He was right. It was just that simple. My brother was right. I had been self-involved and arrogant. Maybe it was understandable, given the pressures on me at the time, but that didn’t mean that I hadn’t made bad calls of colossal proportion.
I should have talked to him. Trusted him. I hadn’t even tried to consider anyone other than Maggie, hadn’t even thought to start seeking support from my family. I’d just moved right along to the part of the plan where I hired one of the world’s premier supernatural assassins to whack me. That probably said something about the state of despair I’d been in at the time.
But it didn’t say as much as I had about my brother. He was right about that, too. It wasn’t something I had ever consciously faced before, but I had told Thomas, with my actions, that it was better to be dead than a monster—a monster like him. And actions speak far more loudly than words.
I always thought it would get easier to be a person as I aged. But it just gets more and more complicated.
“I’m sorry. I should have talked to you then,” I said. My voice sounded hoarse. “I should have talked to you three months ago. But I couldn’t because I made the wrong call. I didn’t think I should contact anyone.”
“Why not?” he asked, looking up.
“Because I didn’t deserve to do it,” I said quietly. “Because I sold out. Because I was ashamed.”
He came to his feet, angry. “Oh, absolutely, I get that. I mean, you had to stay away. Otherwise we all would have known that you
He hit my chest and wrapped his arms around me so hard that I felt my ribs creaking.
“. . . clumsy, short-tempered, exasperating, goofy, useless . . .”
I hugged my brother back and listened to a steady string of derogatory adjectives until he finished it.
“. . . asshole.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I missed you, too.”
Chapter Fifteen
Thomas got us to the island navigating by the stars.
I kept checking the ship’s compass. Not because I didn’t trust my brother, but because I had no freaking idea how he managed to keep the
I filled Thomas in on recent events on the way out, omitting only the details on the immortal-killing thing. I had a sinking feeling that knowing something that important about beings that powerful was an excellent way to get yourself killed horribly on any night of the year that
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Thomas said, when I finished the briefing. “Have you seen her yet?”
I scowled. “Seen who?”
“You tell me,” he said.
“Just you and Molly,” I said.
He gave me a look of profound disappointment, and shook his head.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
“You’re alive,” he said. “You owe it to her to go see her.”
“Maybe when this is done,” I said.
“You might be dead by then,” he said. “Empty night, Harry. Didn’t your little adventure in the lake teach you a damned thing?”
I scowled some more. “Like what?”
“Like life is short,” he said. “Like you don’t know when it’s going to end. Like some things, left unsaid, can’t ever be said.” He sighed. “I’m a freaking vampire, man. I rip out pieces of people’s souls and eat them, and make them happy to have it happen.”
I didn’t say anything. That was what my brother was. He was more than that, too, but it would have been stupid to deny that part of him.
“I’m mostly a monster,” he said. “And even I know that she deserves to hear you tell her you love her. Even if she never gets anything more than that.”
I frowned. “Wait. Who are we talking about here?”
“Either,” he said. “Stop being an idiot. Stop flagellating yourself about how you endanger her by being in her life. You’re the only you
“They don’t make replacements for anybody,” I said tiredly. “We’ll see.”
Thomas looked at me like he wanted to push. But he didn’t.
“So what about you?” I asked. “Justine and her playmate keeping you company?”
“Playmates,” Thomas said absently. “Plural.”
Totally not fair.
“Hmph,” I said.
He frowned. “Hey. How did you know about that?”
“Ghost me was there the night Justine decided she’d had enough of you moping,” I said.
“Ghost you was there for how long, exactly?” he asked.
“I left before it got to an NC-17.”
He snorted. “Yeah, well, Justine . . . has sort of become a dietitian.”
“Uh, what?”
He shrugged. “You are what you eat, right? Same principle applies to vampires. Justine thinks I’m sad, she brings home someone happy. She thinks I’m too tense, someone laid-back and calm.” He pursed his lips. “Really . . . it’s been kind of nice. Balanced, like.” His eyes narrowed and flickered through a few paler shades. “And I get to be with
“Dude,” I said, making the word a disgusted sound. “Single guys everywhere hate you. Starting with me.”
“I know, right?” he asked, nodding and smiling. Then he looked ahead and pointed. “There, see it?”
I peered ahead into the black and found a giant block of more solid black. We were at the island.
The cabin door opened and Molly emerged, the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders. Her face still looked drawn, but not as pale as it had before we left the marina. She came up the steps to the top of the wheelhouse and stood beside me. “Thomas,” she asked. “Why were you down at the boat tonight?”
Thomas blinked and looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean why were you sleeping on board?”
“Because you didn’t tell me what time you’d be there, and I got sleepy,” he said.
Molly glanced aside at Thomas, and then at me. “I asked you to do it?”
“Uh, yeah,” Thomas said, snorting. “You called around ten.”
Molly kept looking at me, frowning. “No. No, I didn’t.”
Thomas promptly cut the throttle on the boat. The
“Okay,” Thomas said. “Uh. What the hell is going on, then?”
“Molly,” I said, “are you sure?”
“None of my issues have included memory loss or unconscious actions,” she said.
Thomas squinted back at her. “If they had, how would you know it?”
Molly frowned. “Valid point. But . . . there’s been no evidence of that, to my knowledge. I’m as confident about that as anything else I perceive.”
“So if Molly didn’t call me . . .” Thomas began.
“Who did?” I finished.
Water slapped against the hull.
