Читать книгу Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night - Jennifer Armintrout, Jennifer Armintrout - Страница 8

This day, when I bolted upright in the bed, throat tensed, vocal cords poised to emit a scream as soon as the gasping breath I’d drawn forced its way out, a hand clamped over my mouth. Nathan was already awake.

Don’t make a sound, he warned through the blood tie, his body rigid with tension that jumped through our mental connection, filling me with his anxiety.

Something was seriously wrong. In the past few weeks, since we had fled Grand Rapids and come to Max’s Chicago penthouse, Nathan’s entire focus had been my recovery. I’d gone mute and practically catatonic after Cyrus, once my sire, then my fledgling, had died. After I’d wake from one of my many nightmares—daymares, I supposed, since we vampires are third-shifters on account of that pesky sun thing—Nathan would hold me and try to reassure me that it had all been a dream, that he wouldn’t let anything harm me. Now, though, I felt his irritation and acute distraction through the blood tie, the telepathic and empathic connection that coursed between a fledgling vampire and their sire, and I knew something wasn’t right.

Before he could explain, I heard a thud and some violent cursing upstairs.

There’s someone in the apartment, I practically screamed into his head, and the pressure of his hand on my jaw subsided slightly.

I know. That’s why I said not to make a sound. I’m going to check it out. He let go of my face and threw back the blankets. I could tell from the faint light outlining the heavy curtains that it was still the middle of the day, but Max’s apartment was specially designed to be dark as a tomb and just as protected from unwanted sunlight.

Be careful, I warned. As if someone could be careful apprehending an intruder in their home. At least Nathan would be armed.

Crap. He wasn’t armed.

“Nathan!” I whispered after him, so the cause of the disturbance wouldn’t hear me. Unfortunately, neither did Nathan. He was probably halfway up the stairs by now. Rolling my eyes, I got out of bed and pulled on the jeans I’d discarded the night before, realizing how ridiculous a silk camisole nightgown looked with jeans. Good thing this wasn’t a fashion show. I grabbed a stake from the drawer in the bedside table. Forget something? I shot across the blood tie, letting him feel all my aggravation at having been pulled out of a comfortable bed. I hoped it would cover the fear that pounded through my veins.

Besides pants? he quipped. He was scared, joking with me to disguise it.

We’d been sleeping in the room I’d used when I’d stayed with Max, after the spell we did to free Nathan from his sire’s possession went all sorts of haywire. No, that wasn’t true. The spell had worked perfectly. It was our relationship that had gone all kinds of haywire. I’d left with Max to try and sort through the disaster of my personal life, but—as seemed to be the case ever since I’d become a vampire—the preternatural world didn’t slow down for boyfriend-girlfriend drama. Nathan’s sire, the Soul Eater, was still out there, trying to become a god and turn the world into his own personal feeding trough.

Though I’d spent a lot of time in the penthouse, I still wasn’t familiar enough with the halls to navigate in the dark. The place was huge and, as huge places often were, decorated with lots of expensive and sharp-edged little tables bearing fragile objects that held the potential for lots of noise if they came crashing down. The guest rooms were on the first floor. Who or whatever had broken in would have had to access the place through the main entrance on the second floor, or the roof door on the third. I felt along the wall, recoiling whenever I encountered the shape of a painting or a light switch. My toes painfully found the bottom step of the stairs to the next floor, and I wondered why I hadn’t heard Nathan tripping and falling over himself on his way. I gripped the rail and went slowly up the stairs, quelling the urge to race up, making heavy clomping sounds on each step. There was no light at the top. I’d just keep on going until there weren’t any more stairs, I supposed.

Or, until I ran into something. Nathan turned abruptly as I collided with him. He grabbed my arms as if to flip me onto my back, but stopped before I even needed to tell him it was me. Don’t do that, he admonished through the blood tie.

