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better, mate. You’ll have to trust me on that.”
    Tate looked down at himself, licking at the blood hecould get. Then he stopped—and stared straight into the camera.
    “Cat.”
    I leaned forward, pressing the button on the monitor that allowed them to hear me.
    “I’m here, Tate. We all are.”
    Tate closed his eyes. “Don’t want you to see me like this,” he mumbled.
    Shame over my initial reaction made my voice raspy. “It’s okay, Tate. You’re—”
    “I don’t want you seeing me like this! ” he snarled, jerking against his clamps once again.
    “Kitten.” Bones glanced up at the screen. “It’s upsetting him. That’ll make it harder for him to control the blood craze. Best do as he wants.”
    My guilt deepened. Was this a coincidence, or could Tate somehow tell that I’d been repelled by watching him before? What a crappy leader I was, let alone a bad friend.
    “I’m going,” I said, managing to keep my voice steady. “I’ll…I’ll see you when you’re better, Tate.”
    Then I walked out of the room, not looking back as I heard Tate’s screams start up once again.
     
    I was sitting at my desk, staring off into space, when my cell phone rang. A glance at it showed my mother’s number, and I hesitated. I so wasn’t in the mood to deal with her. But it was unusual for her to be up this late, so I answered.
    “Hi Mom.”
    “Catherine.” She paused. I waited, tapping my finger on my desk. Then she spoke words that had me almost falling out of my chair. “I’ve decided to come to your wedding.”
    I actually glanced at my phone again to see if I’d been mistaken and it was someone else who’d called me.
    “Are you drunk?” I got out when I could speak.
    She sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t marry that vampire, but I’m tired of him coming between us.”
    Aliens replaced her with a pod person , I found myself thinking. That’s the only explanation.
    “So…you’re coming to my wedding?” I couldn’t help but repeat.
    “That’s what I said, isn’t it?” she replied with some of her usual annoyance.
    “Um. Great.” Hell if I knew what to say. I was floored.
    “I don’t suppose you’d want any of my help planning it?” my mother asked, sounding both defiant and uncertain.
    If my jaw hung any lower, it would fall off. “I’d love some,” I managed.
    “Good. Can you make it for dinner later?”
    I was about to say, Sorry, there was no way , when I paused. Tate didn’t even want me watching the video of him dealing with his bloodlust. Bones was leaving this afternoon to pick Annette up from the airport. I could swing by my mom’s when he went to get Annette, and then meet him back here afterward.
    “How about a late lunch instead of dinner? Say, around four o’clock?”
    “That’s fine, Catherine.” She paused again, seeming to want to say something more. I half expected her to yell, April Fool’s! but it was November, so that would be way early. “I’ll see you at four.”
    When Bones came into my office at dawn, since Dave was taking the next twelve-hour shift with Tate,I was still dumbfounded. First Tate turning into a vampire, then my mother softening over my marrying one. Today really was a day to remember.
     
    Bones offered to drop me off on his way to the airport, then pick me up on his way back to the compound, but I declined. I didn’t want to be without a car if my mother’s mood turned foul—always a possibility—or risk ruining our first decent mother-daughter chat by Bones showing up with a strange vampire. There were only so many sets of fangs I thought my mother could handle at the same time, and Annette got on my nerves even on the best of days.
    Besides, I could just see me explaining who Annette was to my mother. Mom, this is Annette. Back in the seventeen hundreds when Bones was a gigolo, she used to pay him to fuck her, but after more than two hundred years of banging him, now they’re just good friends.
    Yeah, I’d introduce Annette