Falling silent, I realized I was almost done. Short and sweet, that was my style. “So I’m letting it all go. I’m letting you off the hook. And I hope you’re with Mother now, in the Land of the Silver Falls. I hope you’re happy… because I don’t want you to be lonely anymore. You loved Mother with a passion I don’t know if I can ever feel… but I’m trying. I’m trying to open up, to let my wife in, to love her as much as you loved Mother. So… thanks… thank you for the lesson. If nothing else, you taught me that such a love can exist. You taught me to hope.”

With that, I’d said all I had to say. I gently leaned down, kissed the silent forehead, and whispered. “Good-bye, Father. We’ll never forget you.”

As I entered the kitchen and washed my hands, Hanna looked at me. The room was empty and her eyes were suspiciously red.

“Your sisters, they have gone into the living room. Would you like a goblet of warm blood?” She folded the hand towel and placed it on the counter, which was spotless. Both Hanna and Iris were meticulous about cleanliness.

I shook my head. “Thanks, Hanna, but no. I’m not thirsty.”

“You went to say good-bye, did you not?” Her English was improving. The Northlander was learning the ways and customs here, and she seemed content, though she’d taken one hell of a journey to get here.

I glanced at the kitchen door, lowering my voice. “Yes, but please don’t tell Camille or Delilah. They couldn’t handle it. They need to remember him alive, loving them. Not cold and ready to go in the ground. I’ve been there before, Hanna. I’ve been dead. And I went home to kill my family. Camille and Delilah saw me the night I died. They don’t need to see Father dead. You know?”

She paused for a moment, then gave me a gentle smile. “I understand. I truly do. You would not have wanted to see Camille when she returned from Hyto’s lair. I had to tend her, keep her alive so he could abuse her again. I washed the blood off her thighs, I washed the vomit out of her mouth.”

I stared at her, feeling like she was punishing me for some reason. “What are you getting at, Hanna?”

She tilted her head to the side. “Nothing, except you… you underestimate Camille and Delilah. You act as though you are the only one who has seen trauma enough to handle the harshness of life. You do them a disservice. You insult them.”

Normally, when someone talked to me like that, I got mad and wanted to beat the crap out of them. But Hanna’s clear gaze challenged me. I worried my lip. Reality was? She was right. But I seldom found anybody willing to read me the riot act. Most everyone was too afraid. Nerissa could stare me down—and Camille, at times. But very few had doused me with ice water and walked away unscathed.

If I breathed, I would have taken in a long breath and let it out slowly. Instead, I counted to four… to five… to ten. Then, when she still didn’t move, I blinked and looked down at my feet.

“You may be on to something with that. But what am I supposed to do? Let them go look at his body? Trust me, I didn’t even pull the shroud away that much, just enough to see his face and it was bruised and battered and scarred.”

She shrugged. “You do what you feel is right. But make sure you do it out of compassion, and not an assumption. I am a mother, remember this. And you girls, you are still young. Still growing. Still in need of guidance at times, whether or not you choose to believe it. Iris, she is busy with her own kinderkins now, she cannot keep track of you the way she did. But I… my own daughters are scattered from me. I hope they live. My son, he is dead and you know that I killed him to save him. Let me take a moment, now and then, to remind you of what you might be overlooking. Would you do this for me?”

She was so sincere, so brutally honest, that I could do nothing more than nod. Speechless, I forced a smile to my lips, and then headed toward my lair.

“I’m going to talk to Amber and Luke before the night is over.” At the door, I turned around. “Hanna… thanks. Thanks for being a voice of conscience.”

“Conscience?” Hanna shook her head. “No. I have no conscience. If I did, would my son be dead now?”

“I think he would. Because you saved him from a life of captivity and madness. You gave him his freedom. Some of us… we didn’t get that choice and now we live with the consequences.” And with that, I vanished through the bookcase that hid the steel door leading to my lair.

Luke and Amber were sitting on the bed, playing a game of cards. Luke had been my bartender before Derrick took over, before his sister Amber had shown up wearing one of the spirit seals. Now they were both Keraastar Knights, sworn to protect the seals they wore, magically bound to them with an invisible chain that only death could sever.

