"You're avoiding me, Jane."

Jane looked up from her computer. Manello was planted in front of her desk like a house, hands on his hips, eyes narrowed, nothing but a whole lot of going-nowhere. Man, her office was fairly sizable, but he made it feel tight as a wallet.

"I'm not avoiding you. I'm playing catch-up from being out all weekend."

"Bullshit." He crossed his arms over his chest. "It's four in the afternoon, and by now we usually would have had at least two meals together. What's up?"

She leaned back in her chair. Lying was not something she'd ever been good at, but it was a skill she was sure as hell going to try to develop.

"I still feel like hell, Manello, and I'm buried up to my molars in work." Okay, neither of those were lies. But she said them only to camo the omission she was pulling.

There was a long pause. "Is this about last night?"

With a wince, she gave up the ghost. "Uh, listen, about that. Manny... I'm sorry. I can't do anything like that with you again. I think you're great, I really do. But I'm..." She let the sentence drift. She had the urge to say something along the lines of her being in love with someone else, but that was absurd. She had no one.

"Is it because of the department?" he said.

No, it just didn't feel right somehow. "You know it's not appropriate, even if we kept it quiet."

"And if you leave? Then what?"

She shook her head. "No. I just... can't. I shouldn't have slept with you last night."

His brows shot up. "Excuse me?"

"I just don't think¡ª"

"Wait a minute. Where in the hell do you get the idea we slept together?"

"I... I assumed that we had."

"I kissed you. It was awkward. I left. No sex. What makes you think there was?"

Jesus Christ... Jane waved a shaky hand around. "Dreams, I guess. Really vivid dreams. Um... will you excuse me?"

"Jane, what the hell's going on?" He came around the desk. "You look like you're terrified."

As she stared up at him, she knew there was desperate fear in her eyes, but she couldn't hide it. "I think... I think it's quite possible I'm losing my mind. I'm serious, Manny. We're talking schizophrenia time. Hallucinations and distorted reality and... memory lapses."

Although the fact that she'd had sex during the night was not a figment of her imagination. Shit... or was it?

Manny bent down and put his hands on her shoulders. In a low voice he said, "We'll find you someone to see. We'll take care of this."

"I'm scared."

Manny took her hands, pulled her to her feet, and wrapped her up tight against him. "I'm here for you."

As she hugged him back hard, she said, "You would be a good man to love, Manello. You really would."

"I know."

She laughed a little, the choking sound getting lost in the crook of his neck. "So arrogant."

"Try accurate."

He pulled back and put his palm on her cheek, his deep brown eyes grave. "It's killing me to say this... but I don't want you in the ORs, Jane. Not where you're at in your head right now."

Her first instinct was to fight him, but then she exhaled. "What will we tell people?"

"Depends on how long it lasts. For now? You have the flu." He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "Here's the plan. You're going to talk to a friend of mine who's a psychiatrist. He's out in California, so no one will know, and I'm going to go call him now. I'm also scheduling you for a CAT scan. We'll have it done after hours across town at Imaging Associates. No one will know."

When Manello turned to go there was heartbreak in his eyes, and as she thought about the situation, the oddest memory passed through her head.

Three or four winters ago she'd left the hospital late one night, feeling unsettled. Something, some kind of gut instinct, told her to stay and sleep on the couch in her office, but she chalked it up to the fact that the weather was nasty. Thanks to a bitter, freezing rain that had fallen for hours, Caldwell was pretty much a skating rink. Why would anyone want to go out in weather like this?

The nagging sensation wouldn't stop, though. The whole way out to the parking garage, she'd fought against the voice in her head until finally, as she'd put her key in the ignition, she'd had a vision. The damn thing was so clear it was as if the event had already happened and this was her memory of it: She saw her hands gripping the steering wheel as a pair of headlights pierced her windshield straight-on. She felt the stinging pain of impact, the jarring spin as her car whipped around, the burning in her lungs as she screamed.

Creeped out but determined, she'd pulled slowly into the freezing rain. Talk about defensive driving. She regarded every other car as a potential wreck, and would have used the sidewalks instead of the roads if she could have.

Halfway home she'd stopped at a light, praying that no one hit her.

As if it had been preordained, however, a car had come up behind her, lost traction, and started in on the great slide. She'd gripped the steering wheel and looked up into the rearview window... and watched as the headlights came toward her.

The car had missed her entirely.

After she was sure no one was hurt, Jane had laughed to herself, taken a deep breath, and headed home. Along the way, she'd reflected on how the brain extrapolated from its environment and jumped to conclusions, how strong thoughts and fears could be mistaken for some kind of prescient ability, how news reports of bad roads could percolate and lead to¡ª

The plumber's truck slammed into her head-on about three miles from her house. As she'd come around the corner to find those headlights in her lane, her only thought had been, well, shit, she'd been right after all. She'd ended up with a broken collarbone and a totaled car. The plumber and his truck had been fine, thank God, but she'd been out of the OR for weeks.

