Cole turned and put both his hands on my shoulders.
Leaning down so our noses were nearly touching he murmured, “Get it together.”
I glared over his shoulder at the vampire who was tapping his foot impatiently. “I hate that son of a bitch!”
“I know.”
That stepped me back. “But… I love him.”
“Which is why you hate him right now. I get it. Don’t you think I’ve felt the same way about you practical y every day since we met?”
I looked into his eyes and, for the first time, truly understood. “Jesus. I’m sorry. I real y wish—” He shook his head, his smile so smal it resembled Vayl’s least readable expression. “My mom used to tel me that we can’t help how we feel. It’s what we choose to do about those feelings that makes us shits or saints.” His hands slid down my arms until they fel to his sides. “I guess I final y understand what she meant.”
I dropped my head.
I love you, Cole. So much that I wish you could find the perfect girl. Someone who wants to wrap herself around you the same way I do Vayl. With a mind-blowing passion that keeps making me forget to breathe. The downside is that it can tear your heart out. Slowly, so that you feel yourself bleeding, dying inside, every time he looks at you, past you, not seeing, not remembering. And if he never comes back? Another kind of living death that zombies are glad they never have to experience. And still I can say I’ve held the world in my hands.
But you’re not content, are you, Jazzy? Granny May peered at me from around the blouse she was hanging on the clothesline. You’re still going to fight to get him back?
Damn straight, I am. Because in the end, I may be greedier than Kyphas. I’ve had it all. But I want more.
Even so changed, Vayl hadn’t lost his ability to move like one of the tigers that had been carved into the cane he no longer carried. Despite my Sensitivity to his presence, I was stil surprised to find him standing at my shoulder when I final y looked up.
“I am sorry to remind you of your sorrows, Madame Berggia,” he said, his fine black brows drawn down in a frown of, geez, could that actual y be concern? “Let me assure you, the woman I seek is nothing like the Seer who led me to your home in the first place.”
“I… uh—”
His lip quirked, reminding me so strongly of my old lover that I had to grab a handful of skirt to prevent myself from wrapping my arms around his waist. He said, “I have forgotten myself again.”
“No kidding.”
He reached out as if to touch me. I stepped back. If I had felt those fingers brush my hand I’d have lost it completely. His chin tipped. “You are angry.” I shrugged. “You know what happened before.” So tel me!
He put his hand to his heart. “My life on it, this Seer is virtuous and ethical. She is part of a guild cal ed the Sisters of the Second Sight, which strictly forbids its members from sending vampires like me into homes like yours, expecting to find their reincarnated sons…”
Aha! I said, “But they weren’t there, were they?” Even I knew the reunion was supposed to happen in America.
“No. You and Berggia were. Mourning over your young men. It is stil a wonder to me that you did not burn me alive, considering how they had been kil ed.”
The real Berggias’ boys were slain by vampires, then.
Damn.
I nodded. That must’ve been the expected response, because Vayl went on. “I always wondered… did it ease your mind that I found the Rogue who took their lives? That he is now little more than vapor and a few specks of dust?” I thought about how Vayl had kil ed Aidyn Strait. That moment of knowing that my fiancé’s murderer would never laugh again. “There was a need in me. I don’t exactly know what to cal it. I’m—it’s right that he’s gone. There’s a balance restored. But it’s bitter.”
“Yes. Revenge.” He sent me a look ful of fire and blood.
“I thought it would be satisfying enough to give me rest for eternity. And yet here I am, stil seeking what I have lost.” He stopped suddenly. Glanced at Cole. “You never speak of my search. I suppose you think it insane?”
“It’s not my place to judge,” Cole said. A good valet’s response. But Vayl wasn’t satisfied. He turned on Cole so quickly that I reached back, touched the hair I’d woven into a knot before we left the riad. And not just because Vayl had bitched about my choice of dos. When I twisted it up, it looked natural holding the bright blue Japanese hairpins whose true use had been disguised by the CIA’s most creative artists. Each needle tip released a ful dose of vamp tranquilizer when properly, uh, shoved into place.
I relaxed when Vayl’s only violent movement was to fling the cigar into the street. “How do you do it?” he demanded.
Cole ran a hand through his hair, glancing past Vayl to show me what-the-hel eyes. I rol ed my hands. Just go with the flow.
“How do I do what?” he asked.
“I have been without my sons for twenty-six years now. It has been only five for you. How is it that you manage to function as though life stil has some meaning? As if you occasional y see beauty among al this horror?” Had he meant to gesture at the mottled wal s of the buildings that had closed in on us again as soon as we left Zitoun el Kattabi Street?
Cole looked at the toes of his high-tops. I felt myself go tense. Tried to think of some way to deflect the smart-ass comment he was about to fling at Vayl, which would be fol owed quickly by a huge bubble and a suggestion to me that if the Seer was pretty, you know, since he and I were a temporary couple, maybe we could make it a threesome.
But when he looked up I saw depths in his eyes that made me take a quick breath. As if I’d just met the real man behind the fun pal for the first time.
He said, “People deal with pain in different ways. And I can promise you that sometimes what seems like coping to the rest of the world is real y just hanging on by your fingernails. You want to know how I survive?” He took Vayl by the arms and turned him until he was ful y facing me.
“There she is. And here’s another promise. Someday you’l find somebody just like her. When you do, don’t fuck it up.
Because you wil never find anyone like her again.” Vayl nodded. “You are a lucky man, Berggia. To find such a partner is rare. My wife was…” Vayl trailed off, and after a while we realized he didn’t intend to finish that thought. Not out loud anyway.
We stared at one another, an island of silence surrounded by vividly dressed socializers, al headed anywhere but here. They didn’t mind our blockage. Walked around us without comment, like we’d become part of the around us without comment, like we’d become part of the city’s hardscape despite the fact that we stood in a stone-paved thoroughfare so narrow that even a couple of cyclists might brush shoulders if they weren’t careful how they passed each other.
Somebody accidental y bumped Cole, apologized in French, and that was al we needed to get us moving. Vayl led. Cole came next. I fol owed, feeling like I’d betrayed him without ever meaning to.
Raoul? Come on, give me something to cling to here.