Corbin looked resigned to his fate when I reentered the kitchen and claimed the stool next to his.

“You have a couple of options,” I started. “You can stay here and haunt my attic, so no one will ever find you. You can run and take your chances on your own. Or you can go live with my grandfather, and he can teach you how to vampire.”

“How would that work?” He canted his head to one side. “There are no vampires like me.”

“We don’t know that for certain. I can almost guarantee Gramps has run across your kind during his life.” I twisted aside and leaned back against the counter. “The problem with that option is I don’t know him very well. He’s had me kidnapped, promised me to one of his Last Seed followers, and encouraged his clan to collect me and return me like a coat from the lost and found.”

Corbin waited, expecting a punchline, but I was already here. The joke was on him if he didn’t take me seriously. “You’re not selling me on that option.”

“We recently declared a truce. I don’t know if it will hold. I don’t know what it means exactly. But I can tell you there’s no love lost between the Grande Dame and my grandfather. He would protect you just to spite her.”

And because he wanted something from me. What, I wasn’t certain. But it was enough he was willing to bind me to his clan through vampire law by marrying me off to Volkov. It was enough that he smiled as I stepped all over his toes at the ball. Enough he had taken direct orders from me through a clenched jaw.

He would foster Corbin, and I would owe him a boon. What he wanted in exchange…would be nothing good.

At least he was aware Linus and I were a thing. Hopefully that ruled out any plans on his part for arranging a match.

A tiny voice in my head assured me this was yet another reason not to burn the marriage contract between Linus and me.

Bawk. Bawk.

I was such a chicken.

Cricket should have kitted me out as Yellow Belle instead of Blue Belle.

There were no nets to catch you when you fell in love. I learned that the hard way. The only thing waiting for you at the bottom after you took that leap of faith was the other person.

Choose well, and you lived happily-ever-after, or at least happily-for-now. Choose poorly, and you went splat.

Corbin considered me. “You don’t sound like you want to be on the hook for this.”

“Oh, I don’t.” I wriggled on my seat thinking about it. “The last place I want to be is between the Grande Dame and what she wants.” The second-to-last place was handing the Grande Dame exactly what she wanted, which I might very well be doing. “You’re a murderer.”

He opened his mouth to contradict me, I cut him off before the excuses started.

Undead people were still people.

“What you do might be viewed as noble among the mortal set, but a vampire was a human who paid a necromancer a small fortune to enjoy near-immortality, and you robbed them of that. I’m not saying all vampires are saints. Far from it. We’re all flawed: humans, necromancers, gwyllgi, etc. Vampires are no exception. But you’re in our world now. There won’t be any pats on the back or fang necklace stringing parties—whatever hunters do to celebrate their killing sprees—but there will be a whole heck of a lot of pissed-off vampires once they figure out who you are and what you’ve done. That means you need the protection of a vampire who can shield you from a stake to the heart until you can prove yourself to whatever clan takes you in.”

“You think your grandfather can do that?”

“I know he can, if he decides you’re worth the effort.”

“Worth the effort,” he repeated, unable to hide his disgust. “I won’t beg a vampire for shelter.”

“Then I’m glad we had this talk.” I saluted him. “You’ve just saved me the hassle of meeting with him to discuss your case. Thanks.”

Corbin shoved away from the counter and stormed out into the backyard.

“Kids these days.” I clucked my tongue at Linus, taking a moment to send the promised shell pics to Amelie. “What can you do?”

“I’m not sure.” Linus stared at the floor. “I’ve never maintained prolonged contact with my progeny.”

“I need to check in with Lethe, and then I’m going to bed.” I dusted my hands together. “Today was trash. Bag it, and set it at the curb.”

A flinch twitched his shoulders, so slight anyone else would have missed it, but I saw.

“I’ll keep an eye on Corbin,” he offered. “You go on up, shower, and dress for bed.”

The taste of foot clued me in to the colossal mistake I had made by painting today in such broad strokes with the same brush.

“There was one bright spot.” I slid off my stool. “This guy I know took me downtown and showed me this building he’s pretending he didn’t buy for me, but we both know he totally did. He even pitched me a business plan and let me use his shower.” I approached slowly. “FYI, the water pressure is ah-mazing.”

“You could have been attacked in that building, and that guy you know would have been too late.”

“I can take care of myself.” Not one hundred percent, but I was thinking in the sixty or seventy range.

“I hate that you have to, that it’s a skill you have no choice but to acquire.”

“I hate that you put your life at risk every night to keep others safe, but those are the breaks.”

“Yes.” His gaze shot up to me then, his surprise almost comical. “They are.”

I invited myself into his arms. “When are you going to stop being surprised that I want to protect you?”

That I wanted him, that he was wanted. Period.

“When the sun fails to rise, when the stars wink out, when the moon falls into the ocean.”

“Are you quoting at me?” I squinted up at him. “I can’t tell.”

“A failed attempt at being romantic, I’m afraid.” Pink suffused his cheeks. “I’m not very good at it.”