“Sorry,” I whispered, craning to see past him in the dark. We were at the top of the stairs. The marble floor of the foyer gleamed in the faint glow from the recessed wall lights set at shin level around the perimeter of the room. When Max’s sire, Marcus, had designed this place, he’d obviously done it with daytime stumbling in mind. Too bad he hadn’t employed that feature in the rest of the house. In the darkness, a shadow moved, fast, from the bottom of the stairs to the third floor to the kitchen door.

Well, there’s at least one, Nathan told me grimly. You stay here.

I pressed the stake into his hand and watched him go, wondering how long I’d have to wait before following him. He knew me well enough that he’d expect me to disobey his command, but if I waited long enough he’d be too busy with the intruder to stop me.

The kitchen door opened and light spilled out. No burglar I’d ever heard of turned on lights. Well, at least, they didn’t in the movies. But burglars didn’t break in during the day, either. Unless this burglar knew who and what he was dealing with.

How did they find us so quickly? my mind screamed as I watched Nathan disappear behind the door. It swung shut and I was left to adapt to the darkness again. It isn’t fair. We haven’t had any time.

And just like that, fair blew right out the window. There was a shout, not Nathan’s, and the clatter of metal-on-metal that seemed to go on and on. A grunt, a thud, something hit the wall. I charged up the stairs, my heart in my throat, a distinct feeling of having done something very like this many times before fogging my brain.

I pushed through the door. Nathan’s stake lay on the pristine white tile. The rack of pots over the kitchen island was half-empty, most of its stock scattered on the floor. The island itself was completely bare, like a body had been thrown or dragged across it. Nathan’s body, from the looks of things on the floor. His assailant had him pinned, no small feat for a human fighting a vampire, and he was definitely human. I could smell his blood, and his fear. The man lay across Nathan’s chest, the muscles of his back straining against his black T-shirt. Judging by the V of sweat growing there, he would tire soon. And judging by the shape of the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans, he’d come here betting on a fight.

I knew why Nathan was losing. He didn’t want to hurt a human, even if they were out to hurt us. I, on the other hand, didn’t care all that much when the human in question could be one of the Soul Eater’s day staff. I grabbed one of the pans off the floor, a heavy, copper-bottomed saucepan. I’d just raised it up when Nathan’s gaze met mine and knew my intention. He gripped the intruder’s wrists and forced them down, then pushed him off. His strength was enough to send the man flying across the room, safely out of my range. He didn’t want me to kill a human, either.

Nathan was on his feet in an instant, charging as I screamed, “Nathan, don’t! He’s got a gun!”

The shot rang out before I’d noticed the man had climbed to his feet. Nathan crumpled to the floor, and there was a second of horrible silence before he rolled onto his back, groaning and whimpering. The intruder stood, face drawn in shock. I leaped after him, easily clearing the corner of the island between us, and knocked him to the floor. His fingers tightened around the gun. I had to slam his closed fist into the floor over and over, until the tile cracked under his knuckles and he howled in pain, releasing the weapon. I hated to give him credit, but the guy was tough.

I grabbed the gun, hoping my shaking hands and the way I held it didn’t mark me as a total novice. A novice can still pull a trigger, I thought, and, through his haze of pain, Nathan admonished, Squeeze, Carrie, not pull. You squeeze a trigger.

I rolled my eyes and pressed the point of the gun into the stranger’s forehead. Imagining a bullet lodging and blossoming in fatty brain tissue, I pulled it back, just in case my trigger finger squeezed when I didn’t mean to.

“Don’t move,” I barked when he cradled his bleeding hand to his chest.

“Shouldn’t you check on your friend there?” His voice had an appealing, everyman tone to it. Like the professor I had who’d been from upstate New York and could make a pharmaceutical lecture sound like a retelling of a softball game victory. It was a dangerous quality in an armed assailant, because it put me slightly at ease.

I’ll be fine, Nathan sent on a wave of agony. It was a little hard to believe when he was writhing on the floor and making strangled cries as though he’d just hit a ten on the pain scale. I turned back to my captive. “He’ll be fine. Who sent you?”

“Well, no one. I’m here once a month.” He nodded to the refrigerator. On the floor beside it was a small cooler, white with a red top that swings back, the kind that you’d pack a transplant organ in. “I’m Max’s blood supplier.”

