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"Who was it, Brigit?"

Soht went out of her, but the voice was still bitter "You knoho it was He told me He told me it was your fault He would have let me live, but he needed to show you"

"Shohat?"

A shimmer of blood-red tears built in her eyes Her desperation to see e was a blind rage I couldn’t ignore "He said he needed you to know you wouldn’t be able to save us" She sed her rage I could feel her throat contract undertheir ranks "Every human you try to save he will turn personally So you would know"

I fought back my own tears and violently turned her head to the side in my haste to check the skin There it was, as sure as I kneould be The uneven, broken-toothed bite of a psychopath

"Oh, Brigit" There was only sadness in it and I were not alone on the sidewalk any fro a few feet fro to an outsider I was still wearing old hot pants, hooker shirt and four-inch heels My eyes were done with a heavy dose of blackon the chest of a cute blonde girl whose face was covered in blood from her tears and busted nose

I would have liked to tell him it wasn’t what it looked like, but I really didn’t knohat he was thinking

"Please help me," I pleaded

"Of course" Without hesitation or questions he was besidefor me to tell him what I wanted next I wondered, had it been Lucas in my apartment rather than Desmond, if he would have been so compliant

"Is that your car?" I nodded in the direction of the Challenger

"Yes"

"Are you going to killa pretty pathetic new vaone out of her

"No," I said She and Des to take you to soaze this tih about the paranormal to understand who I meant

"The Oracle?" His tone was hushed

"Yes"

"But we can’t go to her It’s against her laws"

"Please" I pulled Brigit to her feet, still holding her arave her credit for "Do you kno to get to her?"

"Of course It’s just down the block, but I’ht, determined line I couldn’t explain it to hiit "Just trust me"

Chapter Twenty-Seven

My apart distance to the coffee shop, but with a bloodied vas a little less complicated I was thankful the busiest hour for coffee lovers had passed and the Starbucks was relatively vacant When Brigit and I vanished in the doorway, Desmond was left alone, but with so few patrons it was unlikely any of theirls with hiit’s docile state wouldn’t last long The hunger would take her before the night was through We were lucky Peyton had thought to feed her before sending her after me, otherwise she wouldn’t have one after the first available blood source instead and another innocent would have been dead

Rather than finding ourselves in front of the cash counter at Starbucks, ere standing in the foyer of a ht word to describe where Calliope lived Mansion would have been much closer to the truth, but even that didn’t really fit Her estate transcended the laws of physics binding other homes to a fixed size It had a limitless nuuests as necessary Whether it was used to heal those ere injured or safeguard new va the public, Calliope’s hoer than er than Lucas’s mammoth bedroo Persian rugs Calliope had acquired at bargain prices when there’d still been a Persia