I hadn’t seen Luke for months, and now, as I gazed into his eyes, I realized he had changed. His eyes were stark, a deep brown against the wheat-colored hair that hung loose. He’d always worn it in a ponytail when he worked for me, but now it was loose, mid-back, and brushed to a silky sheen. The scar that had marred his cheek was almost gone—as if something had rejuvenated him, and I was pulled to him in a way I’d never before felt. Amber, his sister, had gone from pretty and pregnant, to seductive and voluptuous. Her child, a little girl, was playing with a doll on the floor. Together, she and her brother radiated a power that felt magnified to the tenth degree. Around their necks, the spirit seals glowed against their hearts.

What Shadow Wing wouldn’t give to get hold of them. A sudden fear gripped me, and I wished the dragons had already come. They were due to show up and escort the pair to safety the day after tomorrow, but as we’d seen in the past, so much could happen in so little time.

“Menolly…” Luke stood, a smile grazing his face. He looked tired and so did Amber. Tired, intense, and far older than the last time we’d spoken.

“Luke, it’s so good to see you. Amber, you, too. I see you had your little one.” I smiled down at the girl, who was barely toddling around at this point.

“Her name is Jolina. That was our mother’s name.” Amber smiled, baring her teeth. She and Luke were werewolves. Amber had escaped from a patriarchal pack that had abused her. Luke had been thrown out years earlier for disobeying their rules.

“Hi, Jolina.” I knelt down to look at the girl. She was tiny, as were all babies her size, but she gazed up at me, and the flash in her eyes told me that she was older than she seemed. “She seems… very… aware.”

Amber shrugged. “I wore the spirit seal throughout my pregnancy. By then it was already changing my nature. We don’t know how the magic will affect Jolina yet, but yes, she’s precocious. That much we can tell.”

Standing again, I moved to a chair near the bed and sat, crossing my legs. “The Wayfarer burned down Monday night. Chrysandra died in the fire.”

At that, Luke seemed to startle out of his silence. “No! I’m so sorry. Smoke inhalation or burns?”

Neither, to be truthful, although the extent of her injuries would have killed her anyway. But Luke didn’t need to know that I’d been the one to give her release from the pain, so I lied.

“She died from her burns. We buried her early this evening.” After a moment, I added, “I was there. In Elqaneve, when the storm came through. I managed to get out without seeing much of the damage, but Delilah and Camille were caught in the thick of things.”

Both of them stared at me, unspeaking, and I realized that there would be no catching up. No discussion of how the spirit seals had changed them, of what Asteria had been planning for them and the Keraastar Knights. We needed to know, but it wouldn’t be Amber and Luke telling me. They were so far removed from the lives they had led here that they might as well be speaking a different language.

I was going to have to say good-bye, to let go of the people they’d been. I was going to have to move Luke and Amber into my past, and accept that they were now fully Keraastar Knights—along with whatever that entailed.

Standing, I motioned for them to follow me. “It’s getting near dawn and we’ve all been up far too long. I need my lair but you will be safe upstairs. Vanzir will watch over you. And the guards are thick on our land.”

Amber lifted up Jolina and started up the stairs, but Luke paused to turn back to me.

“I never thanked you for all your friendship and kindness, Menolly. I can see it in your eyes—you think I’ve changed. Well, that’s true, but I have never forgotten what my time at the Wayfarer was like. You had an effect on my life.” With a slight laugh, he touched the spirit seal. “Rather obvious, yes. But seriously—I’m a better werewolf for having met you. I’ll never forget you.” And with that, he headed up the stairs.

I decided to let them go without me. I wasn’t part of their lives anymore. A few moments later, Nerissa came downstairs. She took one look at my face and opened her arms. I had thought I wanted sex, but when she wrapped me tight, I laid my head against her bountiful chest and began to cry. As my tears stained her sweater, she moved me over to the bed, and we curled up together, and I wept for the losses in my life. Only I wasn’t even sure what some of those losses were.

