“I’m sure she is.” I couldn’t really argue with Mae. What could I say while Daisy was right there coloring? So I changed the subject. “Have you heard anything about the air conditioning?”

“Not yet,” Mae shook her head. “But it’s cooled off since the sun went down. Outside, it’s not that bad at all.” She looked up at me. “Peter’s sitting out there.”

I wasn’t sure if I should join him. Since coming here, I’d tried to spend very little time alone with him. But the heat was still stifling inside the house, and I could really use a break, so I went outside.

The one thing I would say about the outback is that the stars were amazing. Without all the light pollution from the city, they twinkled above me like nothing I had ever seen.

I stepped down off the front porch to get a better look at them. It was much cooler outside than it was in the house, so I let the night enchant me for a moment. I heard a sound to my left and looked back over to see Peter sitting on the end of the porch, his legs dangling over the edge.

“The sky is really brilliant.” I took a few steps over to him.

“It is.” Peter leaned forward to admire the sky. “It’s not something I’ve gotten accustomed to yet. I’ve spent too much time in the city.”

“Is that why you came out here?” I leaned up against the porch next to him, and he kept looking up. His face was impossible to read, the way it always was.

“You know why I came out here,” Peter answered quietly.

I dropped my eyes and kicked at a stone on the ground. He had come here because of me, and I didn’t have anything to say that.

Shortly before he left, Peter had confessed his love for me, but I couldn’t reciprocate. Well, maybe parts of me could, but I refused to. Not when I had Jack, and I loved him. Then everything had happened with Mae and Daisy, and Peter had seen his chance to escape from me. Again.

“So you like it out here then?” I asked. “Away from all the hustle and bustle of the Cities?”

“I don’t know,” Peter sighed. “The weekly flights to Sydney to visit the blood bank are irritating, but the silence and isolation is nice.” He paused, thinking. “I don’t suppose I like it anywhere very much anymore.” I felt his eyes searching me. “I’ve been worse places, though.”

“Was that some kind of dig at me?” I asked sharply.

“Alice, I’m not trying to fight with you.” His eyes glowed green in the darkness, even without any light, and he let out a long breath. “I can’t win with you. I’m either being cruel, or I’m asking too much of you. Whatever I say, it’s never the right thing.”

“You didn’t say anything wrong.” I shook my head. “I was just asking if you were happy.”

“Don’t ask me that,” Peter said gently. “Don’t ask me because you don’t want to know the answer.”

“How are Mae and Daisy doing?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Not well,” he said. “Daisy isn’t getting any of her bloodlust under control, and Mae refuses to admit that that’s a problem.”

“Oh yeah?” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Daisy has been doing stuff like today?”

“She’s never around humans, or it would be far worse.” He lowered his voice, in case Mae might be inside listening. “Daisy went after a wallaby or a koala a few nights ago.”

“A wallaby and a koala don’t look anything alike,” I pointed out.

“It was something small and furry and gray-ish,” Peter shrugged, not caring what it was. “It was a bloody mess by the time I got of a hold of it.”

“You mean she killed it?”

When he said that she went after it, I had assumed that she chased it down because she was a little kid and they were cute. I had chased down hundreds of bunnies and squirrels when I was young in an attempt to make them my friends.

“She tried to eat it,” Peter said.

“No way! That doesn’t even… I thought animal blood wasn’t edible?”

“It’s not.” He gave me a meaningful look. “She just gets so crazy when she’s hungry, she can’t even differentiate animal blood from human.”

I had been around animals since I turned. Jack has a Great Pyrenees, Matilda, but I never once wanted to eat her, no matter how hungry I got. Her blood didn’t even smell right.

“Holy hell,” I said. “That’s intense.”

“She’s attacked both Mae and me on several occasions,” Peter said. “We feed her every day, but it’s not enough. I know she’s only been a vampire for a few months, and she was so young to start with, but I would’ve thought she’d gotten better by now. If anything, it’s worse.”

“What’s gonna happen with her?”

“She’s going to live out here forever, and we’re going to hope for the best,” he said. “There’s not much else we can do.”

What had happened today with Bobby wasn’t a fluke, and as cute and innocent as Daisy looked coloring at the table, she was equally as dangerous.

I stood outside with Peter for a while longer, but a tense silence fell over us, and I escaped back into the house. My bedroom was still too warm to sleep in, so I tried to put a fan in my window. Peter had brought a giant old metal box fan up from the basement, and it had to have come with the house.