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was almost empty. “One week, Ms. Monk, here in Copacabana. I teach you to detect fey, you come to the decision to join with me. Or not.”
    I looked at the drink and then back up at him. “If I don't come to the decision you want?” I left the question hanging between us.
    “Then I shall have to take what I want. What the Iunctio wants. What the world needs if it is to remain safe from the Dökkálfa .” I don't know if he had waited to mention the Dökkálfa , the Dark Fey, right until the end of our little quasi negotiations, but his timing was spot on. I feared the Dökkálfa and what they could do. Hell, everyone needed to fear them.
    He pushed the drink closer towards me and sat back to watch. I could fight him now, or I could use him to prepare myself to battle the Fey. I wasn't agreeing to join with him, I was just agreeing to the time-frame and possibility of doing so. I couldn't imagine my desire to not join would change in that short length of time. And, I wasn't ready to leave Rio. Rio had somehow got itself settled in my soul. I was in love with the city already. And it needed me.
    One more week. I picked up the drink and took a deep breath in, then slowly let the fire burn its path down my throat. Avery drank his and refilled the glasses.
    I don't remember much of the rest of the night. We finished that bottle, alarmingly. Maybe because I was already drunk, or maybe because I was just letting go and letting someone else take charge for a change. To look after me for once. But, I think we may have opened another bottle as well as that first. I'm not sure, but the fact that I let Avery take me back to my studio apartment on Rua Duvivier and the fact that I let him accompany me into the tiny flat, leant itself to the thought that I had consumed more alcohol than was intelligently safe.
    I remembered him laying me out on my bed. A double twin that takes up most of the small studio room. I did remember him throwing my jacket over the sofa, then removing my shoes. His hand at my waist as he removed my knife and its holder, then covered me in a blanket. The sound of the wooden shutters closing on the large window above the bed. The window that was the only redeeming quality of the pathetic little hole I called home. The view towards the beach down the street I lived is what sold me on the place. Not the décor or size, that's for sure. And then I heard the sound of the mattress squeaking under his weight as he lay down beside me.
    “Go away,” I whispered, realising my head was now pounding and my stomach was churning and the room was on a high spin.
    “One week, Ms. Monk. And I'm not going anywhere,” he replied, tucking the sides of the blanket in beneath me, making a cocoon on top of the bed. I realised then, he was on top of the covers, not beneath them with me. A breath of air escaped my lungs in relief.
    “I hope you don't snore,” he said in his deep voice. “Now sleep.”
    His command must have been laced in Sanguis Vitam , because the next thing I knew I was dreaming.

Chapter 3
Hunter
    Michel was there.
    It was the first time I had dreamed of Michel since his death. That set the alarm bells ringing.
    Then I noticed where we were, what I was wearing. We were on the hill over looking the lambs on my parents' farm and I was wearing a long, flowing white dress, that wrapped around my ankles and fanned my bare skin beneath.
    If Avery was engineering this dream, why would he choose here? Michel knew how important my parents' farm was to me. He'd always known, but Avery hadn't. And I hadn't been thinking of my parents' farm when I fell asleep, so the chances of Avery being able to pluck this memory from my mind, just didn't seem possible.
    “You cannot trust him.” The dream Michel's voice sounded remarkably real.
    “I know,” I said, allowing myself the opportunity to drink him all in with my eyes.
    He looked paler than usual. More gaunt. Shadows were tracing patterns beneath his eyes. He was tired