Chapter Ten

"I've got some bad news for you," Amaranth told Anne grimly.

"Ditto."

As usual, they were half-shouting at each other to be heard over the noise of everyone else's half-shouted conversation in the cafeteria.

"When I found out that your assassin was calling himself Samuel Gregory, I emailed Daybreak headquarters and asked them to give me any information they had on him. Because he might have used the same alias before, just the way that your father always used the same alias when he hunted vampires and Rashel always used to call herself the Cat."

"What did they say?" Anne was feeling a sinking feeling in her stomach.

"Apparently, there are some Daybreakers in Rome who think that he just killed one of their members there last week." Amaranth looked very grim now, but she met Anne's eyes directly. "Someone meeting his description was seen following one of the witches who was trying to reach out to the humans and find allies there. And then the witch disappeared."

"Maybe she just decided to leave?" Anne suggested, although the sinking feeling in her stomach told her otherwise.

"No." Amaranth took a deep breath. "The Daybreak witches in Rome did a spell, a locator spell of sight. You can scry things in a mirror, or a dark liquid, or . . . a crystal ball, even, like in the movies. And the whole coven got together and did the spell. They said there was some sort of barrier up, but they were able to get through it. And they found . . . what was left of her."

"What was left of her?" Anne echoed. But she suddenly knew she didn't want to have Amaranth explain.

Too late.

"She'd been . . . tortured. Then killed. And the witches said they were sure Samuel Gregory did it. They could see him with her in the spell. . . . And when they tried to see where he was now, they could see him when he kidnapped you. Same guy, no question." She swallowed. "I'm sorry, Anne."

Anne felt as if she were a thousand miles away from Amaranth. From everyone. But she heard her voice saying, cool and distant and almost as detached as that of Samuel, "Sorry for what? You didn't do anything."

"I'm just sorry I had to tell you. About your soulmate. I know it must hurt."

"I'm not hurt."

Amaranth looked at her and then slowly shook her head. "You must be hurt; you've got to be. That's the way the soulmate principle works. You're part of one another, and you've got to be hurt by what your soulmate did. I'm just sorry I had to be the one to tell you."

"We may be soulmates, but we're not exactly close." Anne could hear that the detachment was still in her voice. "He told me that he didn't want anything to do with me last night."

Amaranth gaped. "What?"

"He told me that he didn't want anything to do with me."

"But—but—."

"I know that's not how soulmates are supposed to behave," Anne said wearily. "But it's how he behaved. He doesn't want anything to do with me. He's still planning to kill me. If I stay. He wants me to leave. To run away and find some Daybreak safehouse where they can protect me."

Now that she had said it, she didn't feel detached and remote any more. She just felt tired. And miserable.

"Maybe you ought to go," Amaranth said.

"You think so? I thought you were telling me how I ought to stay and convince Samuel that he should join Circle Daybreak."

"Yes, but that was before I got the email from Rome."

"Big deal." Anne had suddenly crossed some line between tiredness and anger. "You knew he was an assassin. You knew he was trying to kill me. So now we find out that he killed someone else. You didn't think I was his first target, did you?"

"I knew he'd killed other people before, but—"

"I want to stay and fight. I don't want to run away. My home is here. My mother is here. My life is here. Why should I go run away and hide with Circle Daybreak for the rest of my life? What would my mother think if she could never see me again? Or is she supposed to come and hide in the safehouse with me forever?"

"Daybreak headquarters said that they might be able to send someone to help, but they've got other things going on right now. They're still preparing for the millennium battle, and, well, stuff like that."

"I don't want to be rescued by Rashel and Quinn or Keller and Galen or whoever. I want to be able to take care of myself."

"So that's it. I'm staying." Anne could hear her voice rise, but she didn't care any more. "I'm going to fight back. I am not going to let this stupid guy ruin my entire life. I am not going to let the Night World ruin my life."

"Sh," Amaranth said, looking around nervously.

Anne sat back in her chair, grabbed her fork, and took a bite of whatever mystery meat the cafeteria had served her. It was cold and tasteless, but she forced it down anyway.

"Anne, it's not just how you feel." Amaranth was looking more nervous and unhappy than ever. "It's . . . the Rome witches were able to tell where Samuel Gregory had hidden Lia DiSilvo's body. She was the witch he killed."

"So?" Anne took another defiant bite.

"So they went to get the body to bury her properly. It was at an old Night World site, and probably lots of assassins for the council had used it before. Now that Daybreak has found it, the council probably won't be able to use it again. So that's good."

"Great." Anne stabbed with her fork at another piece of mystery meat.

"But the thing is . . . they took pictures of the way Lia looked when they found her. And they attached the pictures in their email to me." She fumbled at her backpack and brought out an envelope.

Anne put her fork down. "I don't want to see."

"They're awful, but you ought to see them. You need to see them," Amaranth insisted, when Anne made no move to take the envelope. "This is why you ought to think about going to a Circle Daybreak safehouse. If this is what Samuel Gregory did to another Daybreaker, this is what he might do to you."

