I heard a snort and looked at Brute. He had risen while Jodi walked away and was standing at my thigh. I tensed. Brute still didn’t like me, and I had been inattentive long enough for him to get from the feet of the SoD to me. Not my smartest moment for distraction. “What?” I asked him mildly.

He put his nose at my hand, where it hung by my side, and snuffled me. Tentatively, he opened his mouth and his large tongue licked out and . . . tasted my hand. Then he shoved his big head under my palm and nudged me. I took the hint and scratched him behind his ears. “Don’t get used to this,” I warned. “I am not a dog person.”

Brute snorted slightly in clear disbelief. I stayed with Brute for a while, scratching his ears, neck, chest, and shoulders, studying the Son of Darkness. He was a problem I had no idea how to deal with. I should have killed him. If killing him was even possible. But if I had succeeded, the EuroVamps would have declared war, descended on the U.S., and . . . That would have been bad.

Leaving him semi-alive was better than us at war. Maybe.

Leo had informed the vamp world that Santana was “currently abiding as my guest,” refusing to add any details.

The Europeans had screamed and wailed about Santana, sent long letters and even e-mails full of promises and threats, demanding their Dark Heir be returned to them. Then they had sent notice that the negotiation and visit by senior vamps was back on, according to the previous schedule. And they went silent again. We knew they were plotting. Planning. We knew they would come eventually, looking for vengeance and justice, looking for a return of their creator, but mostly looking to steal land and territory.

We’d be ready.

I turned on a booted foot and left the subbasement for the morning skies and an overheated summer day.

* * *

Entering from the back, I stepped into my garden. The morning light softened the broken stone of the boulders I’d had put there and sparkled off pooled rainwater.

Molly sat on the ground beside the fountain, her clothes rain damp, her hands pressed into the soil, fingers curled around what looked like a stick. Her eyes were closed, her face turned up to the sun. I stopped and studied her, watching and wondering. I could see her magics sparkling around her, not the new death magics but the old earth magic that had been hers before she embraced death to save her sisters, her daughter, and herself. Silvery and greenish and full of life.

I didn’t know what it meant, but Molly looked almost peaceful. Almost normal. Except for the stick. It was the root and branch of the dead rosemary plant she used in workings. It had once been alive, but her death magics had killed it, and I didn’t know why she still kept it. It had to be painful to constantly see proof of one’s magic gone awry.

Molly lowered her face and opened her eyes, staring at the deadwood. “Vivo. Coalesco,” she said in Latin, instead of her usual Gaelic. Her power swirled and shot down to the dead stick. Hesitantly, she raised one hand and held it over the dead root and branch of rosemary resting near her knees, and . . . it sprouted. Pale green leaves sprang from the branch, growing to half an inch long. The root spread rootlets that crawled over the ground and dug into the earth. Molly gasped and made a soft, surprised, questing sound.

My mouth fell open.

My best friend ever looked up at me, her eyes practically glowing with happiness. “Life. There was life in it still.” Her eyes spilled over and tears ran down her cheeks.

And maybe that was what I’d learned through all this, through dealing with the undead. That even in the midst of death, there was often a spark of life left. That life went on even in the heart of mortality. And that perhaps that was something the undead had forgotten—the beauty of simply being alive.

I walked to Mol and sat on the wet ground, the rosemary plant between us, its fresh scent filling the small garden.