Ivy felt her eyes flash entirely to black, pulled by anger. "You need to leave," she said, muscles so tense, it took all her restraint to keep from striking the banshee.
Mia stood. She was alive and vibrant, her smooth face flushed and beautiful-an accusing angel, hard and uncaring. "You can live above your fate," she mocked. "You can be who you want to be. So Piscary warped you. So he broke you and remade you to be a pliant source of emotion-rich blood. It's up to you to either accept or deny it."
"You think I like being like this?" Ivy said, standing when her frustration spilled over. "That I like anyone with long teeth able to take advantage of me? This is what I was born into-there's no way out. It's too late! Too many people expect me to be the way I am, too many people force me to be the way they want me to be." The truth was coming out, pissing her off.
Mia's lips were parted and her face was flushed. Her eyes were lost behind her sunglasses, and the gold in her short black hair caught the light. "That is the excuse of a lazy, frightened coward," she said, and Ivy tensed, ready to tell her to shut up but for the memory of the leashed hunger in her eyes. "Admit you were wrong. Admit you are ugly and a whore. Then don't be that way anymore."
"But it feels too good!" Ivy shouted, not caring if the floor heard her.
Mia trembled, her entire body shuddering. Breath fast, she reached for the back of her chair. When she brought her gaze up from behind her sunglasses, Ivy realized that the air was as pure and pristine as if the argument hadn't happened. Pulse fast, Ivy breathed deeply, finding only the hint of Mia's perfume and the softest trace of her sweat. Damn. The bitch was good.
"I never said it would be easy," Mia said softly, and Ivy wondered exactly what the hell had just happened. "The hunger will always be there, like a thorn. Every day will be worse than the previous until you think you won't be able to exist another moment, but then you'll see the filth in your eyes trying to get out-and if you're strong, you'll find the will to put it off another day. And for another day, you will be who you want to be. Unless you're a coward."
The humming of the wall clock grew loud in the new silence, almost deep enough to hear Mia's heartbeat, and Ivy stood behind her desk, not liking the feelings mixing in her. "I'm not a coward," Ivy finally said.
"No, you're not," Mia admitted, subdued and quiet. Satiated.
"And I am not weak of will," Ivy added, louder.
Mia inhaled slowly, her pale fingers tightening on her purse. "Yes, you are." Ivy's eyes narrowed, and Mia's mien shifted again. "Forgive me for asking," she said, sounding both embarrassed and nervous, "but would you consider living together?"
Ivy's gut tightened. "Get out."
Mia swallowed, taking off her sunglasses to show her pale blue eyes, her pupils carrying a familiar swelling of black that made her look vulnerable. "I can make it worth your while," she said, her eyes running over Ivy as if she was a past lover and moistening her lips. "My blood for your emotion? I can satisfy everything you need, Ivy, and more. And you could kindle a child in me with the pain you carry."
"Get-out."
Head bowing, Mia nodded and moved to the door.
"I am not weak of will," Ivy repeated, shame joining her anger when Mia crossed the small office. Mia opened the door, hesitating to turn and look at her.
"No," she said, a gentle sadness in her ageless features. "You aren't. But you do need practice." Dress furling, the woman left, the click, click of her heels silencing the entire floor, the fluorescent lights catching the highlights in her hair.
Angry, Ivy lurched to the door, slamming it shut and falling back into her chair. "I am not weak of will," she said aloud, as if hearing it would make it so. But the idea she might be wiggled in between thought and reason, and it was too easy to doubt herself.
Her boot heels went up onto her desk, ankles crossed. She didn't want to think about what Mia had said-or what she offered. Eyes closed, Ivy took a breath to relax, forcing her body to do as she told it. She hadn't liked Mia using her, but that's what they did. It was Ivy's own fault for arguing with her.
Again, Ivy inhaled, slower to make her shoulders ease. She could ignore everything but what she wanted to focus on if she tried-she spent a great deal of her life that way. It made her quick to anger, depressed her appetite, and caused her to be overly sensitive, but it kept her sane.
Ivy's eyes opened in the silence, falling upon the tear. As inescapable as shadows, her mind fastened on it, desperately seeking a distraction. Disgust lifted through her at the torn bag. How was she going to explain the broken seal to Art?
Leaning forward, she felt her muscles stretch as she pulled the bag closer, and in a surge of self-indulgence, shook the tear into her palm. A moment of hesitation, and she touched it to her tongue. She felt nothing, tasted nothing. With a guilty motion, she dropped it back in and pressed the seal shut, tossing it to her desk.
The tear was three years old, found in a room stinking of fear. A banshee hadn't been responsible. The man had murdered his wife with a plan already in place to shift the blame. Where had he gotten a tear? A tear three years old, no less?
Three years. That was a long time to plan your wife's murder. Especially when they had been married only eight months, according to Mr. Demere's file. Long-term planning.
Ivy leaned forward in a spike of adrenaline and fingered the bag. Vampires planned that long. Jacqueline had a record. Only a vampire who worked for the I.S. would be in a position to know she was dead, unable to clear her name. And only an I.S. employee would have access to a tear swiped from the old-evidence vault. A tear no one would miss.
"Holy shit," Ivy softly swore. This went to the top.
Dropping the tear, Ivy reached for the phone. Art would crap his coffin when he found out. But then a thought struck her, and she hesitated, the buzz of the open line a harsh whine.
The apartment had been full of fear-anger and fear that should have been soaked up by the tear but wasn't-fear that Art had covered up with her own emotions.
The buzz of the phone line turned to beeping, and she set the phone back in the cradle, the acidic taste of betrayal filling her thoughts. Art had used her to muddle the psychic levels in the room. The guy from the collection van had commented on it when he had come in, blaming it on her after he saw the banshee tear, not knowing she had only added to what was already there. No one documented psychic levels unless a banshee was involved, and they hadn't known until after she contaminated the scene. "After Art stole and planted the tear," she muttered aloud. Art, who was so dense he couldn't find his pretty fangs in someone's ass.