No wonder Drew had fallen so hard for her. Kat felt awful about the whole thing. She'd pushed them at each other when, now, it was obvious that Miranda was hung up on this David guy, and all her talk about not being ready for men was a smokescreen for not having the one she wanted.

In the few days since David had come waltzing back into her life, Miranda had changed again. There was something about her that was different physically, but Kat couldn't put her finger on it; regardless, she was acting like an amnesiac who had suddenly remembered she was royalty. It might have been annoying if it hadn't been so . . . believable.

Seeing her now, Kat felt like a fool for even considering Miranda and Drew as a couple. He was a sweet guy and had a lot going for him, but he was way too meek for a force of nature like her. As arrogant and cold as David had seemed, Kat had to admit he had charisma. She wanted to know more about him, though, before she made up her mind. Not just any guy was good enough for Miranda, no matter how disgustingly hot he was.

One thing was absolutely sure: He was no drug counselor. If she'd had to put him in that world, she'd have pegged him as a drug lord. No way someone with the money to afford those clothes worked for human services. Particularly not given how he'd looked at Kat and Drew like they were from another species.

Miranda finished her last song to an eardrumpulverizing ovation and bowed, saying something to the audience about how awesome they were and good night. She walked off the stage, pulling her guitar over her head and handing it to a sound tech . . .

. . . then stopped, wavered on her feet, and passed out cold.

"I'm telling you, I'm fine," Miranda told the nurse for the hundredth time. "I just got overheated, is all."

"Miss Grey," the round, stern black woman in blue scrubs said, "you're severely dehydrated and you said yourself you haven't eaten in three days. We need to do some blood work-"

Miranda snorted.

"-to find out why you've lost your appetite, and we need to get some fluids into you."

Kat, who was hovering near the entrance to the cubicle, said, "Mira . . . honey, listen to her. You've got to eat."

Miranda hopped down from the examination table, standing at her full height, which barely came up to the nurse's nose. She was in her bra and panties, and the nurse was clearly the don't-fuck-with-me-sugar type, but the woman moved back a foot or so anyway as Miranda's aura hit her.

"I want to go home," Miranda said calmly. "I am refusing treatment. I'll sign whatever forms you need me to."

The nurse looked like she wanted to give her an earful but instead just shook her head and said, "Fine."

Kat was giving Miranda a slightly nervous look. "What the hell has gotten into you lately?" she asked as soon as they were alone.

Miranda looked up at the ceiling. "I'm fine, Kat. Can you drive me home?"

"Sure. But only if you'll let me take you out to dinner first. And only if I see you eat."

Miranda crossed her arms and regarded her friend for a minute. Kat was genuinely worried for her; she was only trying to help, just like she'd always tried to do. There was no reason to treat her badly. "I'm sorry," Miranda said with chagrin. "I don't mean to be a bitch. It's just . . . I don't want them to poke and prod me. There's nothing wrong with me that a good meal and a long sleep won't cure."

Kat stared her down, but eventually looked away, making an I give up! noise. "Okay, okay. I'll go bring the car around to the exit. You sign your forms or whatever, and don't breathe fire at anybody else."

"Can you take this?"

Kat took her guitar with a grunt of assent and left.

Miranda pulled her clothes back on, glad she'd had the presence of mind to ask the tech for her guitar before Kat had whisked her away from the club to the Brackenridge Hospital ER. Otherwise she'd have had to go back for it, and all she really wanted was to go home.

As she put her boots on, she had to stop and breathe. This place . . . there was so much pain. Everyone here was afraid. Afraid of disease, of hurting, of death . . . especially death. She could feel the doctors and nurses moving among the patients, their calm heads like stars in the blackness of space. Their way was to find answers, to hunt down and kill illnesses and stitch together holes. What would they find if they looked at her blood right now? She had no idea, but she knew it scared her.

She drew the curtain aside and poked her head out of the cubicle; her nurse was nowhere in sight. Good.

Miranda gathered her bag and left. Halfway to the exit she saw the nurse and ducked into an empty cubicle until she passed.

The nurses' station was near her, and she saw through the edge of the curtain that a man in scrubs was standing there filling something out while a woman in a different style of uniform-white, with a badge pinned to her shirt instead of hanging from a lanyard-waited with a large red cooler at her feet.

"Twelve units," the male nurse was reading off. "Five O positive, five O negative, one AB positive, one AB negative. Sounds about right. Oh, wait . . . wasn't there supposed to be another cooler with the As and Bs? Or was that coming separately?"

The woman opened the cooler and looked inside. Miranda saw dark red in plastic, and her stomach turned a somersault. She recognized that packaging: a bag with a black-and-white label divided into four sections, bar-coded with type and donor ID.

The roof of her mouth started to itch again. Her hand tightened on the curtain.

"I think you're right," the woman was saying. "Let me run out and check the van to be sure."

She hurried out of the ER, leaving the cooler behind.

Miranda stared hard at the desk nurse. Look away. Look away.

He turned to the left and began to dig around in a drawer for something.