I lowered the gun a little. “Right. And you just waltz in here all the time.”

“Well, once a month,” he corrected with a shrug.

I was about eighty percent sure he was lying. “Sorry. I think that Max would have mentioned you to me. Or, at least, that I would have seen you before.”

“No, I’m quiet. And I’ve got keys. How the hell else do you think I got in here? There’s a doorman and great security.” He ran his uninjured hand through his sandy-colored hair, his gaze flicking to Nathan, still on the floor. “Listen, I knew your friend there was a vampire, or I never would have shot him.”

“Right.” Trembling, I moved to tuck the gun into the back of my jeans.

“I wouldn’t do that. Not with it ready to fire and the safety off.” He held out his hand for it. I turned, fired a hole into the side of the plastic wastebasket, then looked for the safety switch and pushed it before sliding the gun into my waistband. I felt oddly empowered with a gun in my hands, and very grateful that the bullet hadn’t ricocheted and wounded me.

I knelt beside Nathan and tried to roll him onto his back. He resisted, arms clamped tight around his stomach. “Let me see,” I said, urging his hands away from the wound.

“Don’t…you should…tie him…” Nathan managed between wheezing breaths.

“I’m not moving. Trust me.” The stranger paused. “Just like I’m trusting you guys not to eat me.”

“I’m not really hungry at the moment,” I snapped. “If you move, I might change my mind.”

Nathan reluctantly let his arms drop to his sides. Blood gushed, and I quickly replaced his hands with mine. “Burglar, get me a towel or a pot holder or something.”

There was a noise of rummaging, then a blue-and-white checked towel thrust in front of my face. “I’m not a burglar.”

“I don’t care. Go back to where you were.” I snatched the towel. The bullet hole in Nathan was perfectly round, identical to the one in the trash can, but for the torn flaps of skin around it. It looked like some kind of diseased tropical flower. I pressed the folded cloth to it and held it, noting the time on the clock. With my other hand, I reached up and touched Nathan’s face, clammy with sweat. “When the bleeding stops, I’ll give you something for the pain.”

“He can heal from this, right?” our visitor asked. “I swear, I thought it would just slow him down.”

I nodded. “It will slow him down. And he can heal from it. But not the way you see vampires do it in the movies, where the bullet oozes out and the wound closes up instantly. If you’d gotten his heart, he would be dead now.”

The guy made a noise of self-loathing. “God, I’m sorry. But you understand my position, right?”

I did. If I had been a human fighting with a vampire who could have easily killed me with his bare hands, I would have used any method at my disposal to stop him. Understanding didn’t stop me from being pissed off at the guy who’d shot my sire. I turned back to Nathan. “Do you think you can walk?”

He gave a shaky laugh. “Oh, I could run a mile. Just point me in the right direction.”

“Do you think you can walk with help?” I fixed him with a no-nonsense glare. The medical kit is downstairs, and I don’t want to leave you alone with him.

Then tell him to get the hell out, Nathan said, his gaze flicking to the stranger. He’s the one who broke in and shot someone. I’m not worried about hurting his feelings.

Neither am I. But the bullet needs to come out so you can heal faster. I helped him sit up, intending to get him on his feet and downstairs, so he could rest.

“You stay right where you are,” I ordered the intruder. “I’ll be back.”

The hell you will. I’m not going anywhere, Nathan argued.

“You have a recently fired piece registered to me, with my fingerprints on it. I’m not leaving,” the burglar assured me. “You want help getting him wherever he needs to go?”

“Stay where you are,” I repeated, and, to Nathan, Yes you are. You’re going downstairs, away from the crazy man who shot you.

Before I could get him on his feet—and before he tried to argue with me—he stabbed two fingers into the wound and, barely restraining his grunts of pain, pulled the bullet out himself. When he withdrew his fingers, a cold, wet jet of blood shot out, and I clamped the towel over his stomach with a curse.

“What the hell were you thinking?” I scolded, reminding myself firmly that any of the various germs and bacteria he’d just introduced into the wound wouldn’t affect him.

