“Maybe not,” came a reply. Maggie.

“We’re going to have to make arrangements to get to Venice,” Lucian said.

“Let’s let Sean get back and see what he’s discovered about Charleston.”

“I’m willing to bet I know what happened in Charleston,” Ragnor said. “We’ll have to check it out.” Ragnor’s words about Venice disturbed her. They were menacing. He didn’t trust Jared. He thought he should be ...

Destroyed.

Biting her lip, she moved back up the stairway. In her room, she found her purse and dug out her phone book.

Under ordinary circumstances, she’d never make an overseas call from a house where she was a guest, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances.

She dialed the Danieli, and after a moment, she was put through to Jared’s room. The phone rang and rang. She felt a deepening sense of dread.

Then Cindy answered the phone.

“Cindy? It’s Jordan.”

She was greeted by silence. Then suddenly Cindy lashed out at her.

“You bitch! You rotten little bitch! We spent half the night looking for you. We finally traced you to the airlines and New Orleans. And by then, Jared was sick, so sick they had to take him to the hospital. I’m going there now. What the hell is the matter with you, taking off without a word like that, telling the cops to say you’d meet us at Harry’s?”

“Cindy, I had to get out of there. Tiff Henley was murdered. I saw her body.”

“Tiff Henley is in Paris. The cops said so. And Jared said so, too.”

“Jared lied to you, Cindy.”

“Don’t you understand me? He’s in the hospital? sick. He may be dying!”

“Cindy, I love Jared, you know that?”

“Like hell! Your mind is twisted. You went unhinged when Steven died, and now you’re crazy. You’re simply crazy, and you’ve hurt him ...”

Cindy’s voice dissolved into a torrent of tears.

“I have to go. I just came to get some things to stay with him at the hospital. If you give a damn about him, you’ll get your ungrateful ass back here!”

The phone went dead in Jordan’s hands. She felt someone at the door. Great. Good thing she’d never decided to be either a criminal or a cop. She’d left the door open to make her secret call.

Ragnor was standing there.

“I have to go back to Venice. Immediately. You may not have to destroy Jared. Cindy says he may be dying.”

“We’ll go back to Venice,” he said, eyeing her coldly. “But you shouldn’t have called. Phone calls can be traced.”

“They already knew I was in New Orleans.”

“And now they’ll know we’re warned about Jared.” He paused. “There’s another stop we have to make first.”

“Where?”

“Charleston.”

“Why?”

“Sean has spent the day tracing your Steven Moore. He made a really sudden appearance in Charleston. He’d also disappeared from his last job in New York. Supposedly, he’d been injured and suffered amnesia on his way to recovery. Oddly enough, his family died at the same time. A close friend on the New York force met with a serious accident. No one remembered him very well.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that your fiancé might have been a rather cunning vampire.” She shook her head. “No?that’s impossible. You didn’t know him. He was the kindest man, the most compassionate?”

“And maybe a damned good actor. Make yourself a cop. It’s amazing how that could keep a lot of evidence from being found. And amazing how easy it would be to get rid of people who were getting too nosy. And how easy to restrain people when they were trying to escape.”

“You’re wrong!”

“I’ll be happy for you to prove me wrong.”

“How?”

He turned and started out of the room. She ran after him, grabbing his arm. She let it go quickly, having forgotten in the last few hours just how much power lay in his biceps.

“What are you planning?” she asked.

“We have to exhume Steven Moore.”

She gasped, backing away. “He was burned! And you can’t just dig him up?an exhumation order could take days ... weeks. More. And I have to get to Venice?”

“We’ll be on a plane by midnight,” he told her.

“Then?”

“We’ll be in Charleston in a matter of hours. And as soon as it’s dusk?”

“You’re going to dig him up yourself?” she asked incredulously. “No, no, we can’t. I’m telling you, he was burned. He’s been buried a year. He’s deep in the ground, in a sealed coffin.”

“I’m willing to bet your coffin is empty.”

“Steven was never evil! We’ll be wasting time. You’ll see?he’s going to be in his coffin.”

“You’re right; we’ll see.”

“You won’t be able to get him out of the ground?”

