The following evening, Rhage and Mary let Bitty go to the Audience House again to see her uncle.

It wasn’t any easier, Mary decided. Nope. Not something you got used to—especially not after Rhage’s getting shot.

And as the Mercedes took off down the hill once more, she and Rhage went back into the house and stalled out in the foyer. The mansion was largely quiet, First Meal being cleaned up, the Brothers going on about their nights, the shellans, too.

“I kind of feel left behind,” she said as she went over and sat on the lower step of the staircase. “You know, our lives are ending in a way. Everyone else is going on. I mean, I realize that’s sadness talking, but it’s how I feel.”

Rhage came across and joined her. “I’m with you.”

She glanced at him. “I’m so glad you were wearing that vest last night. But why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s just an addition in gear. You know, after that last chest wound—that was too close a call, even for me. And with Bitty around …” He cleared his throat. “So, yeah, I asked Fritz to get me some. I tried a number of them out. And the one I had on last night is my favorite. Worked like a charm, too.”

“Are you going to order another one?”

He shrugged. “Guess so.”

Mary put her arm around his shoulders—well, not all the way around because of his size. “Bitty was so glad you’re okay.”

“She’s a sweet kid.”

As Rhage looked at his hands and pretend-picked at his clipped nails, Mary felt a now-familiar mourning that she recognized she was going to have to live with for the rest of her life. There would be times when it wouldn’t be this acute, she told herself. Times when it was even worse. But it was now her companion, a scar on her insides that was always going to be there.

She didn’t have to ask Rhage to know that it would be the same for him.

“Do you have any regrets?” she asked softly.

“About taking her in?”

“Yes.”

He was quiet for a long time, and she studied his handsome profile. His blond hair needed a trim. His cheeks seemed hollower than usual. And the grim light in those beautiful blue eyes made him look so much older.

As she rubbed his back, she felt the beast following her touch as she passed over his muscle shirt, the tattooed representation shifting to stay with her.

“I don’t know,” he said. “This is pretty rough. This is really hard. But no, I would still have wanted to take her in. If all I’m supposed to get is two months of being her father to tide her over to her rightful home? Then I’ll be grateful for what I was given. I’d rather me suffer for the next thousand years over not having her than for her to have been alone in the world, getting those arms and legs fixed, wondering where she was going to end up. That trade-off ’s worth it to me.”

Mary laid her head on his biceps. “That’s how I feel, too.”

“I owe you an apology, by the way.”

“About what?”

“I should have told you about what they were going to do to Bitty’s limbs. I didn’t want to concern you, and I was hoping it was all going to be okay.”

“Oh, God … not to worry. Water under the bridge.”

“Yeah.”

They sat there for oh, so long, the sounds of conversation in the kitchen and a distant vacuum and Wrath up in his study talking to someone trickling down.

Eventually, Boo, the black cat, padded by, the animal curling into a sit right in front of them.

“Have you got something to tell us, Boo?” Mary murmured. “We could use some good news.”

A couple of meows were released, but they were hard to translate. And then Boo kept on going, attending to very important feline business, clearly.

“Did you talk to Marissa about how it was going to work?” Rhage asked. “You know … and when?”

Mary took a deep breath. “A social worker went down tonight to check Ruhn’s cottage again. There will have to be regular welfare visits there, but V did all the due diligence brilliantly. Oh—and it turns out Ruhn’s employer has access to schooling for Bitty. They’re totally willing to help Ruhn get her into a program. That would be fantastic.”

“She won’t know anyone.”

“She didn’t know anyone when she came into this house. But she adapted.”

“They won’t know what she likes to eat. Her ice cream—she’s in a mint chocolate chip phase now.”

“She’ll tell them.” Mary rubbed her eyes. “I’ll help her pack up her things. I think it’s best that we don’t draw it out longer than we have to. The transition is going to be hard enough on her without her having to stay in limbo.”

“I’m not staying on that third floor. The second she leaves, I’m moving us back down to our old room.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Mary cracked her neck. “Poor Trez. He’s going to be yo-yoed again.”

“He doesn’t seem to care about much right now.”

“No.”

And indeed, Mary found herself struggling not to fall into a similar despondency.

“I’m going to go in to work tonight,” she forced herself to say. “I don’t feel like it, but I’m going to do it.”

“Me, too. There’s a meeting at twelve midnight to talk to the class about what went down last night.”

“Did Peyton survive?”

“Yeah, Manny sent out a text to all of us—that bastard is a brilliant surgeon. The brain swelling is down, stats are fine. The kid’s not cleared to work out or fight for a couple more nights, but he’ll be good to go soon enough. Novo saved his life.”

“I’m so glad everyone came through.”

“It was a close call.”

Even though it was time for Mary to leave, she didn’t move. She just sat next to her male—and when he reached out and took her hand, she went back to resting her head against his shoulder.

Being left behind was a special kind of loss.

After Elise drew on her coat and wrapped a scarf around her throat, she opened a window in her bathroom by the tub and dematerialized to where Axe was waiting for her downtown, their blood tie helping her triangulate him in an instant, even though they had agreed on the address.

As she re-formed, he was staring up at the condominium building like he was assessing its structural integrity.

“Allishon was on the fourteenth floor,” Elise explained after they kissed hello. “The front door to the apartment is locked, but maybe the terrace is open?”

“Do you have any idea which side of the building she faced out of? This place has hundreds of units.”

She thought about where the elevator had emptied out in the hall. The direction the hallway had run. Which way she had gone.

“Facing the Hudson. On that side.”

“Let’s go around.”