My soulmate, Anne thought. Someone who's a perfect match for me. Or who was, once upon a time. Six hundred years ago, before he took an oath and became an assassin.

"You have to know the truth," Amaranth persisted. She was still holding the envelope out.

Moving slowly, Anne took the envelope from Amaranth. Opened it. Shook the photographs onto the table. Looked.

"I'm sorry," Amaranth whispered, wretchedly.

Anne told herself she was not going to vomit. She told herself the same thing again. Then she rose and fled for the girls' bathroom.

"You know, I really should be walking you home," Neil said to Mary.

They'd gone out to a movie that evening. When it got out, they'd headed toward Neil's house.

"Your place is on my way home," Mary reminded him. "My house would be out of your way."

"Yeah, but I still should be walking you home. This way, it's like you walking me home."

"Does it matter?"

Neil shrugged. "Well, the other guys would think I'm a wuss to let my girlfriend walk me home all the time."

"It's not all the time," Mary said patiently. "It's just tonight. And what do you care what the other guys say? You know I can take care of myself." She decided not to point out that as a shifter with training in fighting, she could probably take better care of herself in a fight than Neil could.

"I know. And hey, it's cool. Except I wish I could tell the other guys that you're a shifter. Maybe then they would leave me alone in the locker room."

"Are they bothering you in the locker room?"

"Hey, it's not only girls that pick on one another, you know."

Mary thought about it as they walked. She wasn't sure what to do.

"Maybe Amaranth could cast a spell?" she suggested.

"I can take care of myself."

"Are you sure?" The new voice was cool, and detached, and something in Mary recognized it as very frightening. She spun to face the voice's owner and, at the same time, felt her body hover on the verge of shifting to something with claws and large, sharp teeth.

The white teeth she saw glistening in the street lamps were long and sharp in their own right. A vampire, she knew right away. Pale, dark-haired. Young-looking, which meant nothing more than that he was probably a made vampire.

Neil was still turning to face the newcomer. Part of her recognized that Neil was human-slow and that the vampire could have easily killed him, if he'd intended to. Another part of her was wondering uneasily whether the vampire could have killed her as well. She hadn't known he was there, hadn't smelled his presence. Of course, if he'd known she was a shifter, he might have approached from downwind.

"You're Samuel Gregory," she accused.

"Of course." He half-bowed, and in the movement she almost caught a glimpse of another time, a set of customs that had vanished before she was born. Vanished wholly, except in a few novels, a few paintings, and the long memories of Night World vampires.

"What do you want with us?" Neil asked. Coiled and alert as Mary was, she could hear his quickened breathing and smell his fear-excitement scent.

She wanted to reach out to hold him back, to warn him that he was no match for a Night World assassin--perhaps both of them together weren't a match for Samuel Gregory--but she was afraid he wouldn't understand. She held still, coiled upon herself like a spring, feeling her wild nature boil up inside her, waiting.

"I want to talk with you. Nothing more." He glanced at Mary. "My word upon it."

Mary let herself relax very slightly. Night World assassins were the stuff of nightmares, but they took their oaths very seriously.

It hadn't escaped her attention, though, that he'd turned to her when giving his word. He'd known she was a shifter, and he hadn't wanted to give his word to a mere human, someone who was, in his eyes, vermin. But if he knew that she was a shifter and Neil was human, did he also know that they were Daybreakers? People who were under an automatic Night World death sentence?

Studying his eyes, she thought he did. She wasn't quite sure, though.

"So talk," she said briefly.

"You know a girl named Anne Jamison."

"Yes." That was safe to admit; she and Neil and Anne went to the same school, after all.

"She needs to leave this town. Quickly, quietly, and as soon as possible. Or, in the alternative, she needs to--" he paused, clearly searching his mind for an appropriate phrase, "—change her nature."

"What are you talking about?" Neil exploded.

Samuel Gregory didn't move his eyes from Mary. "She's been targeted because of her family. Not because of anything she's done, or hasn't done. I don't know—for certain—what friends she has made. Until I am sure of the situation, I don't need to move to remedy it. If Anne Jamison has any friends who care for her, they will rescue her before I become sure of the situation and need to resolve it. Which will be very soon, I'm afraid."

"And you're asking us—" Mary realized she should have said "me," but it was already too late, "—to get her out of town. Or to change her nature."

The dark head dipped in a nod. "She might survive better if she were in the care of . . . certain persons. Persons who have secret places where people like me are unwelcome."

A Daybreak safehouse, Mary thought. She'd heard of them. It wasn't a bad solution, actually.

But the vampire was going on. "Or, if she were to become other than what she now is, my superiors might lose interest in her, in time. They might forget about her altogether. Or they might cease to perceive her as a threat." He shrugged. "In either case, changing her might help to keep her alive."

"But what if she doesn't want to change?" Neil asked, belligerently. "What if she wants to stay the way she is now? There's nothing wrong with being human, you know."

The dark eyes moved to him now, and Mary shivered to see the expression on the assassin's face.

