“It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Jenna,” Dr. Lipton said as Richart lowered her to an exam table. “Richart talks about you all the time.”

“Nice to meet you, too. This is my son, John.”

“Good to meet you, John.”

“Nice to meet you,” he murmured.

“Richart,” Dr. Lipton said, “you and John go wait out in the hallway so your hovering won’t distract me.” She winked at Jenna. “Plus, if Richart isn’t in the room, I can share all kinds of embarrassing stories about him with you.”

Richart narrowed his eyes in warning, then kissed Jenna. “We’ll be right outside if you need us.”

Jenna smiled and nodded.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Dr. Lipton shook her head. “That man is so in love with you.”

“I love him, too.”

Dr. Lipton’s gaze sharpened as she donned a pair of latex gloves. “Enough to transform for him?”

“I thought I couldn’t do that safely.”

“If he’s right and you’ve been infected, you may not have a choice. How many times has he bitten you?” There was no mistaking her disapproval.

“That’s just it. He hasn’t.”

Her brow furrowed. “Ever?”

“Ever. A vampire bit me once a couple of months ago. He caught me leaving my job and Richart stopped him. But Richart has been there every night since and made sure the vampire didn’t return. I can’t be transformed by just one bite, right?”

“Not unless he drained you almost to the point of death, then infused you with his own blood.”

“Richart said he didn’t do that; so it must be the flu.”

Dr. Lipton didn’t seem convinced. “Let’s start with your symptoms.”

Jenna rattled them off and answered questions about severity, onset, and the like as Dr. Lipton took her temperature and engaged in various and assorted poking and prodding.

She was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way with brown hair, brown eyes, and a trim figure encased in jeans, a T-shirt, and a lab coat.

“I’m going to level with you, Jenna,” she said finally. “I think Richart’s right. I’ll run a blood test to be sure, but I already know what it’s going to tell me.”

Jenna broke out in a cold sweat as fear rippled through her. “I’m becoming a vampire?”

“Yes.”

She would suffer progressive brain damage and go insane.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Lipton offered with genuine remorse. “There really isn’t any sugarcoating this. I can’t even give you hope that you might be a gifted one. Nearly all gifted ones have black hair and brown eyes. A few, like me, have brown hair. But never red.”

“I’m a brunette. I dye my hair.”

Dr. Lipton studied her. “Have you noticed any special gifts or abilities? Know the phone is going to ring before it does?”

“No.”

“Know what someone else is feeling? Hear their thoughts?”

“No. I don’t have any special abilities, Dr. Lipton.”

“Melanie.”

“I’m screwed, aren’t I, Melanie?”

She sighed. “Yes. As I said, I’ll run some tests to be sure. See how far the infection has progressed. Take a look at your DNA and see if it bears the extra memo groups that would identify you as a gifted one and protect you from the brain damage. But I’m not very hopeful.”

“I can’t believe this.” Her mind raced as nightmare images unfolded before her. John having to watch his mother descend into madness. Jenna having to leave to ensure she wouldn’t harm him. Richart watching and waiting for her to reach the point of no return, then taking her life.

What would it do to him to watch her turn into one of the monsters he hunted? Would she have to leave him, too?

Richart paced back and forth in front of the door to the infirmary.

John stood nearby, looking up and down the hallway, taking in the multitude of guards armed with automatic weapons. Half a dozen stood sentinel near two doors a little farther down.

Dragging his eyes away, John turned to Richart. “What’s in there? What are they protecting?”

“They aren’t protecting what’s in there. They’re protecting everyone out here. Those doors lead to vampires’ apartments.”

John’s eyes widened. “Vampires live here?”

“A couple do, yes. They surrendered instead of following the example of their brethren and fighting to the death. They’ve been working with Dr. Lipton and the other doctors in hopes of finding a cure for the virus or some treatment that might prevent the brain damage it causes in humans.”

“How’s that going?”

Richart shook his head and lied. “I don’t know.” They had been searching for a cure for thousands of years with no success.

John swallowed. “If Mom becomes a vampire, is she going to go crazy and want to hurt people?”

Richart nodded, throat too thick to speak.

Face grim, John resumed his perusal of the hallway. “What is this place?”

“Network headquarters, the hub of the East Coast division of the human network that aids us.”

“Why are there no windows?”

“Because we’re five stories underground.”

Minutes passed.

“I don’t understand how Mom could be infected if you didn’t bite her.”

“I’ve been thinking on that.” Fulminating over it more like. “It has to be a member of your study group.”

John’s head whipped around. “What?”

“It can’t be anyone at her job. When bitten, she would’ve blacked out and not made it home. She would’ve woken up on the floor in the store’s back room or her car or somewhere she shouldn’t be and realized she’d lost time, that she couldn’t remember how she had gotten there.”

“Wouldn’t the same be true if one of my study partners had bitten her?”

“Not if he did it while she was sleeping. If he came over on a night I wasn’t there and she went to bed early or napped until I finished hunting, he could’ve asked to use your bathroom, snuck into her bedroom, and fed from her without her ever knowing she had been bitten.”

“Shit!”

“I’m guessing you had a study session right before she contracted food poisoning? She always bears your study partners’ scents from brushing shoulders with them and the like. The punctures heal swiftly and the effects of the GHB-like chemical she would’ve been exposed to don’t last long, so I wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss.”

“We thought it was the fast food the group ordered in. . . . Shit! This is my fault?”

“It’s the vampire’s fault. Not yours.”

“How do we figure out who it is?”

“We’ll take care of that after your mother is . . . better.”

After she finished turning. After she became a vampire.

There wasn’t going to be a better for her—not long-term—and Richart felt a part of himself die at the knowledge.

The elevator at the end of the hallway pinged. A moment later, the doors slid apart and a blond male about five foot eleven exited. The guards all greeted him with respect as he strolled toward Richart.

Richart didn’t even try to hide the hostility he felt toward him.

“I hear we have a visitor,” Chris Reordon said.

Richart took a menacing step forward. “Stay the hell away from her, Reordon.”

“What is it with you immortals?” he demanded with a scowl. “You keep trying to hide your mortal girlfriends from me even though you know I’m just trying to protect you. It’s my job.”

“And we all know how ruthless you can be in carrying out your job. I won’t have you strong-arming and intimidating her. And don’t ask Dr. Lipton her name because if you issue a single threat I’ll cast aside concerns about Seth’s wrath and—”

“I don’t have to ask her name. I already know it.”

“What?”

“Jenna McBride. Thirty-seven years old. Widowed mother of John.”

“How do you know that?”

“After you outed yourself, teleporting to her living room—and I can’t tell you what a brilliant move that was—I tagged you with a tracking device and followed you to her apartment. After that, the rest was easy.”

“If you give her even one moment of unease—”

“Ask me why it was so easy.”

Richart frowned. “What?”

“Ask me why the rest was easy.”

“I don’t have to. Everyone knows you’re good at what you do. It’s why you’re the highest ranking mortal on the East Coast.”

Chris smiled. “I am good, aren’t I?”

Richart grunted.

“But I didn’t even have to try with this one, because we already had Jenna on file. She’s a gifted one.”

The world went still.