He arched his eyebrows. “Funny, but Tristan thought the same thing. And look what happened to him.”

   I frowned. My dad had died in a car accident. What did that have to do with me, my sisters, or anything else? The two of them were talking in riddles that I didn’t understand. But that was the way things had been around here lately. More often than not, Mom stayed holed up in her office for hours on end, talking on the phone or meeting with all sorts of strange people. Normally, before the annual holiday party, she would have been helping us decorate our tree, since that was our family tradition. But instead, she’d been back here all afternoon, meeting with one person after another.

   I raised my hand to knock on the door but thought better of it. Mom wouldn’t want to be interrupted. Besides, I didn’t like the look of the woman or especially the vampire. Sure, he seemed like just another businessman, one of dozens that my mom dealt with, but his black eyes were cold and dead, like Christmas lights that had burned out. Eyes like that . . . they made me shiver.

   There had been a lot of people with those sorts of eyes around here lately. It made me . . . uneasy. Oh, not that I was actually worried about anything. Not really. My mom was one of the strongest Ice elementals around, and she could easily take care of herself, as well as me and my sisters. But all these meetings and all these strange people . . . it just didn’t seem like her.

   Neither did the worry that tightened her face—worry that she just couldn’t seem to get rid of no matter how hard she tried. Even when she was hanging out with Annabella, Bria, and me, Mom always seemed distracted and far away, as though the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

   “Think over my proposal,” Hugh said, getting to his feet and buttoning his black suit jacket. “Maybe that will give you the illusion that you actually have a choice in all of this.”

   Deirdre snickered, amused by his cryptic words.

   More anger flared in my mom’s eyes, but she got to her feet and gave him a curt nod. The two of them looked at each other over the top of her desk, each giving the other a flat stare. Finally, Hugh smiled and tipped his head at my mom, as though they were having a pleasant conversation instead of the tense . . . whatever this was. Deirdre walked over to him, and together, arm in arm, they headed for the door.

   I scrambled back down the hallway, not wanting them to know that I’d been eavesdropping. But Deirdre and Hugh were too quick for me, and the vampire opened the door before I could vanish around the corner. So I surged forward again, pretending like I had just gotten here, although the knowing look he gave me told me that he realized I’d been listening to them the whole time.

   “Hello, little Genevieve,” he murmured. “So lovely to see you again.”

   Again? I’d never seen him before, but for the second time tonight, a strange man knew my name.

   Deirdre held her hand out in front of her, studying her long red nails, as if she were debating whether she needed a manicure. She completely ignored me, but Tucker kept staring at me. I shifted on my feet, trying not to shiver under his intense black gaze.

   “You’re looking very well today. And so much like your father. More and more all the time.”

   My mom appeared in the office door. “Good-bye, Hugh,” she said in a loud, pointed tone.

   Hugh winked at me, then strode down the hallway, with Deirdre still on his arm. They disappeared around the corner, but I could hear the echo of their footsteps as they moved through the house, each one banging against the floor seemingly as loud as a drum.

   My mom listened to them go, her lips flattening out into a thin, worried line again. “He’ll be back,” she whispered, almost to herself. “And then things will be worse.”

   Worse? Worse than what? What had the vampire done to her? And what did she think that he was going to do to her in the future? I looked up at my mom, but she was still staring down the hallway, lost in her troubles, worries, and fears. . . .

   My eyes snapped open, and I sucked in a ragged breath. For a moment, I didn’t remember where I was, but then a warm body shifted beside me, and Owen rolled over onto his side, so that he was facing me.

   “Gin?” His voice was thick with sleep. “Is everything okay? You were mumbling in your sleep.”

   “Everything’s fine,” I whispered, trying to calm my racing heart. “Just fine.”

   But Owen heard the tension in my voice, and he blinked, coming a little more fully awake. “What is it? Did you have another bad dream?”

   Owen and I often spent the night together, so he was well acquainted with my nightmares, all the memories of the past that crowded into my mind when I slept. More than once, I’d woken him in the middle of the night as I thrashed around and screamed my fool head off about some long-ago battle.

   But I hardly ever dreamed about my mother, save for her murder. That nightmare had haunted me for years until I’d gotten my revenge on Mab Monroe—revenge that had seemed false, hollow, and empty ever since Tucker had told me that the Circle had given Mab the go-ahead to kill my mother. Now, to realize that he and Deirdre had been in her office, in our mansion, threatening her and my sisters . . . it was just another horror show to add to my ever-growing collection. I rubbed my hand across my forehead. I wondered what other terrible things I would remember before this was all said and done.

   “What did you dream about this time?” Owen asked.

   I turned over onto my side so that I was facing him. “It was Christmas. The last Christmas that my mother and Annabella were alive. We were decorating our tree, and I went to my mother’s office to see if she wanted to help us. Tucker was there. So was Deirdre.”

   Owen frowned. “Are you sure?”

   “Yeah. Unfortunately.”

   I told him all the dirty details, and he lay there, digesting my words. “But you don’t know what they were meeting about?”

   I shook my head. “No. But I know there’s more to the dream than that. There always is. It’ll come to me sooner or later. Given what she was involved in, I might wish that it was later, though.”