The two of them walked to the far edge of the high-rise, squeezed through some evergreen bushes, and whispered down its flank until they reached the river-view side.

Craning her neck, she had to hold her hair out of her face as gusts blew against her back. “Almost all the lights are on in the units.” She counted floors. “But see? There are two that are out on the fourteenth level—assuming they started the count with the lobby being the ground floor. One of them has to be it.”

“I don’t care if we have to try fifty of the damn things. If we attract any human attention, I’ll just scrub their memories.”

Elise nodded. “You first?”

“No, you. I want to guard you when you’re on the ground.”

With a nod, she closed her eyes … and went flying in her molecular form, coalescing herself on the terrace of the darkened apartment that was three units in from the end. Axe followed right along, materializing by her side.

There was a sliding glass door and she went over and grasped the handle. Bracing herself to be denied, she—

Yup. “It’s locked.”

Axe cupped his hands and looked inside. “Seems pretty average human stuff. Not a place for a vampire to hide out.”

“Next door?”

“Next door.”

They proceeded over to the other unit, and her first thought as she leaned into the slider was, No way was this a vampire apartment. Even with the darkness inside, she had the impression the drapery was white and diaphanous—nothing that would keep out the sun.

“There’s a bloody handprint here,” Axe said in a grim voice. “On the outside jamb.”

As she glanced across to where he was pointing, Elise’s heart started to hammer—and then she closed her eyes. After a moment, she reached out, took hold of the handle—

The slider pulled free without any problem at all, as if the glass were almost relieved to be getting out of the way.

“I can smell blood,” Elise said roughly. “It’s faint … and it’s Allishon’s.”

Stepping over the threshold, that first impression of white everything gained traction. Even the carpet was the color of a sheet of paper. And as her eyes adjusted, she focused on the bed across the way. The sheets were gone. So were the pillows. There was nothing but a headboard and a mattress.

“You want me to turn a light on?” Axe asked.

“Yes, please.”

Still, she jumped when illumination flooded the bedroom.

Oh … blessed Virgin Scribe. There were stains on that mattress, most of them at the top of it, by the headboard. And there were footprints that were brown on the carpet. Another brown smudge on the doorjamb.

It was as if the violence had been filtered through the passage of time, drained of most, but not all, of its characteristics.

The remnants were more than enough.

Wrapping her arms around herself even though it wasn’t cold, Elise walked out of the bedroom and down a short hall. The living room was also done in white with those same filmy drapes and a set of all-white furniture. The galley kitchen was unremarkable, the counters clean, nothing really in the cabinets. The refrigerator was empty.

No blood to be seen. But that was no relief, really.

“She came here to do drugs,” Elise said to Axe as he loomed in the hall. “This was her party house, apparently. And one night … she brought back someone.…”

Not just someone, she reminded herself. Anslam. One of their own, and not only because he was a vampire, but because he was a high-bred member of the aristocracy.

Had been, at any rate.

And now they were both dead.

Elise took her time going around and around, pacing through the limited floor plan, even though she didn’t know exactly what she was trying to make sense of. It was, she supposed, yet another example of how having all the education in the world about emotions didn’t necessarily help when your own were raw and damaged.

Heading back into the bedroom, she went for the closet. She had to. It was almost like closing the loop, her stepping into the walk-in and looking at … emptiness.

There was nothing but a couple of jackets hanging off the rods and a formal gown pooling on the floor.

Allishon must have come here after one of the glymera’s grand events. Stripped her mask of civilization off. And proceeded to …

“So sad,” Elise murmured as she went over and picked up the red swath of satin.

It wasn’t a fancy dress, though. It turned out to be a cloak, one that had beautiful trim and buttons of mother-of-pearl—

As she went to hang it up on a hanger, something knocked her in the leg.

“Ow.” She looked through the folds, wondering what was hanging off the cloak—or perhaps in a hidden pocket. “Okay, that hurt—”

Elise frowned as she took out a large piece of black metal from the lining. It was oddly shaped and heavy … kind of like a key, but not really.

“Did you find something?” Axe asked from behind her.

“I don’t know.” She held the thing out. “What do you think this is?”

When he didn’t answer, she glanced at him and then rolled the object over in her palm. “Is it some kind of self-defense weapon? It isn’t like there’s a blade in here or … maybe it’s a key, except not to any door I’ve ever seen.”

“I don’t know. But I think we should go.”

“Yes.”

She was tempted to take whatever it was with her. But she didn’t want to have to explain, if she was found with the object, why she had gone to Allishon’s and nosed around.

Putting the weight back in the pocket of that cloak, she stepped out of the closet and shut the walk-in’s door.

Going over to a stuffed chair, she sat down and stared at the bed. “Thank you for coming with me.”

She was acutely aware of Axe standing by the sliding glass door they’d come in through, his big body taking up nearly all of the slider’s expanse.

“I really appreciate it.” She shook her head as she imagined what had happened in the room. “I guess … you know, I had to come here.”

“Yeah.”

“I think I can let her go now. I’ve taken this as far as I can—this is the dead end that means stop for me. I just have to mourn her in my own way. Maybe I’ll even do some version of a Fade ceremony for her.” She took a deep breath. “It’s funny, I feel closer to her now than I did when she was alive—and all mourning is private, isn’t it. We all do it in our own ways for our dead. And she was mine. Close or not, she was my blood and nothing will change that.”

Axe stayed quiet, but that was probably because he didn’t know the right thing to say—and she could understand that. Except then he gave her something more important than words.

He came over to her, kneeling down and reaching out his arms.

As she went into him, up against him, she sighed with gratitude.

Sometimes, you didn’t need the right syllables.

You just needed the right person.