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rogue Weres, Jannalynn’s betrayal of her pack and her leader, the horrible things she’d done. I couldn’t imagine how Sam was feeling. Not only had he learned the true nature of his girlfriend—though evidence suggested that he’d always suspected Jannalynn was playing a deeper game—but he had to absorb her death, which had been truly gruesome. Jannalynn had been trying to kill Alcide, her packleader, but she’d given Sam a mortal wound instead. Then Mustapha Khan had executed her.
    I opened my mouth to try to begin the story, and found I didn’t know where to start. I looked at my friends-since-childhood buddy helplessly. She waited, with a look that said she intended to sit right there in my kitchen until I answered her. Finally, I said, “The gist of it is that Jannalynn is now completely and permanently out of the picture, and I saved Sam’s life. Eric feels that I should have done something for him, instead. Something significant, that I was aware of.” I left off the punch line.
    “So Jannalynn hasn’t gone to Alaska to visit her cousin.” Tara was compressing her lips to keep from looking as freaked as she felt. But there was a hint of triumph, too. She was thinking she had known something was fishy about that story.
    “Not unless Alaska has gotten a lot hotter.”
    Tara giggled; but then, she hadn’t been there. “She did something that bad? I read in the paper that someone had confessed over the telephone to the officer in charge of Kym Rowe’s murder and then vanished. Would that be Jannalynn, by any chance?”
    I nodded. Tara didn’t seem shocked. Tara knew all about people who did bad things. Two of them had been her parents.
    “So you haven’t talked to Sam since then,” she said.
    “Not since the next morning.” I hoped Tara would say she’d seen him, talked to him, but instead she moved on to a topic she considered more interesting.
    “What about the Viking? Why is he pissed? His life didn’t need saving. He’s already dead.”
    I held my hands palms up and open, trying to think how to phrase it. Well, I might as well be honest, if not graphic. “It’s like . . . I had a magic wish. I could have used it for Eric’s benefit, to get him out of a bad situation. And it would have changed his future. But instead, I used it to save Sam.” And then I’d waited for the repercussions. Because using strong magic always had consequences.
    Tara, who had had bad experiences with vampires, smiled broadly. Though Eric had saved her life once upon a time, she included him in her generic dislike of the undead. “Did a genie grant you three wishes or something?” she said, trying to keep the pleasure out of her voice.
    Actually, though she was joking, that was almost the truth. Substitute “fairy” for “genie” and “one wish” for “three wishes,” and you’d have the story in a nutshell. Or in a cluviel dor.
    “Kind of like that,” I said. “Eric does have a lot on his plate right now. Stuff that will completely transform his life.” Though what I said was absolutely true, it came out sounding like a weak excuse. Tara tried not to sneer.
    “Has anyone from his posse called you? What about Pam?” Tara was thinking I had reason to worry if the area vampires had decided I was nothing to them. And she was right to be concerned. “Just because you break up with the big guy doesn’t mean they hate you, right?” She was thinking they probably did.
    “I don’t think we’ve exactly broken up,” I said. “But he’s pissed off. Pam passed along a message from him. A text message. ”
    “Better than a Post-it note. Who have you heard from?” Tara asked impatiently. “All this weird shit has happened, and no one’s calling you to talk about it? Sam’s not over here scrubbing your floors and kissing your feet? This house should be full of flowers, candy, and male strippers.”
    “Ah,” I said intelligently. “Well, the yard’s strangely full of flowers. And