"Why are you here?"

He asked it with deceptive gentleness, not missing a note or looking up. The question startled me.

"B-because you are," I said, cursing myself for stuttering like an intimidated teenager. I'd had enough of that.

Bones still didn't look up. "If you've come to say goodbye, you needn't bother. I don't need a tearful explanation. Just walk out the same way you came in."

A lump rocketed up in my throat. "Bones, that's not - "

"Don't touch me!"

I'd been about to smooth my hand across his back when he knocked my arm away so hard, it spun me. Now Bones was looking at me, and the rage in his gaze pinned me where I was.

"No. You don't get to stroll in here stinking of Gregor, then lay your hands on me." Each word was a measured, furious growl. "I've endured quite enough of being patronized. You treat me as if I was a feeble human who couldn't survive without your help, but I am a Master bloody vampire."

That last part was shouted. I flinched. Bones flexed his hands, seeming to get a handle on himself. Then he spoke the next part through gritted teeth.

"If it were my wish, I could rip you apart with my bare hands. Yes, you're strong. You're quick. But not strong enough or fast enough that I couldn't kill you if I had a mind to. Yet despite this, you continue to treat me with the contempt you'd show an inferior. I've brushed it off. Told myself it didn't matter, but no more. Yesterday, you believed in Gregor more than me. You left me to go to him, and there is no overlooking that, so I ask you again, why are you here?"

"I'm here because I love you and we're..." I was about to say, we're married, but the words choked me. No, I'd proven to myself that we weren't, as far as vampires were concerned.

Bones let out a cold snort. "I won't stand for this. I'm not going to hold you in my arms and wonder if I'm the one you're really thinking about."

"Bones, you know that isn't true!" I was anguished at the accusation. "I love you, you know that. And if you didn't know it, God, you could look for yourself and see - "

"Only shadows," he ruthlessly interrupted. "Glimpses when your guard was down, when that bloody wall you hide behind wasn't blocking me. I have been open with you about all of me, even the worst of me, because I thought you deserved no less, but you don't hold me in the same regard. No, you reserved that for Gregor. You trusted him enough to leave everything at his word. Well, luv, I bow when I am beaten, and Gregor has defeated me in a grand style. He's the one you respect. He's who you trust, so if you're not leaving, I am."

Cold swept over me, and the lump in my throat grew reinforcements. This wasn't a fight. This was something far worse.

"You're leaving me?"

He sat back down on the piano bench. Almost idly, his fingers flicked the keys.

"I can stand many things."

His voice was harsh in its emotionlessness. I recoiled from it. For a second, I was afraid of him.

"Many things," he continued. "I can stand your affection for Tate, much as I despise him. Your repeated jealousies over other women, even when I have given you no cause, for I'd be the same way in your place. I can stand your insistence to participate in dangerous situations that are way over your head, for again, that is also my nature. All of these things ate at me, but for you, I chose to stand them."

Now he stood. That calm, apathetic tone vanished, and his voice rose with each passing word.

"I also chose to stand the things you didn't admit to, like when you secretly wondered if Gregor had made you happier than I had. I could even tolerate the real reason you didn't want to change over, the real reason you clung to your heartbeat. I could stand to know that deep down, there's a part of you that still believes all vampires are evil!"

Roared now. I backed up, never having seen Bones like this. His eyes were electric green, and the emotion in him had him shaking on his feet.

"Don't think I don't know it. Don't think I haven't always known it! And I could bear it, yes, even knowing the other reason for your hesitancy. Underneath your claims of devotion, past your love - and I do think you love me, despite it all - you don't want to change over because you don't think we'll last. You believe we are only temporary, and becoming a vampire is such a permanent thing, isn't it? Yes, I know this. I've known it since I met you, but I've been patient. I told myself that one day, you wouldn't look at me with those guarded eyes. That one day, you'd love me the same way I loved you..."

The piano smashed into the wall across the room. It made a horrible keening noise, like it hurt from being destroyed. My hand pressed to my mouth while the emptiness in my stomach uncurled to fill my whole body.

"I've been a fool."

His simple sentence shattered me more thoroughly than the furniture he'd just demolished. I made a gasp of pain that he ignored.

"But this, this is the one thing I cannot endure - your walking out on me. I would rather have died than seen that note you left me. Would have cheerfully tucked myself in my grave than to see that filthy piece of paper!"

"I didn't walk out on you. I was trying to help, and I told you I was coming back - "

"Nothing you say matters."

It struck me like a slap. He looked at me, no tenderness, love, or forgiveness on his face. It was as if he were a statue. My heart beat faster with fear, desperate fear at everything falling apart.

"Bones, wait..."

"No. Will it change anything? Will it turn back the clock so you won't have left? It won't, so don't bother. You've only ever learned one way. Only one, and I should have remembered that. Perhaps this will finally penetrate into that armor you so relentlessly polish and shine."

He turned on his heel and began to walk away. I stared in stupid transfixion before racing after him, catching him as he approached the now-deserted front entrance.

"Wait! God, let's talk about this. We can work it out, I swear. Y-you can't just go!"

I was sputtering in anguish, tears spilling down my cheeks. They blinded me, but I felt his hand as he reached out and softly touched my face.

"Kitten." His voice was thick with something I couldn't name. "This is the part...where you don't have a choice."

The door slamming behind him knocked me off my feet.

Chapter Eighteen

ANNETTE LET THE SHADE FALL BACK OVER THE window. "It's raining. I told you I could smell it."

I turned my attention to the carton of ice cream in front of me. Pralines and Creme. It was almost empty. Next I'd crack open the Swiss chocolate.

"No fooling you with a bogus weather report."

"We'll watch the movie instead of taking a walk," Annette continued. "I hear it's good."