“Now the bullet is out,” he said, infuriatingly calm despite the beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. His teeth chattered and he sagged against me. “And I’m staying right here.”

Swearing, I pulled him to rest against the wall, his legs dragging two wet trails of blood after him.

“You’re an idiot,” I muttered, placing his hand to hold the towel over the wound. I turned back to the assailant. He’d remained exactly where I’d expected him to be, nursing the knuckles I’d bloodied.

“Is your friend okay?” he asked, with enough grace to appear genuinely remorseful.

“He’ll be fine.” I leaned hard on the word “fine,” so he’d know I was still dangerously pissed off. “What were you doing here?”

“Dropping off blood. Max pays me to come by and stock the place—the mini fridge in his room and the big one here. I do it once a month. Sometimes he pays me between visits to drop in and give the bum’s rush to any overnight guests that might be…disinclined to leave without saying goodbye.” He shrugged. “I’ve got a key, and you can ask Dolores, the morning doorman. She thinks I’m the cleaning lady.”

I arched a brow at him. “Okay, cleaning lady. What’s your name?”

“Bill. William. Bill.” He reached behind him. So did I, looking for the gun. He smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m just going for my wallet.”

“I don’t need to see ID, Bill.” Interrogation was harder than I’d imagined. I wished Nathan was up to the job. It seemed that in the movies the questions all flowed in a seamless pattern of logic. My thoughts were all over the place, would probably come out all scattered. “So, if you and Max are so chummy, why do you carry a gun when you come to his place?”

Bill shrugged. “I always carry a gun.”

“Why?” I had definite issues with people who just carried concealed weapons around. I wasn’t a card-carrying member of the NRA for a reason.

He snorted, as if I couldn’t possibly be serious. “Why not?”

I didn’t want to get drawn into a gun-control argument with someone who just exercised his second amendment right in Max’s kitchen. Staring him down, I crossed my arms and waited.

“Well, for one, it’s kind of like my sidearm. I was in the Marines for twelve years, and I just never got used to not having a gun with me. I also need it, in my line of work. Max isn’t my only client. But this is the first time there have been other vampires here that he didn’t tell me about. Usually, he’ll give me a heads-up when bloodsucking guests are going to be here. That’s why I attacked you guys, because as far as I know, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Well, you’re wrong. Max offered us a place to stay. But still, a gun? Why not a stake?” I realized I still had him cornered on the floor. There was a small first aid kit in the odds-and-ends drawer in the island—nothing that could help me with Nathan’s wounds—and I retrieved it. “Have a seat, and I’ll bandage your hand.”

“Thanks, I’d appreciate that.” He slid onto one of the stools, glancing ruefully over the pots and pans littering the floor. “Hell of a fighter, your boyfriend.”

“He’s my sire,” I said, not elaborating any further on the messed-up nature of the relationship between Nathan and I. The guy might have just ambushed us in our sleep, but he didn’t deserve that kind of punishment.

I opened the first aid kit and took his hand in mine. His knuckles were swollen and split, and I felt a little sick knowing I’d caused the damage. Still, Nathan was far more damaged. I looked to him, and he gave me a weak wave from his spot on the floor. His face was gray, but he’d dropped the towel and I saw that the bleeding had stopped. I faced Bill again. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t carry a stake because it’s not a sure thing. A gun, I can shoot and take someone down, at least long enough to get the hell away from them. With a stake, you’ve got to hit the heart. I’m not a doctor. I don’t know where somebody’s heart would be.” He winced as I swabbed the blood from his hands with a disinfectant pad. “I mean, really, do you think you know where the human—sorry, vampire—heart is?”

“Yes. But I’m a doctor.” I dabbed at a particularly nasty cut and reached into the first aid kit for some bandages. “So, you deal with vampires you don’t trust and feel the need to arm yourself. Sounds like you should make a career change.”

He chuckled, and there was an edge of bitterness to it. “This pays better than anything I could get. The job market is tough.”

