"There must be others who know about you."

Jameson Bryant lifted his brows. "Oh, there are. That's part of the problem. They're mostly dedicated to hunting us down like animals. Slaughtering us, if possible."

Will brought his head up slowly.

"And besides those things, Willem Stone, I trust you."

"You barely know me."

"I know what you did for me that night in the hospital. And I know the kind of man you are.

I'm very good at sensing these things-just as you are."

Will lowered his head, thinking it over. He didn't have a job right now. He had all the time in the world.

"I'll pay you whatever you want," the vampire said.

"I have more money now than I'll ever want or need."

"Then what? What can I do to convince you to do this for me?"

Swallowing hard, Will met and held the creature's eyes. "Show me Sarafina."

They walked along the rain-damp sidewalk, past concrete and brick facades, and windows protected by bars, past well-cleaned stoops, the pattern broken only by the occasional alley, until the vampire stopped in front of a red metal door. Cars hissed past, their lights waxing and waning in time. Horns blew now and then. Not with the constant, unending taxicab language of midtown Manhattan. In midtown the horns spoke in loud voices, arguing and cussing each other out in a code only they and their drivers could understand. The yellow cabs spoke to one another with a little more civility in the Village.

"This is where she is?" Will asked. He was impatient, his good leg tired of bearing most of his weight, while his injured one ached mildly as his meds wore off.

"I don't do this thing lightly, Stone," Bryant told him. "Revealing the ident.i.ty of another vampire to a mortal is-well, it's not done."

"Because of those who hunt you," Will said, nodding in full agreement with the wisdom of it. "But you know I'm not one of those."

"I know you're not one of those. And I know you're no threat to this woman."

He should have been insulted. "Because of my injury," he said, again filling in the blanks on his own.

"No. Because of her power."

Will dragged his gaze from the red door and the sign above it that read The Red Lion, with its stylized scarlet lion silhouettes on either side of the words, and focused on Bryant. He didn't show any sign that he was joking.

"I knew you'd ask about her in exchange for your help before I ever showed up at your door tonight, my friend. As I told you, I did some digging before I arrived. What I've learned about Sarafina-it's less than pleasant."

Will lifted his brows. "Then she's not the right woman. The Sarafina I knew-or imagined- was young and trusting. Too trusting, I'm afraid."

"How much different are you today from the child you were at, say, eight years old?"

Will knew what he was getting at and didn't bother answering. The answer was obvious. He was a completely different person now.

"She's lived five times as long as you have, Willem."

He nodded once. "So what are you telling me? That she's not a tame, friendly vampire like you?"

"Are you patronizing me now?"

He looked away. "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that."

"No, I didn't." He drew a deep breath, sighed. "From what I understand, Sarafina is...dangerous. Most of us today live on animal blood, or what we can steal from blood banks.

Some drink from living beings, but only in small amounts, leaving them unharmed."

"They don't remember and run screaming to the tabloids the next day?" Will asked.

"They remember what we let them remember."

Will digested that without asking any of the questions that were swirling in his mind, though Bryant paused to give him time to ask them. He didn't care about their methods. He wanted to know about Sarafina. "Sarafina is different. Rumor has it she...well... her victims sometimes disappear."

He blinked. This couldn't be the same gentle woman he'd encountered in his mind. Then again, he had seen what she'd been through. Had losing Bartrone twisted her mind?

"She is not overly fond of humans, I think," Bryant said.

"Then why would we find her here, at a bar full of them?"

The vampire shook his head slowly. "I don't know. But I was told she comes here often, sits at a booth in the back and writes in a book of some kind. She never hunts here, so it's the safest place for you to approach her."

"Why does she never...hunt here?"

"It would stir up too many questions, attract the vampire hunters in droves, and that would mean she would no longer be able to come here every night. It would ruin it for her. The place without a single sign of a vampire is the place where you'll find them in droves, Willem. A place where there has been a kill, or a blood bank break-in, or any other sign of our presence, is the last place you will find us."

Again Will nodded. "You'd make good soldiers."

"In a way, that's exactly what we are." Jameson paused for just a moment, then reached for the door. "Are you ready?"

He nodded. Inside, he was preparing himself for disappointment. This woman was not going to be his Gypsy enchantress. She wasn't. There was no way that the Sarafina of his dreams could have become a killer.