Miranda darted out of the cubicle and, keeping her intention focused on the nurse, shoved her hand inside the cooler. Before she could even think about what she was doing, she had seized one of the bags inside and stuck it inside her jacket.

She all but ran for the exit, letting the nurse's mind go at the last minute before she burst outside, where Kat was waiting for her.

She slid into the passenger seat. "Thanks," she said.

Kat did not look at all happy with her. "Anything for you, sugarbean. Now, where do you want to eat? Kerbey?"

"Okay. That's fine. Actually . . . can we run by my place first? I'd like to get out of these clothes and put my guitar away."

"Sure."

Kat drove away from the hospital, and Miranda kept her arms crossed over her chest, feeling the coldness of the bag seeping through her shirt. What was she doing? Had she lost her mind? She'd just stolen blood from a hospital. It might have been meant for babies or someone's crippled old mother. She was riding in a car with her friend as if everything was normal, and she had blood in her pocket.

"Wait here," Miranda said when they reached the apartment complex. "I'll be back in five minutes."

She unloaded her guitar and went into the kitchen, taking the bag and stowing it in the fridge-for a second she wondered what shelf it should go on. The crisper? She stuck it behind the milk, then went to change.

She forced herself to eat most of a short stack of pancakes, though it was a struggle not to throw them right back up again. She had barely eaten anything since the burrito Faith had fed her, but it wasn't for lack of appetite like the nurse had thought. She had tried to eat. She'd tried tempting herself with all her favorite foods, even ice cream from Amy's. Everything tasted like sawdust and ash.

It had surprised her that she was dehydrated, though. She'd been drinking water continuously, though it never seemed to slake her thirst. She'd bought a case of Vitamin Water so that she'd be getting at least a few nutrients.

The amazing thing was that she felt amazing. She was constantly hungry and thirsty, sometimes to the point of crying, but when she could put it out of her mind, she felt like Superwoman. Since she'd left Sophie's she felt like she could fly. She didn't want that feeling to go away.

As soon as she saw the blood in the cooler, it all made horrible sense.

"So Drew's a wreck," Kat was saying over her coffee. "He feels terrible. Are you planning to forgive him?"

"Forgive him? For what?" Miranda asked, blinking. She hadn't really been listening, but she remembered quickly enough. "Oh, that. I guess. I know he didn't mean any harm."

"You should tell him that. He's really nuts about you-right now he's convinced you hate him and he's on the verge of hara-kiri."

"I'll e-mail him," Miranda assured her.

"When are you going to tell me more about this other guy?"

Miranda smiled a little. "What do you want to know?"

"You said you met him at rehab. What does he do?"

She cast about in her mind for a suitable description that wouldn't be too much of a lie. "He's in law enforcement," she said. "He's the one that took me there in the first place."

"And the other night, you slept together?"

"Yes."

"I thought you weren't ready for men."

Miranda cut up the last half of her pancake to make it look like she was eating it. "David is different," she said, though it sounded weak even to her ears without any sort of background story. "I trust him. I don't think I can ever trust any other man again."

"Do you love him?"

"Yes. Very much."

"I guess I'm happy for you, then."

"You guess?"

Kat made a face. "To be honest, honey, he seemed like kind of a dick. But I only met him for about thirty seconds, so I could be wrong."

Miranda laughed. "He's not. I promise. He's just . . . he has a lot of responsibility, and he's not very good with normal people. He's sort of a fanged teddy bear."

Kat looked even more dubious. "I am going to get to meet him again, right? As best friend I reserve the right to kick his ass to the curb if I don't approve."

Miranda smiled at her, warmly, feeling grateful as well as ashamed. There was so much she wanted to tell Kat, and she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to. The secrecy of the Shadow World was what kept it from destruction. The Signets worked diligently to keep vampire kind out of the media and off the radar. Did she have the right to let a human in on its existence?

"We'll all hang out," Miranda told Kat. "It takes him a while to warm up, but you'll like him once you get to know him."

Kat insisted on paying the bill, and Miranda was relieved to leave the cafe. She'd gotten used to the pressure of a room full of humans, but it was still a strain, especially after a night of performing and two hours in the ER surrounded by the injured and dying.

She told herself it was that, and not the thought of what was in her fridge, that made her so anxious to get home.

Kat let her out at her door with a hug and cheek-kiss. "Call me," she said firmly.

Miranda agreed, and watched her go, making sure she had pulled out of the parking lot before turning the deadbolt and switching on the living room lamp.

She felt sick to her stomach from the pancakes, and by the time she got her coat and boots off, she was so nauseated she flew to the bathroom, where her dinner made an inglorious return engagement.

It was Thursday. David had said she should be feeling more normal by now. She contemplated calling him, but didn't want him to worry. She'd see him tomorrow anyway after her show. She just had to keep it together until then.

He was probably going to be angry with her. He'd wanted her to let his blood work its way out of her body this time, and turn her properly at the Haven where she'd be protected and he could control the situation. She knew he was right.

But she was so hungry . . . and nothing was helping. It couldn't hurt to keep his blood alive in her veins for one more day, could it?

