"A sister?"

"Yep. Jill, jailbait, she goes by many names. I went to school with her. Apparently the murder of the queen and the theft of some records got dear old Viktor curious. That coupled with Syd's investigation…"

The alchemist scowled at the moroi from across the table. It was quite the odd crew that had assembled in this woodland cottage; an alchemist, a moroi mobster, a former playboy (and Rose's ex), a rogue dhampir, and a restored strigoi. That had aged Rose by about 10 years, seeing Ms. Karp in the flesh. Viktor and Robert were at another location, having agreed to meet under severe restrictions.

Rose rolled her eyes,"Anyway, thanks to the old bastard's machinations-"

"-nice to hear you call someone else that for once," Abe interrupted.

"-Lissa doesn't know anything about it and Viktor is trying to use Jill to his advantage. Lissa has been campaigning for dhampir rights strangely enough. She has the support of the mob."

"It shouldn't be so surprising," Mikhail noted, "Your absence has had quite the effect on her. She and Guardian Belikov both have been rather vocal. Tasha and Chistian have thrown themselves behind Lissa in support. While other moroi are calling for the compulsion of our kind, they are calling for our emancipation." Mikhail Tanner was the only other dhampir from court in on this meeting and he had his arms firmly wrapped around Sonya. His loyalty to the moroi could be summed up with the words "I'm with her."

Everyone at the table had turned their back on the life of the court. Sonya out of love for Mikhail, Adrian out of rebellion, and Abe...well he did whatever he wanted to do.

"Yes, and while the moroi debate, we are going extinct. However, without the moroi, we go extinct. For some reason the vampires have never heard of sperm and egg donors."

"Or surrogates," Sydney added. "Much as I dislike your kind, being demons from hell and all, I do know that we need dhampirs to eliminate the strigoi, dhampir's need the moroi to reproduce, and the moroi are leading you to the slaughter. Seems like they should be the servant race."

"No," Rose disagreed. "There shouldn't be a servant race and a ruling race. We should just freaking 'be' and leave classism to the humans." Hearing that Dimitri and Lissa were still working together wasn't a surprise; it was rather humorous to see how people hesitated to speak of Dimitri around her. "Jill doesn't know, but Viktor is threatening to reveal her identity. If Lissa found out…"

"Or Tasha," Adrian grumbled.

Rose raised an eyebrow, "what does she have anything to do with it?"

"Don't you know? She's been throwing all of her support behind Lissa, trying to get the quorum law overturned. She has Lissa's ear and right now Lissa is dancing to Tasha's tune."

"Sounds like Avery all over again. One day Lissa is going to have to grow her own backbone."

They continued to talk and plot; ideas flew around the table. Abe provided plenty of food, though Sydney only picked at it. They discussed what to do about Jill, if they should do anything about Jill, what to do about the dhampir, whether they should go to the moroi or start with the dhampir. The one stumbling block was dhampir infertility.

The clock chimed 12. They had been at this since midnight and all of them needed sleep. "Okay, so Viktor has agreed not to make a move until he meets with us; I told him that if he cost me another day's sleep then I would gut him and feed him to his psy hounds. I say we all call it an afternoon."

"Sleep well little dhampir," Adrian said, getting up to give Rose a hug.

"You too. And thanks for coming."

That day Rose was tormented by nightmares. Rivers of the dead, children staring at her, accusing Rose for not saving them. There was blood on her hands that she could not wash off no matter how hard she tried. There was a cold light and Rose was lost in a maze, desperately trying to get out, facing dead end after dead end. She looked above and all she could see was a bright light on the cold, blue walls. The stairs that had led her down into this pit were now covered in silver stakes. Every time she tried to press against the walk, her bloodied hands slipped. Then a door where there had been none and Rose was taken to a pool lit only by one flickering fluorescent bulb. A man was there taking photos without her consent. There were other children and parents in the shallows and when the man left they warned her; warned her what he would do to her, what he had done to others. They didn't run, they didn't hide.

Rose desperately tried to find someone, but that person had disappeared. The world was suddenly open and Rose was still trapped. Again and again she tried to escape until the scene shifted and she was walking barefoot over shattered glass. Abandoned, hunted, alone, and trapped, Rose kept running. The open sky turned to corridors, the ceiling became shorter and shorter until she was crawling, then she was falling again and again, trying to run away, to break free...to go home.

Somewhere through the layers of dream and horror she felt a soft, cool hand on her brow. Küük kzm uyu. Sana gz kulak olmak iin buradaym. Those words, though she didn't know what they meant, took her to the Sierra Nevada mountains. Home...

The next evening when Rose met with her "shadow council" as Abe so colorfully referred to it, her mind was made up. "We need to protect Jill. I don't trust Viktor-"

"Aren't you the one who broke him out of prison?" Sydney interrupted.

"And helped put him there in the first place?" Adrian supplied.

"Yeah, it's why I don't trust him. Anyway, if he is involved, Jill is in danger. I think Adrian and I should go and visit her, convince her to do a DNA test, and if she wants to be revealed, we tell Lissa."

"Which means telling Tasha, Dimitri, and Christian," Mikhail reminded them.

Abe stood to the side with his arms folded. "And what if she doesn't want to be revealed?"

Rose raised an eyebrow, "Then you all disappear and I take care of the loose ends. I think Viktor has been enjoying his ill gotten freedom for a bit too long. Either way, I'll need you all to make arrangements for Robert to get the care he needs."

"He has information that we need, that man is almost as knowledgeable as I am. You sure you don't want me to take care of things kiddo?" Abe asked, his tone casual.

Rose tipped her chair back and found her favorite spot on the ceiling to stare at. "I'll take you up on that Old Man. Clearly doing things my way hasn't turned out so well in regards to Viktor. I just wish there was a place where we could keep him secure without loosing his cooperation."

Sydney was the next to speak. "What if we placed him with the Keepers?"