“I’ll have help. Lucian and Sean will be with us.”

“And the three of you are going to sneak into a cemetery at night and dig up his coffin?”

“The four of us,” he said. “You’re coming too. I don’t intend to let you out of my sight.”

* * *

They had entered a new age.

Maggie Canady arranged for their flight tickets on the way to the airport via her phone and when they arrived at the airport, they arranged for their transportation from Charleston to Rome and on to Venice.

He never left Maggie alone with their toddler and their infant.

While waiting for last-minute arrangements to be made, Jordan had a few minutes alone with the two women.

“You still look shell-shocked,” Maggie told her.

“I am still shell-shocked. I read your husband’s book. I knew something was going on, that strange things were happening, but I was looking for logical explanations. I thought there were killers loose?”

“There are killers loose,” Jade commented.

“But in legend and lore, all vampires are killers,” Jordan insisted.

“And most of us have killed,” Maggie murmured.

“But you’re not a vampire anymore. I’ve never heard of a vampire being cured, in any legend, television show, movie, book, what have you.”

“There is a very old legend that if the tie between a mortal and a vampire is deep enough, a bloodletting can bring back mortality. In my instance ... this is too long and confusing a story to tell quickly. When I met Sean ... well, I think he lived before. We became involved here, in New Orleans, because an old enemy of mine was active and Sean was the cop on the case. I don’t have all the answers; for us it worked.”

“Okay, you were a vampire, but now you’re human. And Jade, you were human, but now you’re a vampire. So you weren’t Lucian’s long-lost soul mate.”

Jade looked at Maggie. “She sounds so skeptical. Doesn’t this all sound perfectly normal to you?”

“I remember when you thought we were all insane,” Maggie said.

Jade shrugged. “I came across a group of terrorists in Scotland, chewing up tourists. They tried to finish off the survivors one by one, and there I met Lucian. I think he believes I lived before; I don’t.”

“But you say that you are now a vampire,” Jordan reminded her.

“I was caught in the final episode with the creatures terrorizing the vaults and crypts of Scotland. With the depths of the tainting I received . . . well, it doesn’t matter. Lucian had no desire to become mortal; he was well aware that the upheaval was happening, and he felt responsible to see that . .. that the world changed. He was responsible for his own kind, and to keep a balance and ...”

“And to protect people,” Maggie said flatly. “Jordan, the world is black and white and all shades of gray. But you have to believe us; maybe we’re all trying to make amends now. Maybe all vampires want to believe even they can get to heaven one day. I don’t know. It’s just that in the last year or so, many of the stricken?the cursed, or the blessed, as you would have it?have formed something of a coalition. They lead fairly ordinary lives, and when such an upheaval occurs, they fight it together. Anyway, here they are

... coming for you. Take care; trust us, please trust us!” Maggie gave her a hug as Ragnor came for her. “Hurry?we’ll just make the plane.” He led her into the airport as Sean and Lucian said good-bye to their wives. He was all business, in a hurry to make sure they didn’t miss their flight.

She was seated next to him on the short hop from New Orleans to Charleston. She was still worn to a frazzle, and he seemed in no mood for conversation. When the plane landed, they immediately searched for a car rental place.

“What about the car I wrecked yesterday?” she asked Ragnor at the desk.

“Sean took care of it.”

“But?”

“He’s a cop. He took care of it,” Ragnor said again.

A few minutes later, they had their car. It wasn’t quite dark.

“We can go to my house, if you want,” Jordan suggested.

“No ... I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“Hey, I know a great restaurant in the area,” Sean suggested. “Southern fried cooking, but then, those two don’t have to worry about high cholesterol.”

Jordan tried to smile at the joke.

She knew the place where they stopped. It was an old converted house on the outskirts of town, very near the cemetery.

Both Sean and Lucian ordered fried chicken, potatoes, succotash, salads and desserts. They ordered wine with dinner.

She decided that since she was going to dig up the grave of a man she had loved, she needed a large glass of wine as well.

“And to think,” she murmured, halfway through the meal, “legend has it that vampires don’t need normal sustenance, only blood.”