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SUNSET WAS AT SEVEN-FORTY-ONE. Claire called the local radio station for the exact time and, while she had them on the line, asked them to play“Welcome to My Nightmare.” The song, discovered on one of her parents’ old albums, had meant a lot to her during the earliest years of her sister’s training and the events of the afternoon had made her nostalgic for those simpler, albeit equally dangerous, times.

At seven-thirty, she started up the stairs.

At seven-thirty-five, she unlocked the door to room four, passed the man lying in the dressing room, who stirred restlessly in his involuntary sleep, and entered the cubicle holding the bed and the wounded Sasha Moore. In the dim light of the bedside lamp, she stood by the wall and waited for sunset.

At seven-forty-six, either the radio station or her watch off by the longest five minutes in recorded history, she saw the vampire’s lips, pale without their customary sheen of artificial color, slowly part and draw in the first breath of the night. Ebony brows dipped in as both wound and bandage pulled with the movement of the narrow chest. Muscles tensed beneath the ivory skin. Eyes snapped open. A dark gaze swept over the red-brown stains along the left side of the bed and then locked on Claire’s face.

“Spill, Keeper,” Sasha Moore snarled. “What the fuck is going on here?”

At seven-fifty-two, as the newly awakened vampire-slayer began to whimper, Claire stepped out into the hall and locked the door to room four behind her.

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“How did you know I wouldn’t kill him when he had every intention of killing me?”

“He’s crazy, you’re not,” Claire answered calmly. “You’ve lived too long to risk exposure by modern forensics.” She turned her attention to the glassy-eyed man, who swayed where he stood, oblivious to his surroundings. Centuries of arriving at accident sites after the inevitable, and invariably messy, cause and effect had already taken place, had given Keepers a distinctly fatalistic, some might even say unsympathetic attitude toward people who played with matches. A Keeper’s responsibility involved keeping the whole metaphorical forest from going up, and they figured the morepeople who got their fingers burned, the less likely that was to happen. Claire shuddered to think of what might have occurred had she stayed in the attic a few moments longer. “How much will you allow him to remember?”

A spark of cruel amusement gleamed in the shadowed eyes.“Let’s put it this way: He’s going to piss himself whenever he’s outside after the sun goes down and he’s not going to know why.”

“Isn’t that a bit extreme?”

“What? For trying to kill me?” Sasha tossed her head disdainfully. “I think not. Besides, it’s nothing a few dozen years of therapy won’t clear up.” Silver bracelets chiming softly, she stroked the velvet length of Austin’s back. “Imagine living two hundred and twenty-seven years only to die at the hands of yet another amateur van Helsing. What a frigging waste.”

“Yet another amateur van Helsing?” Austin rolled so she could reach his stomach. “This has happened before?”

“Once or twice; the nutballs come out every time we get trendy.” Crimson nail polish glistened like drops of blood against the white fur. “But this…” Her other hand lightly touched the bandage under her clothes. “This is as close as anyone’s ever come.” When she lifted her gaze fromthe cat, Claire realized that for the first time since the other woman had arrived at the hotel, her eyes neither threatened nor promised. “Thank you for my life, Keeper.”

“You’re welcome. But it was no more or less than I would have done for anyone. Murder creates the very holes the lineage exists to seal.”

The vampire sighed, a fringe of sable hair dancing as she shook her head.“You really lean toward the sanctimonious, you know that?”

“I’m a Keeper,” Claire began defensively, but cool fingers tapping the curve of her cheek cut her off.

“My point exactly. Try to get over it.”

Speechless, Claire watched as Sasha turned her would-be executioner unresistingly toward the door and, when she opened it, finally gave up trying to put together a sufficiently scathing response, settling for:“What are you going to do with him now?”

Pausing on the threshold, the night spreading out behind her like great, dark wings, Sasha locked one hand around her captive’s wrist to prevent him from moving on and turned back toward the guest house. “I’m going to take him to his car and release him.”

“But the sun’s down.”

White teeth flashed between carmine lips.“Obviously.”

“And people complain about the waycats play with their food,” Austin snorted as the door swung shut.

“I’m not sanctimonious, am I?”

“You’re asking me?”

Claire’s eyes narrowed. “Is there anyone else around?”

“Just the dead guy on the stairs.”

Jacques gave the cat a scathing look as he materialized.“I only arrive this moment, and if he says I am here all along, he lies.”