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the carafe again.
    He took it and poured himself a cup. Derisively, he asked, “So what are we going to do about the corpse in your cellar?”
    “Corpse?” Nana echoed, voice hollow.
    “He means Menessos.”
    “He’s here ?”
    “Yes.” The chatter in the other room had stopped.
    Xerxadrea appeared in the doorway. “You must make Menessos tell you the truth.”
    “Finally!” Johnny exclaimed.
    “Huh?” I asked.
    “I’m not the only one who thinks Menessos is a liar.” Johnny grinned over the edge of his mug.
    “Do not add implications to my words, young man,” Xerxadrea snapped. “I insinuated nothing of the sort.” Though her patriotic velour jog suit was quirky, her formidability was undeniable. “Menessos is many things,” she went on, her voice firm but without the condemnation. “He embodies things you fear, things you envy, and things you cannot comprehend, but he is not a liar.” Before Johnny could protest, she raised a hand and added, “Oh, you can argue he twists facts to suit himself, but what he truly does is so much more than that . He can instantly take all the information he’s acquired and accurately discern which words—and what order—will produce the best advantage for his purposes.”
    “My bad,” Johnny muttered. “He’s not a liar, he’s a manipulating ass.”
    Again, I couldn’t intervene because Xerxadrea was quicker.
    “Omitting the unaccommodating words doesn’t make him a liar or an ass. It makes him a master .” She pointed at Johnny. “Perhaps you would learn a few things if you would but try to see beyond your own conflict, and see his.”
    Johnny’s silence couldn’t disguise the fact that he resented her scolding. It was conveyed in his raised chin and rigid spine.
    Xerxadrea continued. “His perception has been transformed by eons of blood. He has worn the fabric of this world for so long it’s threadbare and holds no mysteries for him now. He has mastered the patterns. Whatever moment in time you’re bitterly clinging to and trying to alter . . . it’s merely a thread to him. He can sever it as easily as he can fray it into a hellish and frantic existence for you. Or he can reweave that thread, making those seconds produce an outcome to fit the necessary and inevitable truth he uniquely sees, and it is that truth of which I spoke.”
    She gestured to me, and held out her arm.
    “Take me to him, Persephone. We must speak with him privately, you and I.”

CHAPTER THREE
    Being that she was an Eldrenne, I didn’t argue with her or point out that talking with a vampire during the day should be impossible. She’d have a way around it or she wouldn’t have suggested it. So, though I shared a glance with Johnny, I simply obeyed. As I led Xerxadrea carefully off my porch, Ruya cawed softly. Xerxadrea whispered back something I couldn’t understand.
    “He’s locked himself in down there, Xerxadrea.”
    “I can tend to that.”
    So could I, but she was the one wanting in, so I’d let her do the unlocking.
    At the cellar door, we halted. While the clouds overhead warned a cold rain could fall any second, I could feel his presence like a warm summer sun kissing the skin of my chest.
    Xerxadrea’s strange eyes shut and her hand rose before her, gnarled old fingers quavering as she mimed feeling along the underside of the door. Her face pinched up, and she whispered a single, sharp word. I felt a snap of ley power just as she sliced through the air like a sideways karate chop.
    She nodded at me. “Now.”
    I threw open the newly unbarred door then reached for her arm, but she had mist drifting around her ankles. I held back while she glided down the precarious steps. I followed, seeing the strange vapor dissipating when her feet safely met the cellar floor. Nana definitely needs to know that trick.
    I jerked the pull chain on the overhead bulb. Menessos had lain in the spare cage to die. He was utterly still.
    Xerxadrea approached him, pausing at the