I'm flying.

All I can see are the tops of buildings glittering in the grey-blue dawn sky. Beyond them, a shining white line is breaking over the horizon, glowing the most at its center – the sun is just beginning to fight its way back up for the day. I don't see daybreak very often. It's lovely.

"Please."

I spin around, which is the first time I realize that I'm not, in fact, flying – at least, not exactly. I'm on a roof, a flat span of gravel, but I can't feel my feet against the ground, and I can't make myself look down to check that my feet are even there, literally can't make myself – I'm not in control. Which is terrifying enough without seeing what I'm seeing.

I don't recognize him at first, because he's on his knees and his face is streaked with blood. But it's Eric. Eric, crying. Pleading.

"Please."

"Eric . . .?"

He doesn't reply. I don't think he heard me. I can't go to him, so I just try to call out to him again, my voice high-pitched and cracking. "Eric!"

His shoulders shake. He can't hear me. I'm not really here, am I?

And now I'm turning back to the sunrise. It's happening faster than it should. The sky is swirling with shades of pink and orange. The sun is peeking out at me.

Eric can't be up here. It's already far too late for him to be outside –

"Eric!"

But I'm stuck, I can't turn to see him. I can just hear his sobs.

And then I smell smoke.

"No!"

There's a cool touch on my forehead. "Annika."

"Eric!" I wail. I can move again, though my legs are tangled up in something. I try to turn from the sun and run to him, but before I'm all the way around everything is dark. The sky, the sun – it's all gone. Lost in the black.

"Annie, Annie, shh . . . shh . . ." There's the same cold touch, brushing hair off my forehead. "Relax."

"Eric . . ." I whimper to the darkness.

"Shh. I'm here, little one. You are safe."

I'm sitting up in this strange bed, either pinned to Eric's chest or burying myself in it, I don't really care which. I'm just relieved to be there. Relieved that he's here at all, here and himself and okay. I cling to his shirt, distantly aware of how childish that is, how childish this entire scene is, but it's not important, not at this moment. "I . . . It was sunrise . . ."

"It's the middle of the day. You were dreaming."

But he's wrong.

. . . . .

In even my earliest memories of Eric, he paces. In front of the fireplace in the farmhouse library. In its kitchen, talking business on the phone, believing I'm in bed. Across the wooden porch as a storm approaches . . .

It's something he's always done when he needs to think, something I've witnessed a thousand times. So, I suppose it's only natural that I do it as well.

I move back and forth across the patterned hotel floor, the carpet scratchy on my bare feet. Eric sits on the edge of the bed, bent over his knees, watching me. The windows at this hotel have light-blocking technology, so the only light we have comes from the dim lamp on the bedside table.

"You were on a roof. In a city." Step, step, step, turn. "Maybe here. I don't know. You were up high, the buildings around you – I was looking at the tops of them." Turn. "The sun was coming up . . . You weren't leaving. You were . . ."

Crying. On your knees. Begging.

I swallow, take a step, turn. "Frightened. Badly."

"Well, that does not sound like me, does it?"

"I don't know why you were there . . ." I run both hands through my hair, forcing my fingers past more than one tangle. "I didn't understand what was happening . . ."

"You were having a bad dream, dear," Eric says for the third or fourth time. Still patiently. "That is what was happening."

"It wasn't a dream," I say for the third or fourth time. Still impatiently. "It was too vivid. It was . . ." But I don't want to say it. If I call it what it was – a vision – that's somehow admitting that it will come true. That at some point Eric will be on a roof as the sun rises and then . . .

"Please stop pacing," Eric says.

"You do it," I mutter in a tone I would second-guess if I weren't so tense. In fact, when he snags me by the wrist, I fear I'm in trouble, but as he pulls me towards him his eyes tell me I'm not. He tucks my hair behind my ears, and I study his face. It's already becoming difficult to picture it with bloodstains. That's a good sign, maybe.

