The words tumbled off my lips like powdered sugar dusting a fresh batch of cookies, and sleep finally rocked me in its dark embrace.

An unfamiliar man’s voice jerked me out of scrambled dreams of a Barbie doll grooming dogs while cats chewed on Roger’s face and he twittered like a bird.

“Jesus, you two look like death warmed over, baked, fried, and set out on the curb for the crows.”

I rolled to one side, my bed creaking. The man who’d woken me sat on the edge of Dahlia’s bed. His dark-brown hair was slicked back, tight to his skull and curled up at his shoulders. Of average build, he didn’t seem all that menacing. Nice profile, clean cut, wearing a well-fitted suit. He looked like the last salesman who’d tried to hawk his wares to me: an instant whipping device for eggs that had broken as he’d given me the demo. The man on the edge of Dahlia’s bed tipped his head, and I got a glimpse of the marks on his neck: two perfect puncture marks.

Bite marks.

Vampire bite marks. We’d been warned about them in Sunday school, and the teacher had shown us pictures so we knew what we were looking for when out in the “real” world. Two tiny holes with bruising around them, spaced an inch and a half apart on average.

“Merlin, are you going to help me or not?” Dahlia breathed out, her voice raspier than just a few hours before. I craned my head to look past him to her.

“You got the money?” He rubbed the first two fingers of one hand over his thumb in a slow circle.

The skin above her left eye lifted. “How much exactly are we talking?”

“For you, a deal. Seventy-five.”

This was the warlock, then. A warlock who played with vampires. A shudder rippled through me, and I pulled my sheets up closer to my chin. The movement seemed to draw his eyes to me.

Dark eyes with a hint of blue around the edge that was so faint I almost missed it locked onto mine. “Your roommate looks only marginally better than you. She got any money?” His eyes never left me as he spoke, and I slumped farther down into my bed. My heart rate kicked up, and perspiration tried to pop up all over my body. No more sweat for me, though.

He grinned at me, but that did nothing to soothe the growing anxiety in my gut. “She’s scared of me. I can smell it on her.”

He could smell me? What kind of freak show was he?

“Leave her alone, Merlin. She’s a Firstamentalist,” Dahlia said.

His grin widened, and I could see he was far from perfect. His front teeth were slightly crooked, turning east and west respectively. “Really? Firstamentalists are so much fun to play with, with all their gasping about going to hell and how every supernatural should be burned at the stake. You know, they were huge supporters of all four Walls that separate humans from Supes.”

Four Walls. I knew there were two in Eurasia, one here in North America, and there was a proposed Wall—

“That’s right, they are building a Wall in South America now, cutting the continent in half. No one thought the numbers of Supes would be near as high as they ended up being.”

He stepped away from Dahlia’s bed as he spoke. There was nowhere for me to go, nowhere for me to get away.

So I closed my eyes.

A laugh burst out of him. “Oh, goddess, bang me, baby. She closed her eyes. Does she think I’m a bogeyman?”

Dahlia sighed. “Merlin. I said to leave her alone.”

“In a minute. I’m enjoying myself.”

My bed creaked as he leaned his weight onto the edge, and I squeaked, “Go away.”

“Tell me your name.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The devil needs a name to call you by, and I’m not giving you mine.”

His laugh was deeper this time, darker if that was possible, and the tone in it made me shiver. “I’m not the devil. I’ve met him, mind you. He really is an ass, but hardly anyone to worry about.”

I couldn’t help it; my eyes flew open. Merlin’s face was only a few inches from mine. “You have not met Lucifer.”

His lips twitched. “It really wasn’t all that memorable. He’s quite the sloth. Lazing about in bed, eating, belching, telling terrible jokes and expecting people to laugh. Boring as . . . well, hell.” He winked as though I wouldn’t get his stupid joke without his prompt.

I pushed myself farther into my bed, close enough to the far edge that another inch and I’d fall out. “Why aren’t you going away again? I don’t have money, and I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re hawking.”

Merlin tipped his head to one side, and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “You are human. You’re dying. Yet you’re more afraid of me than death. That’s rare. It’s intriguing.”

“I don’t want to intrigue you.”

He shrugged and backed off the bed. “Too late . . . Alena.”

“You told him my name!” I snapped.

“I didn’t,” Dahlia breathed. “I swear I didn’t. I knew he was the real deal. I knew it.”

My charts, he had to have read it from my charts. Except I knew my charts were at the nursing station under lock and key. Everyone who contracted the Aegrus virus had his or her information kept that way.

“Dahlia, you have your price. Can you afford it?” He didn’t look at her, but instead continued to stare at my face.

She chewed her lower lip. “Is there anything . . . cheaper?”

Merlin blew out a low grunt. “You said you didn’t want to howl at the moon every month.”