“So is the market for blood donors, I guess. Since you have to service more than one vampire.” I eyed the cooler. “So, exactly how much blood do you have left in your body, if you don’t mind my asking?”

He grinned. “You’re a smart lady. Okay, you caught me. It’s not all my blood. I get it from other donors, ones who don’t mind providing so long as they don’t have to deal with actual vampires. I take it, and give it a little markup for my troubles.”

I shook my head. Was nothing sacred anymore? “You profit from trafficking human blood?”

“Got by honest means.” He nodded to his injured hand. “And really, it’s not like I don’t have my fair share of trouble trying to deliver the stuff. What are you two doing here, anyway? Where’s Max?”

“Max is…” I hesitated. Not knowing exactly what kind of guy Bill was, I didn’t want to tell him that Max was the first vampire in known history to father a baby, or that he’d used that awesome power to knock up a werewolf. “Indisposed. I don’t know when he’s coming back. There are some strange things happening in the vampire world lately, and Nathan and I needed a place to hide out.”

Good girl, Nathan sent across the blood tie. He had a way of saying something like that without sounding completely patronizing. My heart, which was slowly thawing out from the death of my fledgling, warmed a little at Nathan’s approval.

Apparently, Bill accepted my answer. He cleared his throat and asked, “So, Nathan is your sire and your name is?”

“I’m Carrie.” I frowned down at his hand. Bandages never stuck right to joints.

“I’d shake your hand, but you’ve already crushed my other one.” He looked around the kitchen. “So, if you’re staying here, you need blood. I can cut you a good deal.”

I shook my head. “Even after we beat you up?”

“I don’t know what fight you were watching, but I had your sire pinned. Human on vampire, that’s got to count for something.”

“I was suitably impressed.” It was very strange, how easily he had gotten me to trust him. He was either a genuinely nice person, or a master manipulator. The thought made me uncomfortable. “Listen, the other vampires you…service…are they affiliated with the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement, by any chance?”

He nodded. “Some of them were.”

“They haven’t had any communication from other members, either?” My heart sank. Scores of Movement vampires out there and no way to contact them. And if they were anything like Nathan had been when he’d been under the Movement’s control, they would just sit tight and wait for word, as they’d been trained to do.

The Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement had been the final word in the battle between good vampires versus bad vampires—until a really bad vampire blew it up. But before their headquarters went kablooie, vampires had two choices: join the Movement and follow their rules, or don’t and they’d kill you. In return for the privilege of not being killed, Movement vampires killed the vampires who didn’t follow the rules. If we could find Movement members who were still committed to the organization’s ideals, we could put together a fighting force capable of wiping out the Soul Eater and any of his cronies who might be hanging around. But the Movement had never established any kind of communications system outside of their own records, and with good reason. When a vampire went bad—and some did—they didn’t need to have the names and addresses of their new enemies. Still, in an emergency like this it made it impossible that we’d find enough support to even put a dent in the Soul Eater’s plan. There was no way to prove that a vampire we might meet worked for the Movement, or the Soul Eater. Of course, I was a non-Movement vampire, and so was Nathan. But I knew we were okay. When it came to networking, hearing someone was aligned with the Movement was like a seal of approval. Non-Movement vampires could be good, but they could be very, very bad, and I liked to err on the side of caution.

Nathan pulled himself to his feet, wincing, and shuffled over to the island in a stooped-over kind of walk. I wanted to admonish him for not resting, but his signature look of single-minded determination stopped me from saying anything. “We need you to supply us with the names of your customers,” he said, so curtly that I wanted to tack on a “please” to soften the sharp edges of his command.

Bill appeared to be of the same mind as me, because he snorted at the request and shook his head. “No. Even though you asked so sweetly, I have a privacy policy with my clients that I can’t break. It would ruin my reputation and my business.”

“Listen, you were the one who came in here, armed, and shot me.” Nathan gestured to his stomach, where the wound was now pink and tight and shiny. “Maybe you should give us, the injured parties, some kind of recompense. And as for confidentiality, you have no idea the kind of danger we’re involved in. Just knowing that we’re here, well…let’s just say we vampires have our own ways of keeping our affairs private.” He changed his face, though I could see it took a lot of his already taxed strength, and stepped closer to Bill.

