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vampires moved back.
    They let Deirdre walk to the elevators without stopping her, forming a corridor with their bodies.
    The vampires were so close. Staring at her. Looking for a hint of weakness so that they’d be able to penetrate her armor, expose her as a fraud, and then attack.
    She showed nothing.
    Only when the elevator doors slid shut behind Deirdre did she finally sag against the wall and begin to shake.
    They’d lost the election.
    Dear gods, they’d lost .

    There was no celebration outside Deirdre’s apartment that night. Only arguments from the vampires in the lobby, an occasional scream from Niamh, and shouting from the street outside.
    Within Deirdre’s apartment, there was only lethe.
    She could have crawled into one of those cubes, submersing herself in cascades of shimmering blue, and never emerged again.
    Not even to breathe.
    She wasn’t certain she was breathing now.
    It had started raining outside again. She could tell because the window was leaking in a steady drip-drip-drip. Runoff spattered the floor and spread in a damp stain across the carpet.
    The stain spread too quickly. Too darkly.
    It wasn’t water.
    Deirdre shut her eyes as she slipped the fourth cube into the intake bracelet.
    Her eyelids seemed to be transparent. She could still see the too-dark fluids covering the carpet in a wash of black. It crept over her toes, surged around her ankles, and dragged Deirdre under its chilly tide.
    It was hard to believe that lethe used to fill her with euphoria. It was the drug that had given her the confidence to wear a miniskirt into Original Sin and kiss Melchior as Stark watched. Now it only made her want to crawl into a sarcophagus and never emerge.
    More lethe.
    That was what she needed. More, always more.
    Another cube slipped into place.
    Deirdre opened her eyes. Or maybe she didn’t. Stark was sitting in the chair in the corner, veiled in shadow with a wooden box on the table beside him.
    He was waiting for her. Offering to feed her more drugs. He would have opened a vein for her and poured everything from his body into hers.
    Gage stood beyond him, eyes silently imploring. He said, “No, Deirdre. Stop.” Or something like that.
    They were her conscience warring with her darkest urges. The shoulder angel and the shoulder devil.
    The devil was so much more tempting.
    Deirdre was out of lethe again. She had taken all that remained in her room and it still wasn’t enough to bring that warm buzz upon her.
    She was cold.
    Everything was cold.
    The vampires were draining Niamh, taking her to the brink. Rioters crawled outside. Blood lapped at Deirdre’s knees. Blood from a witch security guard that she had allowed vampires to kill, blood from the queen of the unseelie sacrificing herself to the sluagh, blood from the dragon shifter that she had stabbed with the Ethereal Blade.
    All that frozen blood was going to drain her.
    Deirdre stood. She was pretty sure that she stood, anyway. She walked toward the corner where Stark was sitting.
    “This is your fault,” she said.
    He didn’t react. He didn’t even look at her, the bastard. After everything he’d done, he couldn’t even dignify her accusation with a glance.
    “I hate you!”
    She tried to take a swing at him.
    Her fist passed through nothing. Her knuckles rattled the mini-blinds covering her window.
    Neither Stark nor Gage were there. Deirdre wasn’t even standing near the corner.
    Deirdre rested her forehead on the wall, seeking some sense of reality. Lethe’s disorientation didn’t seem worth it without the associated high, but it was too late to take the drugs out of her veins again. Even if she had, she would have only felt worse.
    She needed more. Whatever it took to get the euphoria back.
    At least it didn’t sound like it was raining outside anymore.
    There were boards on her window, positioned between glass and blinds. She had clumsily barricaded it herself when she picked the room. The placement was sloppy, and it