me."
"He sleeps in the wine cellar at our house."
"Our house?" Grigori frowned. The only house they had ever shared had been in Italy. He had gone back to his old hometown about thirty years before. All the houses in the vicinity, including his own and his Uncle Pietro's, had been torn down and replaced by a winery and acres of vineyards. "That's not possible."
She nodded. "He owns it now."
"Alexi owns the winery?"
She looked at him oddly. "We don't have a winery, Grigori."
"What is it like now, our house?"
"It is the same as it was when first you took me there."
He shook his head, trying to make sense of it.
"When were you there last?"
She thought a moment. "Five days ago."
"What month was it?"
"November."
"And the year, do you remember the year?"
"Seventeen ninety-eight. Alexi woke me and said we were going to find you." A faint smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. "He said we were going through time to the year nineteen hundred and ninety-eight, but I did not believe him. It's not possible, is it?" She paused and glanced around the room, her gaze troubled as she saw the TV set, the stereo, the lamps. "And yet, everything is so strange here."
Grigori sat back, stunned. Alexi had traveled through time. How? He remembered asking Alexi where Antoinette was, and Alexi's reply: Where you cannot find her.
No wonder they couldn't find Kristov's resting place! He wasn't sleeping in the same city where he hunted. He wasn't even sleeping in the same century!
"Where is he now?"
She stared past him, her brow furrowed in thought, her expression blank. "He's gone back."
"Alone?"
"No. He has the woman with him."
"Is he planning to come back for you?"
"No. After I destroyed you, I was to destroy myself, as well." She spoke the words without feeling, as if they meant nothing to her.
Grigori swore under his breath, and then he stood up, drawing her with him. "How do you feel?"
"I don't know." She looked up at him, her eyes filled with confusion. "Am I dead?"
"No." He wasn't sure what she was now. In taking her blood and giving her his, he had broken Alexi's hold over her. She was bound to him now, until he died. Unless he brought her across and made her as he was. And that, he thought, was the only real answer, the only way she would ever be in control of her own destiny again. But not now... not when he needed her help. "Sit down, Antoinette. Relax."
"What are we going to do?" she asked.
"Do you know where Ramsey is?"
"Ramsey?" She thought a moment, then shook her head.
"Was Alexi going to kill him?"
"I don't know."
With a sigh, he went to the window and stared out into the night. He stood there, unmoving, still as only one who is Vampyre can be still, his thoughts churning. Alexi had Marisa. Antoinette was still alive. Ramsey was missing. Alexi had Marisa....
Marisa. When had she become so important to him? She was a mortal woman, cut off from him by centuries of blood and death. And yet she had cradled him in her arms, made him feel things he had not felt in two hundred years.
He heard the rustle of Antoinette's skirts as she shifted on the sofa and felt a sudden stab of guilt. She was his wife, but she was no longer the woman he had loved. She would never be that woman again. And he was no longer the man she had married... no longer a man at all.
But she was still his wife, and he was responsible for her.
He stood there for an hour, staring into the night, his thoughts turned inward. Antoinette was safe for now, but Marisa...
He turned slowly as the front door opened and Edward Ramsey burst inside.
"Is she here?" Ramsey asked breathlessly. "Tell me she's here."
"Alexi has her," Grigori replied quietly, and it took all his self-control to keep from reaching for the other man, to keep from ripping him to shreds. "What happened?"
Ramsey sneezed and blew his nose. "I fell asleep. When I woke up, I got the car and started downtown. Alexi was in the backseat. That's all I remember."
Grigori took a step forward and Edward scrambled backward, his hand clutching the cross. He yelped as Antoinette came up behind him, her arms wrapping around him, pinning his arms to his sides. He struggled to free himself, but she was too strong for him.
Grigori approached Edward. Holding Ramsey's jaw between his thumb and forefinger, he turned