"Listen to me." Eric rests his hands on my shoulders, keeping his thumbs against my cheeks. "Of the beings in this world who might want me dead, very few of them have the means or power to make it happen. And I certainly am not about to meet the sun on my own accord."

Well, I wasn't even worried about that. When I saw him on that roof, he was begging somebody, and I couldn't see them, but that tells me he wasn't alone, at least. And I already knew Eric would never intentionally try to meet the sun. Even if he were sad enough to want to do that, he wouldn't. It's not in his nature.

"What you saw was absurd," he continues, "as dreams often are. Even psychics can have nightmares, Annika. That is all this was."

I close my eyes. He sounds so certain, but he can't be. He just admitted that there are some people, no matter how few, that want to and could hurt him. Kill him. So he can't be sure of his safety. And I can't, either.

But when I open my eyes, ready to tell him that, I see a dark stream spilling from his nose.

"You're bleeding." Even as I speak, he takes one hand from me to wipe his face, and I slip out from under the other one and sit beside him. "You need to go back to bed." If vampires stay awake during the day, they get the Bleeds, which, aside from looking eerie, makes them weak and sickly.

"It's nothing," Eric says, licking his finger clean. "I can stay with you a while."

But the last thing I need is to see Eric weak and sickly. With blood on his face. "No. I'm alright." I sigh, and even though I don't believe it nearly as much as I would like to, I add, "It was a bad dream."

He takes a moment to decide whether to listen to me, but eventually rises. "You may turn on the television if you like. It helps some people sleep." He smooths my hair, traces his hand around my head, and lifts my chin up so I look at him. "Leave the worrying to me, Annika. I've had far more practice with it."

As the door connecting his room to mine clicks closed behind him, I start pacing again.

. . . . .

I do eventually go back to sleep, although it's only a couple of hours before sunset, and only with the help of an old television show about four elderly women who live in Florida together and interfere with one another's love lives. The last thing I remember is one of the women fighting with her mother. Then Eric's hand is on my back.

"Annika."

I open my eyes immediately.

"It's time to get up. I ordered you breakfast."

I push up from my pillows and watch him walk into the next room, leaving the door open behind him. He's already dressed, so he's ready to go somewhere – to that church, the Fellowship of the Sun, I would guess. Sookie will have gone there during the day – but shouldn't she have gotten back before sunset?

Eric isn't in a great rush, so I suppose not.

But he intends to take me somewhere. If he didn't, he would have left a note and let me sleep. Maybe he's going to give me another chance at proving he was right to bring me to Dallas.

Eric's room is bigger than mine, with two couches, an armchair, and a table all properly arranged in the main area, and his bed set off in a smaller room that can be closed off with sliding doors, though it isn't at the moment. On the table is a bronze tray with an omelet of some sort and two pieces of toast. Eric disappears into the bathroom as I sit and bite off the corner of one slice. Crunchy, like I like it. "Where are you going?" I ask when my mouth is free again.

"To the church." He emerges from the bathroom, sliding on his watch. "To ensure all is well with Sookie."

"Shouldn't she be out by now?"

"I would have expected so. But I spoke to Isabel earlier. One of her humans accompanied Sookie, and she hasn't sensed anything from him that should worry us."

"But you still need me to eat fast again, don't you?"

"If you would." Eric is good at politely ordering me to do things. He watches as I take a bite of my omelet. "How do you feel?"

The omelet's good – so gooey with cheese I can barely taste the green stuff. I swallow. "Better." I'm still a bit uneasy, but sometime in my brief sleep the utter terror for Eric's life drained away. The scene on the roof – it's already blurry in my memory – seems far too unrealistic to be worth getting upset. "I think you were right. I think it was just a bad dream."

"How much easier your life would be if you accepted that I am right about most things."

He's joking, more or less, and I smile a little. I cut another chunk from the omelet. "Am I going with you?"

"No."

"Then why did you wake me up?"

He takes his leather jacket from a rack by the door. "I do not want you here alone."