I knew Nathan would never kill a human. He might knock one out and throw him out the door, maybe scare him a bit, but not kill him, no matter how we’d been threatened. It wasn’t Nathan’s way. But Bill didn’t know that. He paled a little, then regained some of his confidence. “Buddy, I was in the Corps. You’re not going to intimidate me with a pair of fangs and a few threats.”

A smile twitched at the corner of Nathan’s mouth. “Yes, I see you’re a very tough guy. Especially when taking on an unarmed vampire.”

There’s a point in every tense situation where someone loses their stomach for the argument and gives in. Bill had reached his. Nathan took my seat at the kitchen island while I went to the refrigerator—to get some blood for Nathan, to replace what he’d lost, and something, preferably alcoholic, for Bill, whose hands trembled as he drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

“I’m not usually in the habit of attacking people,” Bill said apologetically. “But since the Movement fell apart, it’s been a little like the Wild West in the city.”

Nathan made a casual shrug, but I saw how he watched Bill. He would note every breath, every twitch, to analyze later.

Bill continued, oblivious to Nathan’s scrutiny. “I’d lay even money that Chicago isn’t the only place getting weird. Am I right?”

“You’re probably right. We’ve only been here, and where we came from.” Nathan shrugged. “Which is why I could really stand to talk to some of your other customers.”

“I don’t know.” Bill took a swallow of liquor. “I’d have to find someone willing to talk. But you guys…how do I know you’re not going to bust in and kill them? I mean, I just met you.” He stopped, a wry smile on his mouth. “I’m not sure I want to vouch for you. I don’t know you all that well and maybe I don’t want to be involved in whatever you’re involved in. I’ve already heard rumors of some Soul guy trying to become a supervamp. I really don’t want to get tangled up in that.”

“Supervamp?” I blurted, at the same time Nathan shouted, “You heard what?”

Bill looked back and forth at the two of us, frozen in indecision. “I’m not sure who I should answer first.”

“What do you know about Jacob Seymour?” Nathan asked, overlapping my, “When did you hear this?”

“I don’t know him. All I know is that every vampire in the city is either working for this Soul guy, or they get killed by him. And the last time I heard mention of him was a couple of days ago, at a bar downtown.” Bill shook his head vehemently and said, “I don’t want to get involved.”

“You became involved when you shot me,” Nathan said, reaching to squeeze the other man’s shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie. “Now, you just have to decide your level of involvement. If you give us the names of your clients and leave, you’re not too involved.”

“And yet there’s still the problem of losing my livelihood.” Bill laughed. “No, thanks. Look, I’ll do some work around here for you, same as I did Max. He’s still paying me, after all. And I’ll spy on my other clients. But I’m not going to hand over their names and compromise their safety. I work for good people.”

Nathan leaned back, letting his arm drop. “Fair enough. Let’s set down our terms.” He opened a drawer on the island, then looked dismayed that it contained only kitchen gadgets. “Carrie, do you have a pen?”

“I’m sure there’s one in the mess on the dining room floor,” I said, backing to the door. I wanted to keep an eye on Bill for as long as possible. “Scream if you need me.”

I wasn’t sure I trusted Bill. He had that smooth, friendly way about him that most con men worked hard to perfect. Maybe I was just being cynical, but I never trusted people like that. Plus, something he’d said had set off alarms in my brain. Every vampire in the city was either working for the Soul Eater or had been killed by him. Which meant if Bill was still in business, he was working with the Soul Eater’s goons.

I found a pen in the rubble of the dining room, and paper in a drawer of the sideboard. I hurried back to the kitchen, where Nathan drew up a list of “terms” for both sides. He requested that Bill not breathe a word of our presence in the city, and promised to match anyone’s offer of payment for that information. Of course, we had no money, but there was no reason to tell him that. I suggested that Bill make us a priority over his other clients. And Bill asked simply that we “not act like assholes.”

“Good idea,” Nathan agreed.

