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doesn’t need to know,” Claire interrupted. If Carlene found out about the money she’d spend it on pills before you could say “back to school sale.” “Think of it as an early birthday present.”
    Vanessa’s mouth puckered. “My birthday isn’t until February.”
    “An early Christmas present, then. Take the money and hide it somewhere, okay? Don’t tell anyone else about it. Just go out tomorrow and buy some stuff.”
    “Okay,” Vanessa said reluctantly.
    “Promise me.”
    Vanessa gave her a sheepish smile. “I promise.”
    “All right. Now get to bed. It’s way past your bedtime.” Claire gave Vanessa a peck on the cheek and sent her back inside.
    A hundred bucks wasn’t enough to buy Vanessa much, but it was a start and maybe if Claire picked up that second shift she could do a little more. God knew the kid needed every bit of help she could get. She turned Michael’s watch in her hand and examined the intricate detail of the gears visible through the crystal face. It had to be worth fifty grand, and if she was lucky she could fence it for five or six thousand.
    Claire continued down the hall and stuck a key into the lock of unit 219. Being a witness to Vanessa’s childhood was too much like reliving her own. Maybe if she’d lived close to a concerned neighbor who slipped her a twenty now and then she wouldn’t have resorted to hustling for cash. And maybe, just maybe, if her mom had been marginally more responsible and behaved like an actual parent who, you know, passed a few values on to her kid Claire wouldn’t have given herself over to her passions and let a stranger do the things Michael had done to her tonight.
    Although, as she turned on the light in her beat-up kitchen and rifled through the thirty-year-old fridge for the leftovers she’d brought home from her shift last night, she was struck with the thought that even if she’d grown up to be an honest, forthright girl with plenty of cash in her pocket she still would have given herself to Michael tonight.
    Who in the hell was this man who made her feel things she didn’t know she could feel? And how could she find him again?

 
    CHAPTER
    4
    “If you’re looking for a distraction, Ronan, go find one in the city. Otherwise, quit staring at me. You’re making me feel like a damned bug under a microscope.”
    Ronan had been with Michael from the beginning. The beginning of his solitary existence, anyway. He had been starved, weak, his body emaciated after a century trapped underground, and without Ronan’s help in escaping Kiev under the nose of the Sortiari Michael wouldn’t be standing here now. Of course, also thanks to Ronan, he wouldn’t have lost the female tonight. Fate certainly had a way of balancing the scales.
    Michael paced the confines of his living room. Sunrise was still a couple of hours off, but already the walls felt as though they were closing in around him. It didn’t help that Ronan’s gaze followed Michael back and forth, back and forth, like a child watching a caged tiger in a zoo.
    “I can’t help it,” Ronan replied. He crossed to the bar at the far end of the room and poured himself a finger of scotch. “I mean, have you looked at yourself, Mikhail? You’re…”
    “Agitated.” Michael massaged his naked left wrist, just now noticing that he no longer wore the Patek. On top of losing the female, he’d lost a sixty-five-thousand-dollar watch. Lovely.
    “I was going to say ‘a walking miracle.’ How did this happen? And where the hell is the female who donated her vein, because I want to shake her hand. Maybe even kiss her. Didn’t I tell you that feeding from humans wasn’t doing you a damned bit of good? A little dhampir blood was all you needed.”
    Michael shot Ronan a glare as a predatory growl gathered in his chest.
    “Someone’s wound a little tightly tonight,” Ronan remarked before he tossed back the drink. He poured another and crossed the room to resume his vigil in one of the