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pleaded.
    With a tilt of his head, he nodded, and looked away down the cobbled street. Just long enough to allow me to punch in the digital code and rush through the cool, shadowed house to my father's bedside. Cinder would follow, I knew, but I blessed him for the chance.
    Lanzo Marazetti was awake and breathing roughly when I sat on his bedside. Golden light from the rising sun danced on the windowsill and the canal water's reflection cast wavy shapes across the ceiling. Papa looked at me but showed no sign of recognition. His salt and pepper hair had grown long over his ears, a prideful adornment he'd always carefully combed because he knew how it had attracted the women. He'd waited five years following mother's death before dating again. I'd wanted that happiness for him. He was a man who thrived in the love of a good woman's arms.
    I held his hand and felt the slow pulse at his wrist. His skin was cold and his fingertips were bluing.
    "You're a good man, Papa. I've brought something to make your transition easier."
    Digging the device out from my purse, I placed the heavy disk on Papa's chest, then waited. For what, I wasn't sure. What code? Shouldn't the thing just work?
    I searched my memory for the spells I had stolen from witches over my decade of training with tribe Lilith. I'd initially thought taking magic from a witch through bloodsexmagic so evil, yet the majority of the witches had been cooperative and had actually participated willingly, thanks to my vampiric thrall and sensual wiles.
    Cinder was aware of a code? I would have to make him talk.
    Kissing Papa's forehead, I whispered that I'd return. It was difficult to leave the dark bedroom, but when I heard the commotion below, I quickened my pace.

Chapter Five
    The blonde spitfire blazed into the study and hissed in a whisper, "You don't have permission to enter this home!"
    I set down the marble globe I'd been studying with care and turned to lean against the ancient mahogany desk that might have been around for centuries. "I'm not a vampire, vixen. I can enter any dwelling I choose."
    "Generally a person waits to be invited in if he means to be in the least nice."
    "Never confessed to being a nice guy, either."
    "You're an ass."
    "And you should be nicer, seeing you've got some big favor you want to ask of me. Yes?"
    Fists chugging at her sides, she blew out a breath of frustration instead of another argument. I had guessed correctly. And I immediately felt awful about it. Someone had taken the wind out of her sails, and that someone had been me.
    I shouldn't feel bad. She was a thief. But standing here in her father's home, with him upstairs--dying--would never put me in the running for sainthood.
    Defeated and quiet now, Parish pulled the Retriever from her pocket and held it before her on a shaky palm. "Please, help me. I need the code to make it work."
    "Tell me how your mortal father lost his soul?"
    "I don't have time for this, demon."
    I winced because I preferred her to use my name and not the label that suddenly made me feel dirty and lesser around her brightness.
    "Do you even care?" she continued. "He's dying. He's so close..." She tilted her head down and I looked away before I could see the teardrop. Too late. I smelled the salty sadness. My chest squeezed oddly. "Fine. Papa sold his soul for me."
    "For you? But what...?"
    "I didn't want to tell you this, but apparently you've not a clue."
    "A clue about what?"
    "About what I really am, or rather, what I once was, and how I believe we were destined to meet."
    Now she'd lost me. She was vampire, who I assumed had once been mortal due to the mortal father. Destined to meet? I bought into that crap about as much as I believed in fate and soul mates. Life was what you made it; it was not foretold before you set foot on this earth. Unless...
    "Cinder, I was born with a sigil on my forearm." She displayed her forearm, but where she stroked it the skin appeared paler, thinner.
    A sigil? That was an