"I'm not going in with you. She'll sense the presence of another vampire immediately and might perceive you as more of a threat. She tends to shun the company of others like her, or so I'm told."

"So she's not overly fond of humans or vampires," Will said, thinking aloud. "Maybe she just likes being alone."

He looked through the door Bryant held open. People milled around carrying drinks, while others sat at small square tables on impossibly high stools. Still others lined the bar. The place was smoke-filled, the music a little too loud for his taste. A little too hip-hop for his taste, as well.

He preferred cla.s.sic rock, probably a sign of his age.

"I'll meet you tomorrow night at your apartment to finalize our bargain, Willem," Jameson Bryant said.

"All right." The vampire didn't seem to harbor any doubt whatsoever that this was going to be the woman Will sought.

"Be careful."

Will nodded, barely hearing him as he stepped into the bar. The door closed behind him. He limped to the first vacant stool he spotted, sat down to rest his leg and ordered a shot of Black Velvet. Sarafina sat in the back, at her usual place, her pen moving slowly and deliberately over the parchment-like pages of the large, velvet-covered book. She was writing about Dante now. About his betrayal and their resulting estrangement. He had been her only surviving family member, her grandnephew. But they'd been more than that to each other. She'd become his mother when she'd found him near death on the ground and fed him from her veins, making him immortal, as she was. She'd become his sister when he had grown in power and wisdom until he was nearly her equal. And then he'd become her betrayer when he'd chosen his precious lover over her.

Dante and Morgan lived in bliss like a pair of happily wed mortals in Maine. Dante had been neutered, she wrote. His fangs filed off, his claws clipped. He no longer lived the life of a lone predator. The life of a vampire.

She did. She relished it. And she always would.

An odd chill brushed over the nape of her neck, and Sarafina's pen stilled. She lifted her head slowly, feeling the room around her. There was someone there. Someone familiar.

Turning, she searched the bar, her gaze guided by instinct. There was a whisper tickling her mind, one she couldn't quite hear, but the sensation was so like one from long ago. It had been a century since she'd felt this particular presence. But the last time, he had told her his name.

Willem. And that he lived in New York. And while she hated to acknowledge it, that was part of the reason she had come here after her break with Dante. She'd vowed never again to become dependent upon another living being for her happiness. They only let her down; it never failed.

But perhaps her friend from the spirit realm would contact her here. And, she had to admit, she would welcome that. It had been so long....

"Sarafina?"

The voice came from behind her. It was the voice of her familiar spirit. It was a voice she would never mistake. And yet it came not in a mental whisper but as an actual sound. How could that be?

She turned her head slowly, not getting up.

A man stood there. A mortal man. She'd seen her spirit once, in her crystal. This man looked harder. Less mystical, more physical.

He extended a hand in greeting. "My name is Willem Stone. Do you remember me?"

She glanced down at the hand he offered. "You're just a man." He couldn't be the one. He couldn't be. He only sounded the same-and looked similar, too. But her spirit could not be flesh.

She didn't trust people on this plane the way she'd trusted him. He couldn't be the one. Please, G.o.d, she thought, don't let him be the one. Not an ordinary man.

He withdrew his hand slowly, nodding once. "Yeah. Do you mind if I talk to you? Just for a few minutes?"

Blinking slowly, she let her gaze explore him. He was, perhaps, not so ordinary. His build, his physique, spoke of power. He must be strong, for a mortal. He used a cane to help him walk, which she supposed was a flaw, but a recent one, she sensed. He was in pain. She knew that immediately. He kept it pushed to one side of his awareness, as if he were the one in control of it, rather than the other way around. He wore suede hiking shoes, khaki trousers that fit loose in the crotch, making her wonder what they hid. His sweater was a pullover in olive drab, with leather patches sewn onto the shoulders and elbows, and a patch on the front that bore foreign letters.

Perhaps he was not so ordinary at all.

"Sit with me...for a moment."

Nodding, he came around the table, limping, and slid into the booth opposite her. There was a candle burning inside an amber gla.s.s jar in the table's center. Its light played on his face, which was not handsome, but hard. Sharp lines at the jaw and nose. An iron brow. Arctic-blue eyes in stark contrast to the dark, closely cut hair and deeply tanned skin.

