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him age and die while I remained unchanged.” Her gaze, diffuse with remembered grief, zeroed in on Delaney. “Everything he did, he did for you. Always you. I railed at him about his stubbornness and stupidity. I could have cured him, made him immortal. But his sainted daughter might not approve, and now he’s as dead as those poor bastards on that tour bus.”
    “And you blame me,” Delaney said tonelessly.
    “You are to blame, don’t you see? You had his heart, the man I loved till his last breath, and you have Jaden. It’s a bit more than flesh can bear.”
    Delaney looked up at Jaden, and Jaden looked at her. He was the handsomest, most talented man she had ever set eyes on, and possibly the kindest. She remembered the time her beloved cat, a three-legged relic from her childhood, had gotten stuck in a drain pipe on the estate. Jaden had stayed up until four in the morning coaxing the creature out while Delaney fretted inside with pneumonia. She would never forget the sight of them, drenched from a cold miserable rain, dripping in the mud room. Val was there too, screeching at Jaden to come in and not catch his death of cold. Which, given the circumstances, was pretty ironic.
    “I want to talk to Jaden,” she told Val. “Alone.”
    “Why, so he can seduce you again? Don’t be a fool. You aren’t cut out for this, and you know it.”
    Delaney took up her pocketknife once more and continued to slice potatoes into the pan. “Where will you go, Val? There aren’t many Hiltons up here.”
    Val gave a snort of disgust. “Tell me you aren’t for one minute considering this. Vampires are vampires. Humans are humans. You would be changing the course of history.”
    “I think she told you what she wanted,” Jaden said. “If you leave now, you might make it to Cusco before daybreak.”
    “Unless vampires have the ability to fly, she’s stuck here with the rest of us,” Delaney said. “The earthquake knocked out a big chunk of the road. We’re all essentially stranded here until they fix it, but that could take weeks.”
    “Earthquake?” Jaden whipped his gaze toward Val. “You did that, didn’t you? My God. Was that to prevent my coming, or were you trying to kill…?” The color drained from his face.
    “I do what is necessary to survive,” Val said with an air of injured virtue. “That’s how the game is played. Winners, losers. The eaters and the eaten.”
    “Get out!” Jaden said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “How could you? What kind of person could do such a thing? Even if you hated Delaney, how could you try to murder the only daughter of a man you claimed to love?”
    Delaney set down the knife and rose slowly. She felt sick. The earthquake could have killed more than just her. She still had no idea what might have happened in her village. How was Val able to cause a natural disaster? It was as though this was still earth, sure, reality was reality, but all the rules had changed.
    Val slipped her purse over her shoulder. “You’ll regret this. Mark my words. Ask Jaden what the consequences are of you going through with this ridiculous ceremony. Ask what will happen to him.”
    She left a cloud of floral perfume in her wake, her heels an angry staccato. Delaney stared after her in stunned disbelief.
    “What is she talking about, Jaden? What consequences? How did she trigger an earthquake? And why were you unable to stop her?”
    Jaden took her in his arms. He was warm, and her cheek rested comfortably against his chest. “Pachacamac, the Inca god of earthquakes. The fate of vampires has been entwined with that of Pachacamac for centuries. Female vampires have the power to summon him, to do earth magics. Male vampires do not.”
    “She means to kill me,” she said.
    His embrace tightened. “I will never let that happen.”
    “So what will happen if I undergo the ritual? What consequences was she talking about?”
    For a moment, Jaden seemed to hesitate. Then he said, “To