When Lucas returned from conferring with the pilot, he suggested we all try to sleep.

“It’s not the most comfortable environment,” he said. “But I doubt anyone slept much last night, and these next few hours may be our only chance tonight.”

Cassandra nodded. “You and Paige should definitely try to sleep. I’m not tired, though, so I’ll sit in the rear cabin, if you don’t mind.”

Lucas escorted Cassandra into the tiny private cabin behind ours.

“Did she sleep at all last night?” Aaron whispered to me when they were out of earshot.

I shook my head. “She says…she says she’s not sleeping much lately.”

His eyes filled with quiet grief, as if this was the answer he’d been both expecting and dreading.

“I’ll sit up with her,” he said.

As I pulled pillows and a blanket from the closet, Lucas disappeared into the crew area. He returned a few minutes later carrying two mugs of tea. He slid my “forgotten” bottle of painkillers from his pocket. I opened my mouth to argue, then caught his look, nodded, and held out my hand. He shook two into it, then sat beside me.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Shaken, but okay. When we heard Edward and Nastasha were into dark stuff, I steeled myself for what we thought was the worst—that they were experimenting with humans. But the scale…the number of people they must have—”

I gulped my tea and sputtered as the hot liquid burned my throat. Lucas took my mug with a rush of apologies.

“No, that’s my fault,” I said. “I always tell you to make it hot. I drank it too fast.”

I took the mug from his hands. As I moved it to my side table, my hands shook so badly that tea sloshed over the side, nearly burning me again.

“Damn it,” I muttered, then managed a small smile. “Guess I’m not so okay after all.”

He squeezed my hand. “Completely understandable.”

“I know I have to be able to handle this better,” I said. “If I’m going to help you, I need to get over my squeamishness. I’m too—”

“You’re fine,” he said. “I’m not feeling too ‘okay’ myself. I can guarantee, as a, uh, partner in my endeavors, you’d likely never see anything on this scale again.”

“Partner?” I said, my smile turning genuine. “Don’t think I didn’t notice the hitch in your voice. Don’t worry. I have no plans to shoehorn myself into your life that way. I’ll be here to help when you need me, but that’s it.”

“That wasn’t—That is to say, I certainly don’t mind, if you’re interested…”

“I’m not. Well, I am, but I can’t be, right? Between the council and the new Coven,my plate’s already full.” I inhaled. “We screwed up. The council, I mean. We should have caught this.”

“You can’t keep tabs on every vampire—”

“Can’t we?” I said. “The Pack does it with werewolves, and there are more of them to police and fewer people to do it. I don’t mean we need to be breathing down every vampire’s neck, but we need to be more proactive in general. There were rumors. We should have heard them. I can’t blame Cassandra for that. It’s everyone’s responsibility. I want to change things, to start paying closer attention. But I also want to start this new Coven. I need to do that. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“Because your mother would have wanted it,” he said softly.

“Not just that. I wanted—or I thought I wanted…” I rubbed my hands over my face. “I know rebuilding the Coven is important, but some days I feel like there are other things I should be doing, things I’d rather be doing, and the Coven…I’m not sure it’s still my dream, or that it ever really was.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

Lucas leaned over and kissed me, a slow, gentle kiss that calmed the confusion crashing about in my head. After a few minutes, we reclined our seats, curled up together, and let the soft drone of the plane lull us to sleep. When the plane landed in Atlanta, I woke up just enough to hear Aaron and Cassandra’s whispered exchange of good-byes. A moment after the cabin door shut behind Aaron, I felt Cassandra tug the fallen blanket up over me. I sensed her standing there, watching me, but by the time I pried my eyes open, she was gone.

When I woke again, the plane had landed in Miami. I knew it had to be past dawn, but the cabin’s blackout shades made it nearly pitch black inside. I snuggled in closer to Lucas and pulled up the blanket to ward off the chill of the air-conditioning.

“Cold nose,” Lucas said with a sleepy laugh.

I tried pulling back, but he lifted my chin and kissed me.

“That’s nice and warm,” he said.

“Hmmm. Very nice.”

“We’re going to have to see my father today,” he murmured between kisses.

“Hmmm, not so nice.”

Another laugh. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re right. We need to tell him what we found…and we should thank him for the use of the jet.” I caught Lucas’s look. “You don’t still regret taking it, do you?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. I worry about how it will be interpreted. Then I worry about whether it’s a sign of backsliding. And then I worry about worrying too much, what you must think of it.” A quarter-smile. “Self-doubt is not a sexy trait in a lover.”