He helped her to sit back down on the bed, his body warring with his mind. “I do not know who Ibuprofen is, but if he is another of your lovers, I will have to adjust my equation.”

“What equation? No, wait, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if you’re the king or emperor or whatever they have here in Austria now—you do not get to call me rude names.” Io stood up again, weaving only slightly before she squared her shoulders and shot him a look that should have enraged him, but simply went straight to his groin.

He really was getting a little tired of everything about her making his rod stiff with need and desire and wanting that all but left his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth.

She must be the best prostitute in the world if she could do all that without so much as touching him.

“If you don’t mind,” she said, trying to brush past him, “I’m going home. Or rather, I’m going to go to my cousin’s home. You guys can just continue on with your oddball ways without me. Imogen…hell, I don’t know what to say to you. I guess I’ll just keep mum to Gretl about the fact that you evidently have some…did you say daughter? Imogen is your daughter?” Io looked startled when she turned to face Imogen again. “You told me your dad was dead. Although your brother said he wasn’t, but I kind of figured he was a little light in the noggin since he also said he was some sort of a vampire.”

Everyone in the room froze, including Nikola. The odd side of his mind noticed that Io’s declaration had, at least, had the benefit of killing his erection, but that wasn’t really important.

“Who are you, how did you meet my children, and how do you know about—” He stopped, unwilling to speak in front of the superstitious servants. He’d carried his secret close to his breast, not even allowing his valet to know the truth about Benedikt and Imogen, or how the curse had come to be. Other than his children, only two others knew the truth. He eyed the woman again. Had one of his half brothers spoken to her about him?

It was all very much a puzzle, and along with mysterious women, he disliked puzzles intensely.

July 12

If someone finds this journal someday and says to herself, “Holy jumping cats, whoever wrote this seriously needed to have some penmanship lessons,” please note that I’m writing with a quill. A quill. One from a bird. Goose, I think, or something big like that. Regardless, it’s really, really hard to write with a quill without leaving big ole blotches of ink everywhere, not to mention ripping up the paper, and just trying to get letters formed so they’re actually readable.

Man, things have gotten so weird, I’m actually ranting about a feather.

But I promised I was going to do this properly, and I am.

Right after I woke up in some strange dude’s place (and when I say “strange dude,” I don’t just mean someone I didn’t know—Nikola was a very odd man, what with his demands that I tell him about my boyfriends, and then getting bent out of shape when I did so, and some strange equation that he kept yammering on about), I knew immediately something seriously wrong was going on.

For one, I couldn’t remember a damned thing about how I had ended up in the room.

For another, and I’m totally at a loss how this could even be, I seemed to have woken up in some ultraconservative cult, kind of like Amish people who insisted on living just as if they were three hundred years in the past.

And lastly, the strange dude appeared to be under the impression that I was a hooker. Me! And Imogen was a part of it. “Look,” I said to Imogen’s father, who more closely resembled an older brother than a father, but it was clear there was some sort of weird genetic thing going on with that family.

You could say that.

“Look, I’m not a ho.” I stopped, frowning at the voice in my head. I’ve never been one to talk to myself, and I didn’t want to start. “And I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing here, but I really do think it’s time I go back to town. Does someone have a phone I could use? I seem to have lost mine.”

Everyone, every single person from the effeminate guy in some sort of Georgian costume with a big pink wig to the mega-conservative short, round lady who kept calling for the others to do heinous things to me, stared just as if I’d said something exceptional.

“What, you guys don’t have any technology here?” I glanced around the room. There was a fire in a fireplace set in the wall opposite the bed, and lots and lots of candles all over the room. It was a bit of a fire hazard, to be honest, and I wondered what sort of sprinkler system they had in place just in case one of those candles tipped over. “None whatsoever? Even the Amish folks can have cell phones if they keep them in a special place.”

“She’s speaking in tongues!” the crazy round lady exclaimed, pointing at me with one hand while clutching the tall, willowy Imogen with the other. “She is the devil’s plaything and must be destroyed!”

