At the accusation, Oliver pressed his lips together. His chest heaved, and he felt the cords in his neck bulge. “How dare you accuse me of willfully acting the way I do?”

“Oh, I dare a lot more!” She pointed her finger toward the door. “I also dare accuse you of attacking this girl and leaving her half dead! Is that how you want to live? Always a step away from killing an innocent?”

Her words chilled him to the bone. Often enough he’d been close to doing just that, but tonight, Maya was wrong. Tonight, he’d rescued an innocent. “I didn’t bite her! Do you want to know what happened? Do you? Or will that shake your preconceived opinion of me?”

“Go ahead! Dish up some more lies if it makes you feel better.”

“They’re not lies! I don’t know why the girl isn’t telling you what happened, but I can venture a guess. She hasn’t lost her memory. She just doesn’t want to admit what happened.”

Maya raised her eyebrows, then crossed her arms over her chest. “Admit what?”

He had to say it, as much as he wanted to keep this piece of information to himself. “That she offered me sex in exchange for helping her. She—”

Maya’s laughter interrupted him. “Oh my god! I can’t believe you couldn’t come up with a better excuse. What is it? Has the blood gone to your head and made you dizzy? No girl like her would offer you sex in exchange for help. She’s not a prostitute. Have you lost your mind?”

“She did! She offered me sex if I helped her and then she kissed me. And when she collapsed in my arms, I saw the bite marks of the other vampire. That’s when I brought her here.”

“She kissed you? Stop Oliver, you’re just digging yourself deeper and deeper into a hole.”

“But it’s true! You must believe me! She was running from somebody. She begged me to help her.”

Maya let out a sigh, seemingly exhausted. “It’s me, Maya. You don’t have to continue making stuff up. Just tell me what really happened and I’ll try to put a good word in with Gabriel and Samson.”

“I’m not lying! It’s the truth. I didn’t bite her!”

She scowled at him. “Fine. Play it your way. Continue lying, but it’ll make it only worse. If you at least showed remorse for your actions, I could convince Gabriel and Samson to be lenient with you, but since you’ve decided to be a hard-ass about it, don’t expect to be treated with kid gloves.”

In disbelief Oliver shook his head. This couldn’t be happening. He would be taken to task for something he hadn’t done. “That’s not fair! I’m innocent!”

Maya rolled her eyes. “Innocent? There’s nothing innocent about you. The only innocent in this house is that girl in the next room. And you’ve robbed her of that innocence. You should at least have the decency to admit your guilt like a man.”

Oliver closed his eyes. He knew it had been a mistake to help the girl. He should have followed his first instinct and turned around the minute she’d approached him. But no, knight in shining armor that he fancied himself, he’d wanted to help her.

Liar.

He cringed. Okay, so he’d only decided to help her after she’d made her outrageous offer of sex. Not that he would have ever held her to it anyway! It didn’t matter: he’d gotten involved, and now he was in a hell lot of trouble and as long as the girl didn’t admit the truth, it was his word against hers.

The evidence was damning: bite marks on the girl’s neck and massive blood loss. Maybe if he could talk to the girl and assure her that he wouldn’t collect on her promise, maybe then she would tell Maya what really happened.

He had to try it.

“I’ll talk to her again. Alone.” He made a step toward the door.

“Not a chance,” Maya objected instantly and blocked the door. “Do you think I don’t know what you’re trying to do?”

“Do what?” he ground out and ran his hand through his hair.

“You’re going to try and influence her, using mind control.”

Oliver narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you wanna get your facts straight for a change: as Thomas will be able to confirm, I haven’t quite mastered the art of mind control yet.”

In fact, he was having problems with it and assumed that his problems with being able to control his hunger for blood had something to do with it. They robbed him of the energy necessary to exercise mind control and being able to plant fake memories into his victims’ minds. He was, however, fully capable of erasing a person’s memory. It was a skill that required less finesse and was more instinctual than the art of mind control, even though the two skills were related.