Chapter 4

Come dawn, I slept without dreaming—a blessing considering who I was and the baggage I carried. By the time I woke up, at sunset, Nerissa had long been up and was almost done with her day. Our opposite sleep schedules interfered with our lives at times, but we made it work. We had from sundown till late night together, and on weekends, she’d stay up late with me—till two or three in the morning. Weres didn’t need as much sleep as FBHs, so she was good with a few hours.

Last night, after I’d cried myself out, we’d watched an old movie—Mildred Pierce—and then she’d snuggled down to sleep while I spent the rest of the night reading. The house was quiet during the late-night hours, and I relished my time to myself. I was in the middle of a biography of Rasputin, and the reading was slow and dense, but interesting.

Come sunrise, I’d curled up next to my wife and fallen asleep. We were safe enough in the same bed as long as she was awake and out of reach by the first moments I woke at night.

As I took a quick shower, then slipped into jeans and a turtleneck, I heard the phone ring upstairs. Even through the steel door, my hearing was so sensitive that I could hear the doorbell, the phone, loud conversations. There was a flurry of words that I couldn’t quite make out. The steel door we’d installed muffled sound better than the old wooden one. But by that time, I was at the top of the stairs and could hear Camille. She sounded surprised. I sauntered out into the kitchen to find her staring at the phone in her hand, her head cocked to the side.

“You look puzzled.”

“Yeah, well, that was cousin Daniel.” She turned around, the quizzical look still present. “He wants to get together for dinner. He basically invited himself over tomorrow night.”

That was a shocker. First, the very fact that our blood cousins actually wanted to hang out surprised me. Second, I’d expected to hear from Hester Lou first. She had dropped us an e-mail after she left the restaurant the other night to reassure us that she was thrilled we’d met and that she wanted to pursue a familial relationship. That fact that she had a wife, too, had created an instant bond between us. But Daniel? He’d seemed standoffish and taciturn, and not at all the sort who would suddenly go all touchy-feely over us.

“Well, then. I suppose we should all be here.” I raised one eyebrow.

“I know—odd, isn’t it?” Camille moved to the counter, where she poured herself a cup of risha-berry tea. “I guess we’ll just have to wait to see what he wants, but I have the feeling that he’s got something up his sleeve. I know the man is hiding something, though I don’t get any negative feelings off of him.”

“That’s good, at least.”

“I have something to tell you—” Camille started to say, but the phone rang again, interrupting her.

I was closest to it so I picked up. “Hello?”

“Menolly? Chase here.” He sounded harried.

I glanced at the clock. Five P.M. “I take it you’re still at work?”

“Yeah, love working Saturdays, you know. Anyway, we have problems.”

The words we so did not enjoy hearing. “What’s up and what do you need us to do?” I said it half-jokingly, but he didn’t banter back.

Instead, his voice was low and solemn. “I’m serious. We have a situation here and we need you girls. Seriously, come now and bring all the reinforcements you can. We… this is bad.”

Fuck. More words that I didn’t want to hear. “Our backup is depleted. I think Smoky, Roz, and Trillian went back to Otherworld—” Here, I glanced at Camille, who nodded. “We’ll be there as soon as we can. What’s shaking, and where do we meet you?”

“The Utopia Club. It’s burning, and we have people trapped inside.”

“Motherfucking son of a bitch! Shikra—did Shikra make it out?” The realization that she might be so much dust right now hit home and I flashed back to Chrysandra, lying blackened on the hospital bed. With vampires, though, there would be no slow death. Fire was one of the few things that could actually destroy us, and we burned bright and crisp and clear, wisping into a handful of ashes in seconds.

“She’s safe, yes. But the club was torched. That much we are fairly sure of, and the firemen seem to be making headway with the flames. But there’s something else going on in that fire. Shikra told Yugi that there was some spiritual activity going on there this evening—it started in the afternoon while she was still asleep. But her Supe bouncers and a couple of cleaning ladies had several nasty experiences. I’m wondering… is there such a thing as an arsonist ghost?”