“I am no one’s plaything, and nice manners abroad or not, you’re really starting to work my nerves, lady,” I told her, giving her a gimlet eye. “I wouldn’t dream of telling you people how to run your cult or religion or whatever it is that you’re doing here, but I am not a doormat, and I will not let you walk all over me. So you can do the rest of us a big ole fat favor and just get over yourself already.”

I might have yelled that last sentence at the crazy lady, but that’s no excuse for the handsome Nikola to suddenly snap into action, clearing the room of everyone in a matter of seconds.

“Leave us!” he bellowed, waving one imperious hand.

To my surprise, everyone did as he ordered. Imogen slid me a long, long look as she left, as well. That surprised me a bit, but I realized I had no claim on her friendship with Gretl.

Still, it would have been nice of her to offer me the use of her cell phone.

“Now you will explain to me what game you are playing,” Nikola demanded.

It was his eyes, I decided, that made a little shiver run down my back. He had the eyes of a white wolf: pale, icy blue, with a black ring around the outer edge of the iris. Set against that black hair, and a face that could have graced any fashion magazine, his eyes packed a wallop that I was steadfastly determined to resist.

I was not in the market for a man, even an older one who probably had worked out all his issues. Especially one who looked like Nikola did—I knew from experience how men who felt they were god’s gift to the world acted, and I wanted nothing to do with another one of that ilk.

“I do not play games, not the sort you’re referring to,” I said with much dignity. “I’m sure you’re busy with your party or cosplay or religious cult or whatever it is you folks are doing, so I’ll just get out of your hair. I’d prefer to call my cousin, but if you don’t have a phone, then I guess I’ll just have to walk to the nearest one.”

“Who told you I was a Dark One?”

“No one told me…wait, you mean Dark One like vampire?” I gawked at him for a minute. Had I gone completely insane? “You think you’re a vampire, too? Like Benedikt?”

“You will tell me what you know of my son!” he said as he stalked slowly toward me. “You will tell me how you have learned about the curse.”

“I will?” He really was a handsome devil, once he stood where the candlelight could play all over his face. He was dressed in a costume, as well—costume! He was wearing a costume! I slumped in relief on the bed, my anxiety level dropping when I realized that everyone must be attending a costume party. That or they were part of a local theater troupe. “What curse would that be?”

The one that has made my life a living hell.

I sat up straight at the voice in my head. Since when did my brain play tricks like that on me? I must have hit my head harder than I thought. Great, now I’d have to go see a doctor to find out why voices were suddenly talking in my brain.

“Do not play coy with me, madame. I neither desire nor seek such an attitude. Was it Rolf? Arnulf? Did they tell you what happened to me?”

“I don’t know an Arnold or a Ralph, so the answer to that is a rock-solid no.” I eyed him as he moved toward me, all sorts of warning bells going off in my head, and not just because the man moved like a panther about to pounce on some unwary prey.

He wasn’t a whole lot taller than me, but he was broad across the chest and shoulders; that much I could see even through the fancy outfit he wore. His hair was black, curly, and worn longish in the back, not—thank god—in a mullet, but still long enough that it was caught up in a little ponytail. He had an interesting face with a long, straight nose, a chin that made me a bit weak in the knees, and those eyes…oh, those eyes. He certainly didn’t look like a man in his sixties, which he must be if Imogen was in her forties. I shook my head at my confused thoughts. There was just something different about Nikola that went beyond the obvious sex appeal.

Warmth flooded me at that acknowledgment, a sexual sort of warmth, one that startled me with its intensity. “Oh, lovely, I probably have some sort of serious brain injury as a result of…of…” I screwed up my eyes and tried to force myself to remember what I had been doing before I woke up here.

“You did not hit Heinrich hard enough to injure your brain,” Nikola said, his voice, a lovely rich baritone, doing something wonderful to my insides. “You will look at me when I am speaking to you!”

Nothing breaks the spell of a yummy male voice like an obnoxious demand. I popped open one eye to glare at him. “OK, one, you are so not the boss of me, and two, I do not respond well to orders. If you had asked politely, I would have told you that I’ve closed my eyes so that I can try to remember what happened to me before I woke up here.”

I closed my eye again, and concentrated.

“I can tell you what you did to end up here.”

“Really?” I opened my eyes once more. “What?”

“You ran into Heinrich.”