She flushed the toilet and washed her face with ice-cold water. Her reflection looked green around the gills, and the flush of power had faded from her face, leaving behind an ashen pallor much like the one she'd had that first night. She couldn't stand to be that sick again.

Just this once.

Miranda fetched the bag from the fridge and set it on the counter, wondering how to go about it. Should she heat it? Put it in a glass? Stick a straw in it? She'd never seen David actually drink from one, but she couldn't picture him sucking on the bag like a Capri Sun. Surely he used a glass.

She opened the cabinet. A champagne flute? No, something for a red.

She settled on a coffee mug so that she could put it in the microwave for a few seconds. That had to be better, more like . . . more like fresh from a person.

Snipping off a corner of the bag, she poured enough to halfway fill the mug, and the rich coppery smell of it hit her like a sledgehammer. Her legs almost buckled beneath her, but she held herself up and punched twenty seconds, watching the cheerful I WENT BATS IN AUSTIN! logo turn in circles.

She took the cup out and sniffed it, then took an experimental sip.

Miranda moaned softly. As soon as it hit her tongue, she felt warmth and renewed strength trickling through her. One sip turned into a swallow, and before she knew it she had drained the mug and was refilling it with shaking hands. The orgasmic rush she remembered from drinking David's blood returned, though not as intensely. She had to force herself not to gulp-the thought of vomiting blood was the most disgusting thing she could imagine, and it would be such a waste. She didn't know when she could get any more.

She ended up sinking to her knees on the floor, her hands splayed out on the tile, heady joy and pleasure rocking her back and forth. The painful burning and itching in her mouth was gone, and so was her fatigue and weakness. Her vision was acute again, the colors in the room sharper. She hadn't realized how dull her senses were becoming as the week had worn on. Now everything felt right again.

It was wonderful.

She was laughing as she fell asleep on the kitchen floor.

David Solomon had been the first Prime to computerize all his records. Everything in his Haven was stored electronically; everything was beyond state-of-the-art, because if he didn't have the technology he wanted, he simply created it. The com system, the network connecting all the Signets all over the world, the sensors that now helped protect Austin-he had a dozen patents to his name already and was in progress on several more, including a new kind of solar cell that harnessed the vampires' universal enemy as a source of renewable energy to power not just the Haven, but all its systems and even the cars.

At first the other Signets had laughed, but eventually they caught on to the convenience and efficiency. California was the first to buy a software license and join the network; Deven knew a good thing when he saw it. After that, most of the others fell in line. Even a few Signets who were outright antagonistic toward California, and by extension the South, had expressed interest in upgrading their archaic communications.

The only area where Faith had really seen a problem was when it came to research. Everything David had brought with him from California, including all their information on the original Blackthorn syndicate, was on a server. Anything dated before the Signet changed hands was still kept in hard copies in the archives of the Haven. Auren had been particularly disdainful toward technology, so all his old patrol reports were still on paper, handwritten.

That meant that when David asked her to find out more about Ariana and Bethany Blackthorn by going through Auren's files, she wanted nothing more than to beat him about the head with the 1954-1955 bound reports until he had a better idea.

"All I'm asking is for you to pull relevant files," the Prime said. "Eventually I'm going to try to scan and upload all of Auren's old shit so we can go through it and save what we want, then shred and burn the rest. All it's doing right now is taking up space. Just bring me what you think I should look at."

"How the hell do I find it?" Faith asked. The task ahead was daunting, to put it mildly. The archives consisted of eight rooms lined floor to ceiling with shelves of files, some so old they were falling apart or unreadable. "Is any of it in order?"

"Yes, Faith." This newfound patience of his, though refreshing in some senses, tended to make her even more impatient in response. "Auren's archive will be the most recent, so it will be in room eight. According to Bethany, she and Ariana were only here for about four years before Auren died, so look for anything that corresponds to that timeline, pull it, and bring it to me."

"And why do I get this honor? Am I the secretary in command now?"

David looked at her from the array of electronic bits and half-constructed sensors he was working on to further refine the network in town. "I don't trust anyone else in those rooms," he said. "There could be a thousand kinds of sensitive information in there, and it's for our eyes only."

Grumbling, Faith stalked off to the archive hall, where each room's number was hung on its corresponding door. Room eight was on the left end. She unlocked the door with her com and let herself in, trying not to choke at the dust and the stuffy smell of neglected space.

"Oh, Jesus," she muttered. "This is going to take me all year."

Faith took a minute to get her bearings; near as she could tell, the files were in something like chronological order. She started to sort through the first stack, finding as she'd figured mostly patrol reports that were essentially useless now.

An hour later she was still going through them and her patience was wearing perilously thin. She tossed another handful of papers onto the stack on the floor; at least she'd have a box of them to incinerate later so that in that distant era when David had time to spare for archiving, he could skip over them.

The entire Haven was full of people who could be doing this. Surely she had more important work to be going on with. She could have assigned a couple of green recruits to this and gone back to the city for another round of patrols. She didn't trust the peace any more than the Prime did, but he was using the momentary respite to tighten the network. She wanted to be out on the streets making sure the Shadow World knew who was in charge.