“You’re even more beautiful than I thought you’d be.”

“Great.” The sarcasm in my voice didn’t appear to register. “You know, it’s been a really long night. Could you be creepy later?”

“I love you.”

“Apparently not.” I was feeling tired. Incredibly, I felt like yawning, even as someone grunted in pain.

“Incoming!” Quinn yelled. “There are more of them than we thought.” I tilted my head at Pierre, tried a winsome smile. Marcus stared at me.

“Are you going to be sick?”

Brothers.

“Pierre,” I said. Would fluttering my eyelashes be overkill? And did I even know how to flutter my eyelashes? “Could you help me?”

“Anything for you, my love.” Okay, so maybe this pheromone thing might be useful after all.

“There are bounty hunters coming.” I tried to look innocent. Lucy would have fallen over laughing if she could see me now. “They want to kill me and my brothers.”

“I will not let that happen,” he promised fervently.

“Great.” I patted his shoulder. “Go on.”

He made a very dramatic departure while Marcus and I watched. Quinn and Logan joined us.

“What’s going on?”

“Solange just got some sappy vamp to fight for us.”

“Then what are we standing around for?” Connor said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

We ran, leaving behind the sounds of Pierre and his friends battling the bounty hunters. I really hoped he’d win. I didn’t like the thought that I might have sent him to his death.

“Slowing down’s not exactly the goal here,” Logan said.

“Shouldn’t we help him?”

“No, run faster.”

“But . . .”

“Solange, you’re so pale you practically glow. Move it.” I might have argued further but I was feeling very sluggish. I was barely able to push one foot in front of the other, never mind performing heroics to save a vampire who I was probably going to have to stake anyway, if the pheromones had anything to say about it.

“I feel . . . funny.”

Connor scooped me up again. I was too exhausted to feel particularly alarmed, though some part of my brain registered that this was hardly the time for a nap.

“It’s just the change,” he said. “You’re overtired. It’s normal.” The yawn was so big it made my eyes water.

“Are you sure?”

I wasn’t awake long enough to hear his reassurance.

CHAPTER 14

Lucy

“What the bloody hell do you mean Solange went to see Veronique? And Natasha?” Everyone took a healthy step back out of range of Helena’s fury. “I specifically said she wasn’t to leave the house.” Liam sat in his chair and grimly drank a brandy. Hyacinth’s pug was sniffing under the front door and whining. I shifted from foot to foot. The thick miasma of anger and pheromones was starting to make even me light-headed. Liam reached out for his wife’s hand.

“They’ll be all right,” he said darkly. I’d never heard his voice have that particular tone and kind of hoped I’d never hear it again. It made the hairs on the back of my neck shiver.

“Why’d Lady Natasha set a bounty in the first place?” Nicholas asked hotly.

“There’s a rumor going around,” Sebastian explained. “That Solange really is going to take Lady Natasha’s crown as soon as she changes.” We stared at him, all sorts of horrible scenarios unfolding in the spaces between us.

“But Solange would hate that,” I said.

“But Lady Natasha would never want to be anything else,” Helena said. “So she’ll never understand that, or trust it. Also, she knows Montmartre is courting Solange, in his own twisted fashion. Even though they haven’t been together for a long time, she doesn’t share well.” She glanced at the window. “Where the bloody hell is Hyacinth?

It’ll be dawn soon.”

“Bruno has his boys out looking for her.”

“I should be with them.” Sebastian was standing stiffly in the corner, glowering.

“No.” Helena narrowed her eyes in his direction.

“Mom.”

“I said no, Sebastian. You’ve done enough tonight.”

“What about London?” Nicholas asked. “She’s the one who came to get Solange.” Liam sighed. “She’s a royalist, like the rest of that side of the family. But I have to believe she didn’t know about the danger.”

“There’s more.” Geoffrey tapped his pen on the cover of a leather-bound book.

His hair stuck up everywhere; he’d been raking his hand through it constantly since he got here. Liam tilted his head back and briefly closed his eyes.

“Of course there is.”

“I’ve finished analyzing the Hypnos sample.”

Liam straightened, his eyes flaring like hot silver.

“Tell me.”

“Several zombie drugs, as we’d assumed,” Geoffrey said.

“And?”

His expression was hard. He didn’t look like a slightly distracted scientist anymore, or like the handsome intellectual who attracted all the divorced women in town.

“It’s ancient blood. Ancient enough to be Enheduanna.” The silence fell like a hammer through a glass window. I blinked.