"I stayed here alone last night." I ordered pizza – with vegetables – and watched two movies on television that were both named Star Wars something, and they were strange, but I liked them and enjoyed myself.

"I was downstairs. I could have been here in an instant if necessary." He puts on the jacket and pops his arms out to make it fit correctly. "If I am going to be out of the building, I want you with a vampire. Of my choosing."

I put down my fork. "You're leaving me with a babysitter."

"Annika, you are a human in a hotel full of vampires. It is not safe for you to be unaccompanied. Especially not when some vampires in the area now know there is a sweet little psychic nearby. They might get . . . foolish ideas."

I fold my hands together. Psychics and vampires have a long history. Vampires, who always like power, like having psychics around to assist them with . . . well, anything.

And psychics who become vampires . . . well, they're usually the most powerful vampires of all. At least according to Eric.

But, for vampires who aren't psychic – meaning most of them – the next best thing is to have someone who is. Which is why Eric put so much effort into getting me. Of course, I'm not a normal psychic. He says I'm a rare sort of powerful. Knowing him, he's kept that fact quiet from the world, but sometimes word manages to get around, even about secret things. So for vampires in Dallas, vampires like Stan, to know that I'm here . . .

"I am not worried." Eric's been watching me. He must have noticed the rather violent way my hands are twisting together. I separate them. He says, "Only a suicidal fool would attempt to take what is mine. I am just being cautious."

I tear off a bit of toast, let it fall to my plate, tear off a second bit. "Okay. So who am I staying with?"

His lips curl up in a way that worries me.

. . . . .

The door opens only seconds after Eric knocks, revealing a pretty, teenage-looking vampire with long red hair. She's wearing a bath robe and her eyes are wide. "Eric . . . Annika."

"Jessica," Eric says pleasantly. He's enjoying this too much. "Lovely to see you again."

She tries to smile but fails. She's only been a vampire for a few weeks, so I can read her almost as easily as a human, but really, it's not necessary. Anyone with eyes can tell she's anxious. I can't blame her. If Eric shows up at your door without warning, you should be nervous. "H-hi. Um, Bill's in the next room? I can get him –?"

"I'm not here for Bill. I have a job for you."

She blinks. "A-a job?"

"You remember Annika."

I wrap my right hand around my left wrist. "Hello, Jessica."

She tries to smile again. Fails again. My face tries to twist into a scowl, but I don't let it.

Jessica stayed at Fangtasia for a couple of weeks right after Bill turned her – he had to, as punishment for killing Longshadow, because evidently turning someone is nothing Bill ever wanted to do, which I don't understand – because Bill had something to take care of and he couldn't handle Jessica while he did it. And baby vampires need handling. So Jessica and I inevitably spent some time together, and . . . we didn't get along.

"I am going out for the night and I do not feel comfortable leaving her alone," explains Eric. "So I would appreciate it if she could stay with you."

"With . . .? Um . . . I . . ."

Eric waits patiently for her to realize that she can't say no.

"I . . . guess so? Of course." This time she does manage to hold a smile, but it looks like one that's been painted on a doll. Her eyes aren't in it at all. Her eyes look like those of a cornered rabbit.

"Please explain how she is supposed to protect me," I ask in Swedish, my voice flat. Jessica looks at me as if I just barked at her.

I almost certainly hear Eric chuckle. "The mere presence of a vampire will be a deterrent. No one who would consider getting to you will know she is only a baby. And, if something bad does happen to occur, she would be a distraction in the moment it would take for Bill to come in from the next room."

"Why is he here, anyway? Is he not worried about Sookie?"

"That is none of your concern." He switches back to English. "I am most grateful to you, Jessica. She will need to eat in a few hours, but she can handle that herself. I am sure she will be no trouble . . ."

Jessica nods too hard before stepping aside to let me in. I enter, again fighting the instinct to make a face. I am not a child. I do not throw fits or make things unnecessarily difficult.

But oh, sometimes I'm tempted.

"You girls have fun," Eric says, and winks at me before he vanishes with a breeze that blows back my hair.