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setting in, making her shiver, fuzzing her thoughts.
     But that didn’t make the question vanish. Some part of her already knew the answer.
     She just couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it.
    I’m no bloodsucker, Phenex had told her, seeming offended that she might think so. Justin simply arched
     a dark brow.
    “You know what I am,” was all he said, then turned the subject with businesslike precision.
     “You’re free to go, provided you can keep tonight to yourself.” He tilted his head,
     his gaze intense. “I think you can, actually. Unusual. Which is why I’ll give you
     a choice I didn’t give your friend. If you’d rather just forget everything, I can
     accommodate that. She won’t even remember coming here tonight. I can do the same for
     you. You’d be happier.”
    “No,” Sofia said, sure of this if nothing else. “I wouldn’t.” She didn’t want anyone
     messing around with her thoughts, erasing memories. Justin didn’t look surprised,
     though there was something calculating in the way he was watching her that she didn’t
     like at all.
    “I can provide you an escort home, at least.”
    Sofia was already backing toward the door, treading carefully around the blood. “No,”
     she said, hardly able to believe he was letting her go so easily. “No, that’s fine.
     I—I’ll get a cab. Out front. But thanks. Really.”
    That sudden flash of a smile again. “No thanks are necessary. I appreciate the fact
     that you’re managing to stay so calm. Your injured friend will be in touch. Soon,
     I’m sure. And, of course, you’re always welcome at Amphora.”
    The coppery tang of blood filled her nostrils, and the room suddenly seemed too bright,
     too harsh, too everything. Sofia drank in a gulp of air that she hoped wasn’t too
     noticeable as her stomach started to roll again. Reality was catching up to her…and
     all she wanted was to be far away from here when she finally lost it. She’d dealt
     with injuries that most people could only imagine, functioned in situations where
     normal people would have broken. But she’d never feared for herself, or questioned
     her own sanity, quite like this.
    “I’ll…yeah. Okay,” she said, shooting one more look at an obviously puzzled Phenex
     before she felt the door at her back and pushed it open. A few steps and she was out
     in the crowded club, where everyone but the tall, muscular man discreetly stationed
     right outside the bathroom door seemed oblivious to the bloodbath that had just occurred.
     That, or it was just so ordinary to him that he didn’t care.
    And no one would ever believe her if she tried to tell them, so Justin didn’t need
     to worry about that. She just wanted to go home.
    Sofia suffered only the briefest moment of hesitation as she watched the bathroom
     door swing shut, her eyes meeting Phenex’s for a single, electric second. If this were somewhere else, some other night , she thought wistfully, but then stopped herself. He wasn’t human. That wasn’t changing,
     and she needed to get out of here before somebody decided to bite her . She straightened her shoulders, turned on one spindly heel, and walked away as fast
     as she could.
    When she hit the front doors, heels be damned, she ran.

Chapter Five
    “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
    Phenex glared at Justin as a section of wall slid away on the far side of the bathroom
     and a group of vamps with heavy-duty cleaning supplies and a reinforced body bag hurried
     in as silently as ghosts. Justin murmured a few instructions to the leader of them
     before beckoning Phenex to follow him back into the hidden corridor.
    The fallen angel sighed irritably, but there weren’t a lot of choices if he wanted
     to know what the vampire king was up to. He was working some kind of angle, he had
     to be. You didn’t just pat the witness to a vamp attack and subsequent murder, however
     justified, on the head and send her on her way. He’d only barely managed