"You promised you only wanted to talk," she said hastily, before either one of them did something more.

She wished she could communicate mentally with Neil that he should stay silent and not provoke the vampire. She didn't sense that Neil understood, really understood, how dangerous their Night World visitor was. She could see it in the way Samuel Gregory stood, the way he tilted his head as he eyed them. As a predator herself, she could see the predator in him.

And the predator in him was several levels of strength and ruthlessness above the predator in her.

"I gave my word," Samuel Gregory said, after a few seconds. He turned back to Mary, ignoring Neil again. "And I hold my word sacred. But I also gave my word to obey my orders, and my orders were to find Anne Jamison and kill her. If I can kill her, therefore, I will. If you are her friend, or if you know of any friends she may have, they will get her out of my way before I strike."

"By kidnapping her and forcing her to leave her home? Or by forcing her to change against her will?" Neil clearly had no intention of staying out of this. "That's wrong. Just plain wrong." He emphasized the last word. "If you're too sick and twisted to see that, I do."

Samuel Gregory acted as if he hadn't heard Neil's insults. Mary wondered if he didn't consider a vermin's insults to be worth responding to. Or perhaps it was just a matter of Samuel Gregory's determination to keep his word.

"I'll see what I can do," she said, carefully.

"Mary!"

Samuel Gregory gave her a curt nod. "It will probably take me a day, perhaps two, to determine whether Miss Jamison has any friends here. Friends, I might add, who might be of interest to the Night World council. To which I am bound to report."

A shiver ran along Mary's spine.

"But if Miss Jamison disappears before then, my primary reason for being here also disappears, and I would not bother to pursue any secondary reasons. I would be busy trying to find out where Miss Jamison had gone. That would be difficult, no doubt, and so it would absorb all my attention."

In other words, Mary thought, she'd been warned to get Anne to a Daybreak safehouse within 48 hours or Samuel Gregory would kill both Anne and her. And probably Neil as well, since Samuel Gregory had almost certainly been able to tell that Neil was a Daybreaker, and not just a human that she'd deceived into going out with her.

She allowed herself to shut her eyes in despair for a single second. When she opened them, Neil was exclaiming, and Samuel Gregory was nowhere to be seen.

She waited. Nothing happened. She saw no one but Neil, smelled no one. No one struck her from behind. Samuel Gregory apparently intended to honor their truce.

"Come on," she told Neil. "Let's go home."

As they walked, Neil kept sputtering about Samuel Gregory. He'd never seen such an arrogant guy. They should get together—Anne, Amaranth, Mary, and Neil—and teach him a lesson. He'd heard about arrogant, evil Nightworlders, but he'd never imagined that they could be quite that arrogant and evil.

"It's just plain wrong to ask us to kidnap Anne," he said finally, when they had almost reached his house. "He wouldn't understand that, of course, since he's already kidnapped her once himself. But even if we think we're acting for her own good, it would be wrong of us to force her to leave for a safehouse."

"Yes, Neil," Mary agreed wearily. "I didn't say it was right."

"And it would be even more wrong to change Anne against her will. If she wanted to change, that would be one thing. But she shouldn't be changed against her will."

"I agree."

"You wouldn't do that, would you? Turn her into a shifter against her will?"

Mary thought. She'd never done something like that, but she'd thought about it. Mostly in kindergarten, when some of the other kids had pushed her in the playground and laughed at her. She'd told her mother about her thoughts, mostly as a joke, but her mother hadn't seen the joke. She'd punished Mary and then had a very long talk with her. Changing people to shifters wasn't a joke. It was something that you could be executed for, and the person you changed might be executed too. They had to be careful, ceaselessly careful, and they should never even talk about changing anyone unless they really meant to do it.

"No," she said. "I wouldn't."

"He's evil," Neil said vehemently. "Everything we're fighting against. I feel as if I never truly understood before how evil the Night World can be—the Circle Midnight part of it, at least. People like this need to be stopped. He deserves to die himself, after what he's probably done to other girls like Anne in the past."

"I . . . don't know," Mary said.

"You don't know?"

"I mean—I mostly agree with you. But people can change. That's part of what Daybreak is about. Giving people a chance to change, and to live a better life."

"Not people like him. You can't believe that he would ever change, no matter how many chances he was given. He's prejudiced and evil, and he's what we're fighting against. Exactly the sort of person we're fighting against."

"We should still give him a chance to change," Mary insisted. "We should give everyone a chance."

They stopped in front of Neil's driveway. With her better-than-average night vision, Mary could see Neil frowning at her.

"You're too good," he said. "You want to think good of everyone. But a guy like that isn't going to change. Believe me."

"Maybe you're right," Mary said. She didn't want to argue.

He kissed her quickly. "Are you going to talk to Amaranth about this?"

"I'll call her this evening and tell her that we saw the assassin and what he said to us."

"Fine." He kissed her again. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"'Night," she said. She waited until he was inside and she could hear him turning the locks behind him. Then she turned away for the long, solitary walk home.