“Ah…” She broke off a piece of her croissant and put some strawberry jam on it. “Well, after we checked in, there was a cocktail hour of sorts.” Vomitorium. “We milled around the gym getting to know one another.” Nearly were electrocuted in the dark. “Went for a swim.” Had a drowning party. “At the end, we took a walk.” Dickensian death march. “And then everybody had a physical exam.” Cardiac resuscitation. “It was a long evening, so that was why they wanted us to stay.” Half-dead and barely breathing. “And that’s it.”

Great. She was channeling Mr. Subliminal.

Her father nodded. “The Brotherhood was most kind in calling me—Peyton as well. They said you did a wonderful job—that you were at the top of your class.”

“I surprised myself.”

And was still lost in her own home. Sitting with her father in the same seats they always did, under the same crystal chandelier, with the same porcelain plates and cups and saucers, watched over by the same oil paintings of ancestors, she felt like she was in a nice hotel that was furnished like a castle, and had a staff so well trained they were able to anticipate everything she wanted … and was in a foreign land.

Then there was her father … God, her dad.

As Abalone sat at the head of the long, glossy table, his handsome face was aglow with relief and pride—mostly relief—and didn’t that make her feel even worse. The fact that her fabrications were having their desired, de-escalating effect distanced her even further from him … plus there was the added layer of her guilt.

Which was not just about the training.

It was impossible not to remember and obsess about what she’d done with Craeg, and what he’d done to himself. Part of her was constantly re-running every nuance of the experience, all the eye contact, all the sounds, the scents … the expression on his face as he—

Okay. She was not going there at the damned dining room table.

Where she would go, though? God, much as she hated to admit it, she worried that that interlude, even if it proved to be a one-time only, made her unmateable in the eyes of the glymera. Sure she was still sexually pure, but her vein had been good and tapped and that had led to … that certain exhibition, as one might call it, on Craeg’s part.

Indeed, she hated the fact that she was wasting even a thought on that load of judgmental BS—but sitting here with her father, it was an unavoidable burden.

You didn’t ditch an entire upbringing’s worth of context that quickly.

Especially when you thought about what your next of kin wanted for you in life.

“Paradise?”

She shook herself and smiled. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I think you have enough jam on there, darling.”

Paradise looked down and saw that she had put about half the jar on a piece of croissant the size of her thumb. The red sweetness was dripping down onto her plate, all over her knife, onto her hand.

“Silly me.” She started trying to clean things up. “So how was your night last evening?”

Fortunately, he went into his work and a grand festival ball that was coming up and some other things, and she was able to listen well enough to nod in all the right places.

What were the Brothers going to do to us tonight? she wondered. And how the hell was she going to act all normal around Craeg?

Thirty minutes later, she was in her uniform, had her satchel sorted, and was out the front door, dematerializing to the meeting place. The bus was already parked in the wooded lot, and the folding door opened as soon as the driver saw her.

Going up the three steps, she loosened her coat and met the eyes of the group. Novo was lounging back, earbuds plugged in, her iPhone front and center. Boone was the same. Axe was asleep in the back again, no doubt dreaming about things that hopefully would stay in his brain. Anslam was typing into his phone, probably updating his Facebook status to being in a relationship with the Porsche his father had just bought him as a reward for being in the training program. And Peyton was rubbing his face as if maybe that would wake him up.

“Hey,” he said as she came down to where he was.

As she took a seat across the aisle from him, he shifted around, leaned against the blackened windows, and stretched his legs out.

“You ready for this?” he asked.

“I could answer that better if I knew what we were in for.”

He grunted. “Okay, I’ll change the subject. So, guess what I heard?”

Peyton was the source of all gossip—always had been. He’d been the one to tell her about the new toy parked in Anslam’s family’s garage, and the latest scandal involving his second cousin and the fact that she’d lied to her parents about where she was staying in town, and the one about some female who was married to an old goat and fucking rounds of males in her guest cottage on her estate.

But that last one had to be hyperbole.

“What?” At least the chatter would take her mind off of seeing Craeg. “And embellish if you can. This trip is going to take a half hour at least.”

“I got more stories. Don’t you worry.”

“Thank God.” And this was in spite of their having spent all those hours on the phone during the day. “Have I mentioned lately that I love you?”

“Yes, but if you really wanted to prove it, you’d get that tattoo we were talking about.”

“I’m not having your picture put on my ass.”