Good? I couldn't seem to remember what that was. I felt like I was a walking open wound. I couldn't even sleep more than minutes at a time, no matter how exhausted I was, because I was afraid if Bones came back, I might miss an instant with him. The only respite in my current misery was that my mother wasn't here. She was somewhere with Rodney, but for obvious reasons, I didn't know where.

"Crispin needs time," Spade had said after that terrible exchange. "Don't tear off after him. Even I don't know where he is."

So I'd been waiting, dwelling on every awful thing he'd said to me, and worse, how most of it was true. I hadn't meant to keep Bones at a distance. I didn't know why I closed parts of myself off. But more than that, I wished with all of my heart that I hadn't left that morning with Gregor.

And Gregor had been busy. Not content with his role in ruining my relationship, Gregor had been feeding the rumors that without his intervention, I might change myself into a vampire/ghoul hybrid. That's how he'd garnered the two-hundred-plus ghoul army he'd amassed to attack in Bavaria. Gregor had promised the ghouls that once he had me, he'd change me into a vampire. Gregor even had the balls to state that if Mencheres hadn't stolen me away and imprisoned him a dozen years ago, I'd already have been a vampire and wouldn't have risen to such notoriety today.

Yet Gregor had let me go with my pulse intact. Now there were rumbles that I'd influenced him as well. What no one cared to hear was that Gregor hadn't had a choice about changing me. The silver dagger in his back made his decision for him.

Adding to these ghoul/vampire hybrid fears were my high jumps in Paris. Who'd have thought that would have been responsible for so much added paranoia? But since flying was a skill only Master vampires possessed, the fact that I had come close to demonstrating it, even briefly, had people wondering what other powers I could be hiding. It fueled the fears about what would happen if ghoul attributes were added to my repertoire. Would I be invincible? Unkillable? Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and rerotate the spinning of the globe to turn back time? The theories got wilder and crazier.

Little did anyone know that all I was a danger to currently was anything sweet. Before I'd turn to alcohol for useless comfort. Now I used sugar, but there was a lot of pain and not nearly enough sugar.

"When does Spade get back?" I asked Annette. He'd gone out earlier with a vague statement about business. No one told me anything that could be used against me. We all knew Gregor was still snooping in my mind, even though I'd barely slept, and he'd been able to learn almost nothing. I didn't know where we were. How many people were with us. What day it was. Actually, none of those things meant shit to me. All I knew was this - it had been five days since Bones walked out. That's how I measured time. In the minutes and seconds since I'd last been with him.

"After dark," she answered.

Fabian came downstairs and sat - in a fashion - next to Annette. The ghost was smiling at her in a way that could only be called besotted.

I rolled my eyes. Even phantoms had a thing for Annette, it seemed. She'd probably found a way to have sex with him. Though he was transparent and as solid as a particle cloud, if anyone could do it, Annette could.

"What a charming man," she remarked. "Faith, Cat, you might have started a trend. When I leave, I daresay I'll be trying to sneak him past you."

It took so much willpower not to ask, "And how soon will that be?" After all, I'd been trying to control my think it, say it tendencies.

"Annette, I think I'll just skip the movie and read something. Watch it without me."

Halfway up the stairs, I passed Vlad. He'd stayed on, making the comment that he'd leave when things were settled. I bet he hadn't figured on being here this long.

I was nearly to the bedroom when I heard my cell phone ring. The sound made me hurtle through the door, almost diving to get it.

"Bones?" I answered.

A contemptuous scoff filled my ear. "No, cherie. Still hoping for your lover's return? How amusing."

Gregor. Just what I needed.

"What's up, dear?" Sarcastically. "Still snooping in my dreams, I see. Are you done apologizing to your ghouls because I'm sucking in air instead of blood? Just when you think you've got the little woman cornered, oops, you forget she has a knife."

"You should have stayed with me and spared yourself the humiliation of being yet another castoff of that peasant whore," he purred. "While you pine for Bones, he ruts with other women."

"Liar. Bones might be pissed at me, but he's a better man than that. Of course, that's something you wouldn't understand."

Gregor just laughed. "Oh, Catherine, soon you will see you're very wrong. Did you really think he'd changed? He saw a way out, and he took it."

I hung up, stopping myself from my stamping on the phone only out of concern that Bones might call next, and I'd have broken the thing. I was breathing heavily, like I'd been running. When Vlad tapped on the doorframe, I whirled around and grabbed him by the shoulders.

"Do you know where Bones is? Tell me the truth!"

Vlad flicked his gaze to his shirt, as if to say, Do you mind?

"No, Cat. Going to shake me next?"

I dropped my hands, balling them in frustration. "That bastard is playing games with me. He knows what I'm most afraid of, and he's using it to hurt me!"

"Gregor?" Vlad asked evenly. "Or Bones?"

I stopped pacing and shot him a measured look. "I meant Gregor, but...you might have a point."

Vlad smiled. "And what are you going to do about it?"

"When Spade gets back," I said grimly, "I'm going to shake him."

Spade just made it through the front door when I grabbed him by the shirt.

"You contact Bones and tell him he's made his point. I might have been wrong, but he's being cruel, and I've had enough."

Spade flicked my hands as if they were lint. "You couldn't relay that without creasing my shirt?"

"An attention-getter," I replied with a glint. "Just in case you needed one."

Vlad was on the other side of the room with Fabian and Annette. All three of them were waiting to see if Spade complied or refused. I'd moved some furniture out of the way, just in case Spade chose the latter. No need to trash the place.

"Cat," Spade began, "give me a few more days."

"Wrong answer," I said with a smile, and hit him.

Maybe it was the smile that put him off his guard. His head jerked to the side from the blow, then he took me seriously. The looseness was gone from his posture, and he took a wary step backward, his hands flexing in readiness.