Why stop there? demanded Aunt Tatiana. Think what he did to Sydney!

He didn’t succeed, I reminded her.

It doesn’t matter! He tried to hurt her. He has to pay! Don’t just freeze him with spirit! Use it to crush his skull! He needs to suffer! He tried to hurt her!

For a moment, her words and that storm of emotion building in my chest threatened to overcome me. He had tried to hurt Sydney, and maybe I couldn’t stop her current captors, but I could stop Wesley. I could make him pay, make him suffer for even thinking of hurting her, make sure he was never able to—

“I’m sorry,” Wesley blurted out to Nina. “And to you too, Vanessa.”

I hesitated a moment, torn between the desperate look on his face and Aunt Tatiana’s urgings—urgings that a dark part of me secretly wanted to give in to. Soon, the decision was made for me. I couldn’t have held out longer if I’d wanted to. My grasp on spirit vanished, and he collapsed to the ground in an ungraceful heap. He scurried to his feet and quickly backed away, with Brent and Lars shadowing him like the toadies they were. “This isn’t over,” Wesley warned, feeling brave once he’d put more distance between us. “You think you’re untouchable, but you aren’t.”

You showed him weakness, Aunt Tatiana told me.

“Get out,” ordered Vanessa. She gave a nod toward a couple of her larger male friends, who were more than happy to help Wesley to the door. “And don’t ever come back to any of my parties again.”

From the mutterings of others, Wesley and his cronies weren’t going to be welcome at any parties for a long, long time. But me? Suddenly, I was even more of a star than I had been. Not only was I shrouded in secrets, I’d also just used the still little-understood power of spirit to put a would-be womanizer in his place. The girls at the party loved that. Even the guys did. I had more invitations and friends than I’d ever had in my life—and that was saying something.

But I was also exhausted. The sun was threatening to come up over the horizon, and I was still on a human schedule. I took the well wishes with as much humility as I could and attempted to make my way to the door, promising each person I’d be sure to hang out with them later. Here, Nina jumped in to help me, steering me through the crowd, just as I’d guided her earlier, and dropping hints about official business I supposedly had to deal with.

“The only business I want to have now is with my pillow,” I told her with a yawn, once we’d broken free of the Szelsky home. “I’m nearly dead on my feet.”

“That was some hardcore magic you did,” she told me. “I didn’t even notice you’d stopped drinking. Pretty impressive restraint.”

“If I had my way, I’d live on a constant buzz of alcohol,” I admitted. “But I try to sober up a couple of times a day. It’s—it’s hard to explain, and I can’t really, but there’s something I have to do that I need my wits and spirit for. It timed out lucky tonight that Wesley made his appearance when he did. I wouldn’t have been so impressive if it had come down to a fist fight.”

Nina grinned. “I have faith in you. I bet you would’ve been awesome.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry for what he said to you.”

“It’s okay,” she said with a shrug. “I’m used to it.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to like it,” I said.

Something vulnerable in her eyes told me I’d hit the mark, that those comments stung her deeply. “Yeah . . . I mean, people don’t usually say things quite that explicitly, but I’ve seen that attitude in the people I deal with at work. You were right about the party, though. Some of them weren’t as bad as I thought.” Her voice suddenly turned shy. “And thank you . . . thank you for standing up for me.”

Her words and my small victory over Wesley gave me more self-determination than I’d had in weeks. My mood, which had been wallowing in darkness and self-loathing for so long, swung up dramatically. I wasn’t worthless after all. Maybe I hadn’t been able to find Sydney yet, but I was still capable of little things. I couldn’t give up the fight yet. Who knew? Maybe tonight my luck would change. I could barely wait to escort Nina back to her place so that I could get back to mine and search for Sydney.

When I did, though, it was clear my luck was staying the same on this front. No Sydney. That heady mood came crashing down, but at least I was so exhausted that I had little time to beat myself up over the failure. I fell asleep promptly thereafter and slept until almost the middle of the next vampiric day as my body continued figuring out what schedule I was on.

When I woke, my phone had a message from my mom, reminding me about dinner later on. When I checked the voice mail on the phone in my suite, I discovered about a million messages from my new “friends.” My cell phone number wasn’t widely known, but a bunch of the party goers had managed to find which guest building I was at and get messages through that way. I had social opportunities for months.

But today, I only had one that mattered. My parents’. I didn’t care so much about my dad, but my mom had gone out of her way to come get me. She’d gone out of her way for me on so many things, really, and I owed it to her to be respectable in front of her friends tonight. I stayed sober throughout the day and did boring things like laundry instead of following up on any of the invitations I had—including one that came in from Nina. As much as I liked her, and as much as I’d had fun with her, an inner voice told me it was wiser to keep my distance.