“Most of my clients don’t talk business in front of me. In fact, most of my clients don’t talk to me.” Bill glanced from Nathan to me. “I’m a little intimidated by the idea of spying. Not that any of them would do anything to me. They’re all as meek as kittens.”

“I’m sure,” Nathan agreed drily.

Bill spread his hands. “I just don’t want you to think I’m going to waltz in here with a ton of information in two weeks.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Nathan told him, sounding menacing and reassuring at the same time. “But if you tell anyone that we’re here, and what we’ve asked you about, I can guarantee you’ll come away from this place with more than a bruised-up hand.”

Since we’d pretty much covered everything and made all the threats we could reasonably make, we all sealed the deal with an awkward three-way handshake.

“What do you think?” I asked Nathan later as I stood at the windows in the library, watching the traffic pass on the street below. The sun had set, but twilight kept the sidewalk around Grant Park bright with a diffused glow. In the reflection in the glass, I saw myself, just as blond and pale and plain as ever, and Nathan, coming to stand behind me, all brooding dark, like an undead Heathcliff with his mussed black hair and hard, chiseled features.

He wrapped his arms around my waist and leaned his face close to mine, so that his deep voice, softly accented with his native Scots Gaelic, stirred my hair and tickled my ear. “I don’t know. I think that we will either find information that will be helpful to us and get us into a lot of trouble, or we’ll find information that isn’t helpful to us and we’ll still get into a lot of trouble.”

“Trouble is inevitable.” I turned and stepped out of his embrace, putting some distance between us. Being close to Nathan always affected my judgment. “Do we really need to find it for ourselves? You’ve already been shot. Speaking of which, let me look at it.” I crossed the space between us and reached for the bottom of his T-shirt. I pulled up the fabric to see the wound, nearly healed, just a paler patch of white against his normal pallor. “It looks okay. Thank God.”

He pulled his shirt down, a little reluctantly, as if he didn’t want to break the contact of my fingers against his skin. “It’s like any wound. Nothing to be alarmed about.”

“Nothing to be alarmed about? Nathan, I would be worried if you had a paper cut, let alone a gunshot wound.” I rubbed my temples to ease a headache I didn’t have, but I suspected I would later on. “I’m worrying needlessly, aren’t I?”

“It’s nice to be worried about,” he assured me. The corners of his eyes crinkled when he fake smiled the way he was now. “Really, it’s just nice to know you still worry about me.”

I didn’t respond with more than a smile. He wanted a different answer, that much was clear. But I wasn’t in a position to give it to him.

It was the story of our relationship, it seemed. From the moment we’d met, we’d both been on very different pages with each other. At first, he’d been in love with his dead wife, and I’d been enthralled by Cyrus, my first sire. When I’d finally gotten over that—and Nathan had accidentally resired me and saved my undead life by giving me his blood after I was attacked by Cyrus—Nathan realized he wasn’t anywhere near finished grieving for his lost wife. Then, when he finally was, Cyrus had come back into my life, and departed it just as quickly and painfully. Every day I began to appreciate more the way Nathan must have felt when I had pressed him again and again to give me love he just hadn’t felt. I wasn’t whole enough to give him love now, but I could certainly give him sympathy.

“Ah, well,” he said to break the awkwardness between us. Still, I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I was relieved when Nathan’s cell phone chirped.

“Nathan Grant,” he said after he’d flipped the phone open. I’ll never understand why men always seem to answer the phone that way, stating their names instead of just saying “hello.” I shook my head as I turned toward the fireplace. A fire might be nice, in the morning.

I heard the soft drum of something falling to the carpet, and I turned. Nathan stood, empty-handed, the phone still open on the floor. He stared at it as though it were a talking frog or a shimmering mirage, something you hear about but never see. A mixture of fear, disbelief and, strangely, happiness warred on his face.

As he made no move to pick up the phone, I knelt and lifted it to my ear.

The voice through the speaker was tinny and broken by static, but a chill of recognition ran up my spine. “Hello? Hello? Nate, are you still there? Dad?”

It was Ziggy.