Bitter Blood

that becomes necessary.”

“Myrnin—you’re scaring me,” Claire said, and reached out. “Please, tell me what’s going on!”

He took her hand and raised it to his mouth in an old-fashioned gesture that made her skin tingle, especially when she felt the cool brush of his lips against her skin. His eyes were very dark in the dim light of her study lamp, and she didn’t think he’d ever looked more…human. Crazy, maybe, but so very human.

“I hope I am scaring you,” he said. “When things seem calmest, that is the time you should fear the most; it’s when you have the most to lose. It’s not your enemies who are likeliest to hurt you. It is, always, those you trust. And you have trusted Amelie too far.”

He hadn’t let go of her hand, and she was starting to feel flushed and awkward about it. “I’ve trusted you, too,” she said. And he gave her a sad, slightly manic smile.

“Yes, and that too is a mistake,” he said. “As you’ve known from the first moment you met me, I am not reliable.”

“I think you are,” Claire said softly. “I really do. Myrnin—please. Please don’t go away. You—you matter. To me.”

There was just a flicker of warmth, something, and for a moment she thought…But then Myrnin’s face shut down, and he let go of her hand. Where his fingers had touched hers, her skin felt ice- cold.

“Don’t,” he said. “It’s dreadfully unfair to say things like that when this is likely the last time we will speak, and we both know you don’t mean what you say. It’s pure selfishness that you want to keep me here.” His tone had a harder edge than she was used to hearing from him, and his expression was deathly still.

She felt an unexpected surge of anger. “Didn’t you just accuse me of not being selfish enough?”

“Don’t play at word games with me. I was a master of it before your country even existed.”

“You can’t just go! Where will you—”

“Blacke,” he said, cutting her off. “For a start. Morley and I do not get along well, but he and the quite- frightening librarian woman have built a rough approximation of a town where vampires are welcome. It will do until I gather resources to settle elsewhere more congenial. You’d do better to think of yourself. Without me to help protect you, you are likely to end up dead, Claire. I should regret that. You’ve been the least useless apprentice I’ve ever had.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say? I’m the least useless?”

It burst out of him in a furious, low-voice rush. “Yes, of course that’s all I’m going to say, because there’s no point in it, no point at all in telling you that I’m lonely, that it’s been so long since I could discuss books and theories and science and metaphor and alchemy and philosophy, and that is a desperately lonely thing, Claire. Even for someone who has killed to stay alive, there’s a point where life—where existence—just seems…worthless, without some deeper connection. Do you understand?”

She was afraid to, really, but she gulped down a deep breath, and said, “You’re saying that you care for me.”

Myrnin froze, staring at her. He really was amazing, she thought; when he had that light in his eyes, it was possible to see past the crazy behavior and clothing chaos and recognize him as just…beautiful. The longing in his face was breathtaking.

But he said, in a low voice, “Not as you would understand it. What I admire in you is…intellectual. Spiritual.”

She actually laughed a little. “You love me for my mind.”

He sighed. “Yes. In a sense.”

“Then stay.”

“And watch you torn apart between Amelie, Oliver, and this town? Helpless to stop it?” He shook his head. “Better I go.”

“No,” she said, and grabbed at his sleeve. The old fabric of his jacket had an odd texture to it—cloth that had survived a hundred years or more past its makers. He could have avoided her, of course, but he didn’t. He simply waited. “You can’t go! You fought the draug to save the town!”

“I won’t fight Amelie, and for as long as Oliver holds sway over her, she’s dangerous to us all. So what do you propose I do? They’ll come for me, sooner or later; I’ve always been a thorn in Oliver’s side, and he’ll want me dealt with before long. If I’m lucky, he’ll do it before he comes after you and your friends, relieving me of the burden of standing by for that.”

“Amelie won’t let him hurt you.”

“Won’t she?” Myrnin’s face set hard, and he seemed to be remembering something very unpleasant. “Oliver has a talent for corruption. He had the same skill in breathing life. The atrocities men committed in his name were legion and legendary, and those were mere mortals acting on his behalf. Vampires can be infinitely more cruel. Let enough of us lose our better instincts to that, and there will be a kind of—fever. A madness that sweeps us away, and we won’t care about promises of good behavior, or even about our own survival. I’ve seen it happen to entire towns of vampires. They just…break.” He snapped his fingers in front of her face in a sharp, dry motion, and the sound reminded her of bones shattering. “I don’t wish to see it again. And I certainly don’t wish to be part of it.”

“Then make her listen to you. You’re one of her oldest friends!”

“Friends count for little when they cross lovers,” he said. “You’re old enough to know that. And it is why I can’t—” He shook his head. “Why I can’t stay.”

She felt she would choke on tears, suddenly. He stepped forward and took both her hands in his cool ones. For a moment, she thought he intended to kiss her, and for a panicked moment she wasn’t sure if she ought to stop him, wanted to stop him…but then he just touched his forehead to hers and held it there.

“Hush, now,” he said, and there was so much sweetness in his voice. “I don’t want to see you cry. I’m nothing to cry over.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

He pulled back, still close, very close, too close. There was a faint crimson flicker deep in his eyes, like a distant thunderstorm. “Take care,” he said. “Promise me.”

“I will,” she said. “Myrnin—”

He kissed her. It was so fast that she couldn’t move to prevent it, even if she’d wanted to; it was also quick, and light, and cool, and then…

Then he was gone.

Claire leaned out the window and saw him scrambling in a blur down the tree. He jumped the last ten feet, landed smoothly on his white patent leather shoes, and looked up at her in silence, then held up a pale, long- fingered hand.

She held hers up in response. Tears blurred her view of him, before they broke free of her eyes and rolled hot down her cheeks.

When she blinked, the yard was empty, except for the broken branch he’d been standing on when she’d first spotted him.

Claire gulped in several deep, cold breaths of night air, then slammed the window shut and sat down on her bed. She felt…She didn’t know how she felt. Just wrong. She wanted to talk, but she couldn’t to Shane, not about this; he wouldn’t understand, not about this.

Eve. Maybe she could talk to Eve…. But she could hear the shouting from downstairs, and Eve’s voice was gleefully announcing her victory over Shane in the game. Upstairs felt like a whole world away from that.

Claire stretched out on her bed, closed her eyes, almost ill with how wrong that had been, how guilty she was about that whole conversation. But she’d needed to have it with him; she knew that.

She flinched and bolted upright at a knock on the door, both arms instinctively crossing over her chest. “Who is it?”

“What do you mean, who is it?” Shane eased the door open and studied her. Oh. Of course, that was Shane’s knock; she knew it very well. “What’s up? You all right? You look scared.”

She felt a surge of feeling so fierce that it burned in her cheeks and made her stomach churn, and for a second she didn’t even know what it was, until her brain kicked back in.

It was shame.