So... as she watched Manello leave her office, she knew what was going to happen, and the clarity of it all was along the lines of that vision of the accident: As immutable as the color of her eyes. As undeniable as the passage of time. As unstoppable as a plumber's truck skidding on black ice.

"My career is over," she whispered in a dead voice. "I'm done."

Vishous knelt by his bed, put a necklace of black pearls around his neck, and closed his eyes. As he reached out with his mind to the Other Side, he deliberately thought of Jane. The Scribe Virgin might as well know what the hell this was about from the get-go.

It took a while before he got a response from his mother, but then he was traveling through antimatter to the nontemporal realm, taking form in the white courtyard.

The Scribe Virgin was standing before her tree of birds, and one of them, a peach finchy kind of thing, was in her hand. As the hood of her black robe was down, V could see her ghostly face, and he was astonished at the adoration on it as she looked at the little creature in her glowing hand. Such love, he thought.

Never would have assumed she had it in her.

She spoke first. "Of course I love my birds. They are my solace when I am troubled, my greater joy when I am of cheer. The sweet chime of their songs lifts me as nothing else does." She looked over her shoulder. "That human surgeon, is it?"

"Yeah," he said, bracing himself.

Fuck. She was so quiet. He'd expected her anger. Girded himself for a battle. Instead? Nothing but calm.

Which was right before the storm, wasn't it.

The Scribe Virgin blew on the bird, and it responded by crooning and spreading its little wings to bask. "May I assume that if I deny the substitution you will not carry through with the ceremony?"

It killed him to speak. Killed him. "I gave my word. So I will."

"Indeed? You surprise me."

The Scribe Virgin put the bird back, whistling a call as she did. He imagined that if the sound could be translated it would be something along the lines of, I love you. The bird returned it in kind.

"These birds," his mother said in an odd, distant voice, "are truly mine only delight. Do you know why?"

"No."

"They ask nothing of me and give much."

She turned to him and in her deep voice said, "This is the day of your birth, Vishous, son of the Bloodletter. Your timing is well calculated."

Um, not really. Jesus, he'd forgotten what day it was.

"And as this day three hundred and three years ago I bore you into the world, I find myself in the mood to grant you the favor you inquire over, as well as the one that has been thus far unspoken, though evident as the risen moon in a vacant sky."

V's eyes flared. Hope, a dangerous emotion in the best of times, flared in his chest with a little spark of warmth. In the background the birds chirped and sang merrily, as if anticipating his happiness.

"Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, I shall grant you the two things you want most. I shall allow the substitution of your brother, Phury, in the ceremony. He shall be a fine Primale, gentle and kind to the Chosen while proffering a good bloodline unto the species."

V closed his eyes, relief washing over him in such a great wave that he weaved on his feet. "Thank you..." he whispered, aware that he was addressing more his destiny's change of course than her, even though she was the driver.

"Your gratitude is appropriate." His mother's voice was utterly level. "And also curious to me. But then, gifts are like beauty, are they not. It is in the eye of the recipient that they find their seat, not in the hand of the giver. I have learned this now."

V looked over at her, trying not to lose it. "He will want to fight. My brother¡ªhe will want to fight and to live on the far side." Because no way would Phury be able to handle not seeing Bella again.

"And I shall allow this. At least until the Brotherhood's ranks grow in number."

The Scribe Virgin lifted glowing hands to the hood of her robe and covered her face with it. Then, soundlessly, she floated over the marble to a small white door that he'd always assumed was the entrance to her private quarters.

"If it would not offend," he called out. "The second favor?"

She paused at the little portal. Without facing him, she said, "I renounce you as my son. You are free of me and I of you. Live well, warrior."

She went through the door and closed him out, the panel shutting firmly, then locking. In her wake the birds fell silent, as if her presence was what charmed them into song.

V stood in the courtyard and listened to the fountain's quiet, chiming waterfall.

He'd had a mother for all of six days.

He couldn't say he missed her. Or that he was grateful to her for giving him his life back. After all, she was the one who'd tried to take everything away from him.

As he dematerialized back to the mansion to report in, it dawned on him that even if his mother had said no, he still would have picked Jane over the Scribe Virgin. No matter what it cost him.

And the Scribe Virgin had known that all along, hadn't she. Which was why she'd forsaken him.

Whatever. All he really cared about was getting to Jane. Things were looking up, but he was so not out of the woods yet. She could, after all, still say no. She could very well choose the life she knew over a dangerous half existence with a vampire.

Damn it, though, he wanted her to pick him.

V was taking shape in his bedroom and thinking of the way it had been with Jane the night before... when it dawned on him he'd done an unforgivable: He'd finished inside of her. Goddamn it. He'd been so in his head, the forgotten that he'd left some of himself behind. She must be going mad by now.

He was such a bastard. A thoughtless, selfish bastard.

And he actually thought he had something to offer her?