Bitterness welled in me. “He’d didn’t get hurt, Madeline. He got murdered.”

She flinched and got up to walk over to the window where rain was running down in rivulets now. “Part of me died that day. No matter what had happened between us, Daniel was the only man I ever loved.”

“Did you even care about what happened to your daughter after he died?” Nikolas asked harshly.

Madeline turned away from the window. “Of course I did,” she snapped. “Sara disappeared after her father died, and there was no trace of her. I thought she had died, too, at first. I don’t know why I forgot about Daniel’s brother, Nate, but it was years later when I remembered him.”

I knew why she hadn’t remembered Nate. Aine had hidden me so the vampires could not find me. She’d made everyone forget that Nate even existed. It surprised me to hear Madeline had looked for me, but it didn’t change how I felt about her.

Nikolas leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Tell us about the Master.”

The agitation on Madeline’s face immediately turned to fear. “I-I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” I had to force myself not to yell at her. “Why are you protecting him?”

“I’m not protecting him. You don’t understand.” She began to pace in front of the window. “I can’t tell you because I don’t know who he is.”

“You’re lying. A day before my dad was killed, you went to visit a friend of yours in Portland and you told him you knew about the Master.”

She stopped pacing to stare at me. “Jiro Ito? How do you know about him?”

“His son, David, was there and he overheard you talking to his father. You said you knew the identity of a Master, and you needed the money he was holding for you so you could disappear.”

“Jiro’s son was there?” She shook her head. “He misunderstood what I said. I told Jiro that a Master was after me because I’d seen him, but that I didn’t know who he was.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “That makes no sense. If you saw him, you can describe him. And how did you come to see him in the first place or even know he was a Master?”

Madeline looked almost terrified when she returned to her chair. “I was in New York to see Adele, who was opening a new night club there, and I ended up at a party on the Upper East Side. I –” She swallowed and her hands clenched the arms of her chair. “Something happened to me at the party. One minute I was having a drink and the next I woke up in a cage in the basement of a place I didn’t know. There were vampires everywhere, but none of them talked to me until one named Eli came in. He taunted me about being his Master’s new toy. When I heard the word ‘Master’ I knew I was dead.”

“Khristu,” Nikolas breathed.

“A few hours later, they took me upstairs to meet the Master. I remember walking into a room and seeing him sitting by the fireplace. I remember every minute I was tortured by him for two days. I remember wishing to die. But I can’t remember anything about him.”

The fear in her voice was real as she relived the ordeal. “I’m sorry.” No matter what my feelings were for her, no one deserved to go through that. “Did they drug you to make you forget?”

“He compelled me to forget him.”

My eyes jerked from her to Nikolas. “But we can’t be compelled by vampires. Can we?”

“A Master is not a normal vampire,” Nikolas replied.

“He made sure I remembered everything about my time there, except him.” Madeline’s voice shook. “He said he was going to enjoy playing with me for a long time.”

The air in the room was charged with her fear, and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. At that moment, lightning zigzagged across the sky, and I jumped.

“How did you escape?” Nikolas asked her.

“I didn’t. He released me.”

My mouth fell open. “He let you go?”

“Something happened. I don’t know what. I was chained in his sitting room and I heard voices outside. Then he came in and said something that made me go to sleep. I woke up in Central Park filled with an overwhelming urge to run.” She swiped a finger under her eye. “The first thing I did was go to Portland to warn Daniel. I’ve been running ever since.”

Nikolas shook his head. “Madeline, why didn’t you go home? Tristan would do anything to keep you safe.”

She sniffed delicately. “Whatever he did to me made me afraid to trust anyone, especially the Mohiri. Adele is my closest friend, and I can’t even trust her completely. He stole that from me. He released me from my chains, but he still robbed me of my freedom. Until I can get rid of this compulsion, I’ll never be free.”

Orias’s conversation with Madeline suddenly made sense to me. “Orias is trying to find a way to break the Master’s compulsion, isn’t he?”

“He’s been working on it for ten years, but nothing can break it.”

“The only thing that can break a Master’s compulsion is his death,” Nikolas explained.

The weight of his words hit me. “She can’t tell us where he is unless she can break the compulsion, but in order to break it he has to die?”

“Yes.”

Despair settled over me, crushing every hope I’d pinned on finding Madeline. She was supposed to have the answers, to lead us to the Master, but she was as confused as the rest of us. Where did that leave us?