebrain reason was, lamebrain."

He did not like Nicole and Zeb getting so chummy. "You kept bird-dogging me, Nicole, asking about my secret. How could I tell you that I was there as a Viking vampire angel on a mission to save some SEALs?"

"Huh? What SEALs?"

"Sly and JAM were fanged by your buddy here and were on a fast track to joining the ranks of the Lucies."

Now it was Zeb who was subjected to Nicole's glare.

Zeb shrugged. "It's what I do. Fanging." Then he gave Trond a look of one-upmanship and disclosed, "Trond fangs, too."

Nicole's head swiveled back to him.

"Except I do it to save souls." Mostly. "Zeb does it to condemn them to a life of horror and sublime evil." He sliced Zeb with a so-there! look of triumph.

"Alas, Trond is right," Zeb said, fluttering his long eyelashes at Nicole. Since when do I notice the length of a man's eyelashes. Maybe I am becoming gay. Aaarrgh! "But all is not lost. I am hoping that Trond will be able to save me."

Whaaat? That was so low, bringing Nicole into their demon/angel arguments, that Trond couldn't even speak at first. But then he didn't have to because Nicole asked what he'd meant about Sly and JAM being his mission in Coronado.

He explained what he and Karl had done with Sly and JAM.

"I knew there was something different about those two, but I never suspected . . ." She cocked her head to the side, pondering. "Karl is one of you, too?"

Trond nodded. "He's a young vangel, though. He died in Vietnam."

"Good Lord!" Nicole was shaking her head, with disbelief or wonder, he wasn't sure which.

There were a series of staccato announcements on the TV: "News Flash: Navy SEAL mission in Davastan rescues female hostages thought to be long dead."

"The biggest U.S. military coup since the killing of Osama bin Laden."

"Najid bin Osama missing and thought dead."

"Welcome, panel of experts, to discuss today's surprising news." The news anchor then introduced high-level military and news personnel.

Nicole, Trond, and Zeb, without speaking, picked up their plates and beverages and moved to the living room where they could better view the news report, using a low coffee table to spread out their food. For more than an hour, the network reported evolving news, had its various experts discuss the implications of the event and speculate on what the future portended in the war against terrorism. They showed graphic depictions of the Davastan geography and Najid's compound, before and after the mission.

It was a scene Nicole could barely accept . . . her sitting in a seemingly normal living room, eating dinner, watching TV, with an angel vampire and a demon vampire. It was a story to tell her grandchildren some day. If she lived that long.

First on the TV were the poignant pictures of the ten girls from the Swiss boarding school being reunited with their families at the airport in Kabul, preparatory to their return to the U.S. Some were on crutches. Two were in wheelchairs. One was on a gurney.

"Wait a minute," she said. "How long have we been here? There's no way those families could have been notified, flown across the world, and been taking their girls home in the hours since this afternoon."

"A day and a half," Zeb said blithely.

"What?" she screeched. All the strange happenings today were beginning to accumulate inside her. Soon she would have a full-blown panic attack, not that she'd ever had one. She blew out a few times in a huffing fashion since she'd once seen someone do that on TV, except that person had been blowing into a paper bag. "How can that be?"

Zeb shrugged and took a huge bite of dessert-a strawberry cheesecake he'd defrosted for them that was, incidentally, delicious. "Demon time is different from human time."

That was another thing. What was this demon/angel/human nonsense? "Are you saying that you are . . . dead?" she asked Zeb.

"You could say that." He paused a moment, pinching his skin playfully. "Yep, I'm dead. How about you, Trond?"

Trond scowled at him. He was doing a lot of scowling today, though why he should scowl was beyond her. She was the one who had reason to scowl. Big-time.

"Yes, I am dead."

Her jaw dropped, and she just gaped at him.

She could tell he was uncomfortable with that disclosure. She had been contemplating a relationship with a dead guy. How pathetic did that make her? But then, she recalled the infamous utility closet incident and had to admit Trond sure knew how to kiss for a dead man. Probably lots of years of practice.

"What are you thinking?" Trond asked her.

"Nothing," she said, and avoided his gaze.

But Zeb just had to remark to Trond, "Her eyes got hazy for a moment, and her lips parted. I daresay her nipples are hard. Arousal would be my guess."

To give him credit, Trond reached over and swatted Zeb upside his fool head.

"What? I was making a simple observation."

"Some observations should be kept to yourself," Trond told him.

"Oh." Zeb turned to her then. "My apologies, m'lady."

Their attention turned back to the TV as the newscaster reported that author Selah ad Beham had just passed away of massive internal injuries, and there was a discussion of her various books and their poor reception in some parts of the Arab world. Various representatives of women's organization spoke with regret of her passing and her legacy that would go on beyond her death.

Nicole made a mental note to buy her books once she returned home.

If she returned home. Oh God! I can't think about that now.

The minor English princess, a cousin of Princes William and Harry about fifteen times removed, was already giving interviews; somehow, she would profit from the experience. But then, Nicole conceded, the woman deserved whatever she could bleed from the pain she'd suffered. They all did.

After that, the husband of the Greek starlet was interviewed. According to the surviving hostages, Athena had been killed during the first week of her captivity. One of the servants had let slip to Selah, who'd told the others, that Athena's torture had gone too far and led to her unplanned death. Planned or not, Morris Goldstein, Athena's husband, was devastated and furious. He swore he would get vengeance, even if it took all his fortune.

The young New York coed refused to be televised until her dental work could be completed. She would regain her looks, the commentator assured the audience, though that had to be the least of Beth's worries, in Nicole's opinion. Her father, like Goldstein, swore revenge and said that if his contributions to a militant Israeli group had been what caused the punishment inflicted on his daughter, he would double, no, triple his contributions in the future.

Then there were the on-site reports. Pictures were shown of the compound that seemed oddly undamaged, except for the wall of the harem chamber that the SEALs had blown open. None of the harem women had been harmed, but there were very few men left in the compound. That included Najid, who was mysteriously absent, though observers claimed he had been exiting the helo when attacked by hordes of huge scaly beasts, with fangs and long tails. There were also reports of odd, fanged creatures with wispy blue wings who fought the scaly beasts. The only thing left were piles of sulfurous slime all around the area.

Al Jazeera featured representatives of Najid's now almost defunct organization claiming the U.S. military had engaged in chemical warfare of some type and demanding a UN investigation. As for the reports of prowling beasts, the experts put that in the category of bigfoot sightings, or possibly figments of near-death imaginations.

Nicole recalled the scene that she'd seemed to see when Zeb had mysteriously whooshed them out of the harem building. Had it been her imagination, too? Confused, she turned to the two men, "Are you beasts like those they're describing?"

"Not exactly," Trond said.

"Trond is being kind. I am a beast exactly as they are describing. He, on the other hand, is another kind of beast. A good beast." Zeb smiled at Trond.

"Thanks a bunch," Trond said. "And all this buttering up isn't going to change anything, my demon friend."

"Notice that he called me friend," Zeb whispered loudly to Nicole. "I think I'm making progress."

She gave Trond a look of disapproval, as if he ought to be helping Zeb.