"What did you want to speak to me about?" she asked, leaning back in her seat, enjoying her exploration of him. Enjoying even more that it didn't seem to bother him or unsettle him in the least.

"Excuse me? I'm sorry to interrupt," a waitress said, standing beside the table.

Sarafina lifted her brows, sending daggers with her eyes, but the twit was too focused on the man to notice.

"Are you Colonel Stone?" she asked. '"Cause I saved the issue of TIME that had you on the cover, and I'd just love to get your autograph to go with it. I think you're just-"

He held up a hand, which stopped the woman's mindless chatter, thank the stars. His eyes met Sarafina's, then shifted to the little redhead. "Sorry," he said. "I get this a lot, but I'm not him."

The girl frowned, as if confused. "Oh. I'm...sorry, then." She walked away, puzzling things over in her very tiny mind.

Sarafina looked at her mortal companion. "So it's Colonel Willem Stone."

"Retired."

"And you're some kind of...war hero?"

"I was captured and tortured and lived to tell the tale. To some that makes me a hero. Given the choice, I'd have foregone the pleasure."

She felt her lips pull at the corners. And she remembered a vision of her spirit lover-bound and being tortured by red-hot irons. It drove a deep chill up her spine, and she had to shake the image away. This wasn't him, though he used the same name and appeared in the same place her spirit had told her he would.

"I know you," he said. He dropped the words and just left them lying there.

She was unsure what he expected her to do with them. "I doubt that, Willem. No man truly knows me."

"I do. I know all about you. I know about the camp. I know about your sister, Katerina, and how she and Andre betrayed you. I know about Bartrone and the way he died. And I know what you are."

She sat very still, watching him, listening to him, a sense of unholy dread spreading in her chest. When he stopped speaking, she leaned across the table, curling her hand around his nape and drawing him closer to her to whisper against his ear. "And you think that I can allow you to live, now that you've confessed all you know about me?"

His own whisper, just as soft, and spoken so close that his lips moved against her ear with the words, startled her. "I'm not an easy man to kill, Sarafina. But if you want to try, I'd be more than happy to play."

The feel of those lips, that warm breath against her ear, set a fire in her loins. Images of the night her spirit had come to her in her dreams-made love to her in a way no man, mortal or vampire, had ever done-made her shiver with desire. She drew away sharply, flicking her eyes to his. "Perhaps we'll play first. And you can die later."

"However you want to do it."

She nodded slowly, reminding herself that he wasn't the one. It was safe to love a spirit. Not so a man. "How do you know all the things you know about me, Willem Stone?"

He held her gaze as a vampire might do, probing, trying to read her thoughts with his eyes.

"My G.o.d, Sarafina, you have to remember. I was there. I was with you. I was the voice that spoke to you inside your mind. You called me your beloved spirit. I told you I was just a man."

She nodded slowly, searching her mind for an explanation besides that one. He was going to put out the one remaining sliver of light in her life-the hope that one day her spirit would return to her, love her again as he had so long ago.

"That's impossible," she whispered. "You weren't yet born when I was experiencing those things."

"I know it's impossible. I also know it happened. I used to doubt it, thinking maybe it was because of the torture or some kind of mental illness, but now that I've seen you..." He shook his head. "I know it was real, Sarafina. Do you?"

She studied his face. "The things you describe... happened. There was a voice that spoke to me at those times. He said the very things you claim to have said to me. I've never told these things to anyone, nor even written of them in my journals."

"Then there's no way I could know them-unless I was there."

She nodded slowly, realizing it was true, and trying to keep the fact that his words had shattered what remained of her heart hidden from him. He was real. Physical. Physical beings lied and betrayed and died, and left their beloved alone and in pain. She couldn't love her spirit lover if he were a physical being. She wouldn't.

She kept her eyes averted. "What do you want from me now?"

He seemed stunned, maybe a bit hurt. "I...I don't know. I guess I just wanted to see you. To convince myself I wasn't losing my mind."

"You needed your experiences validated." It was difficult to keep her voice from trembling with the pain. "That's done. What else?"

He blinked, perhaps taken aback at her directness. "I had to know that you were all right.

When last I saw you, you were..." The pain overwhelmed her restraint. "When last you saw me, you promised to try to come again as soon as you could. But I never heard from you again until now. It's been a hundred years, Willem."