“I like that you’re practicing on me.” I felt heat on my nape. “I’m glad some of this is new to you too.”

His lips parted, like he might say more, but he cleared his throat. Twice. “I better check on Corbin.”

“I’ll do my best not to wind up outside your room again.”

“I don’t mind.”

But I did. Drool was not sexy. Bedhead, not great either. Screaming and writhing on the floor?

Ugh.

Leaving Linus to reel in my progeny before the sun rose and turned Corbin to a crispy critter, I headed upstairs to check on Oscar. Quietly, I opened the door then ducked my head in his room.

He was gone.

I chose to read that as a good sign. When he came back from wherever he went, he was always recharged. I hoped that held true this time too.

Woolly nudged the door closed, squeezing me out into the hall where she prodded me toward my room.

“Will you let me know when he gets back?”

The old house groaned assent then turned on the shower in the bathroom.

I didn’t need a shower, but I embraced the chance to wash today off me before I climbed into bed.

He has a new girlfriend. His third one this week. Just as mundane as all the rest.

Why not me? Why won’t he ask me? I would say yes. He knows I would say yes. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I should play hard to get. Maybe then he would see we were meant to…

The carpet squishes under my feet, and cold slime seeps between my toes. I shiver, confused, my anger at Boaz forgotten. The smell hits me then, copper and rose water and thyme.

Maud.

I collapse to my knees beside her and scoop the icy blood back into the gaping hole in her chest.

“Maud?”

The sobs start, and I can’t stop them. I’m working as fast as I can, but her heart—her heart—it’s missing.

“Wake up. Please wake up. Please, Maud. Wake up. Please.”

Shivers dapple my arms, and my teeth chatter, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters if she won’t open her eyes. I’ll be alone again. All alone. Maud is all I have, and she’s…

She’s gone.

She’s dead.

Dead.

Using her blood for my ink, I start drawing a sigil, one I’ve never seen in any textbooks.

“No, Grier,” a voice pleads behind me. “Stop before it’s too late.”

“I’m not losing her too. I won’t.” I keep going, slipping and sliding, covering her head to toe in the foreign sigils. “Come on, Maud. Try. For me.”

“You have to let her go.” Footsteps pound closer. “You don’t want her back. Not like this.”

“You’re wrong.” I scream so loud my voice shreds to ribbons. “I want her back any way I can get her.”

“You don’t mean that. Please, Grier. Think.”

Snot clogs my throat as I close the sigil with a defiant swoop of my finger.

Magic explodes into the room, knocks me backward, and my head cracks against a wall.

“Grier.”

Darkness swirls around me, and I embrace it, grateful when it blinds me to the corpse at my feet.

Except it doesn’t last. I’m not passing out, I feel like I’m waking from a nightmare of my own making.

The blackness thins, swirls, coalesces, and I sob like my heart is breaking.

What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?

Her heart is gone. There can be no culmination now. How would we ever find it in time?

Goddess, what have I done?

A figure kneels on the floor, shrouded in black, hands clawing their face, their chest, their arms.

The room spins, a vortex of midnight, as all that grim power funnels itself into a new host.

I rocketed toward consciousness, soaked through with sweat and trembling. I came awake stretched halfway across my threshold, my fingernails broken and fresh claw marks on the hardwood. I swallowed and I swallowed and I swallowed, but the lump in my throat persisted. I tasted old blood and salty tears.

Chill hands hooked under my arms and lifted me to my feet, but my legs might as well have been jelly.

“I remember…” I wet my cracked lips with my dry tongue. “I tried to bring her back. Maud. I tried to resuscitate her.”

Linus shut his eyes, but it did nothing to conceal his pain, and it didn’t dull the edge of mine when I realized what this meant, what ought to be impossible but made so much sense.

“You’re not surprised,” I rasped, locking my knees to keep me upright. “You knew.”

The rich navy of his gaze was a punch to my gut, a wordless confirmation.

The smidgen of resolve I had gathered around myself crumbled. “How did…?”

Black mist spun across the surface of his skin, hiding his expression, the vortex cloaking him in midnight.

A vortex of midnight.

“It was you. In my dream.” Legs buckling, hope failing, I sank onto the floor. “You were there.”

All that dark power had cocooned him, embraced him…devoured him.

“I—” I bit my lip, tried again. “I remember now.”

The voice pleading with me to heed his warnings, the figure clawing at his face after I failed to listen…was Linus.

Linus had been there, in Woolly, with me, when my world ended for the second time.

Just like that, the other shoe dropped, and it squished my hopes and dreams flat as pancakes.

A gasp broke free of my chest, and then another and another.

Lungs burning, I gulped oxygen until I choked from swallowing. Not enough. Never enough. I scratched at my throat, raking furrows in my skin. I couldn’t breathe. The walls pressed closer, suffocating me. Air whistled through my teeth. No use. It was no use. None of it.

Linus caught my hands and pinned them down at my sides before I clawed myself bloody.

The peaceful afterlife I had imagined for Maud had been just that—a dream.

The nightmare—that was reality. Hers and mine. And neither of us could wake from it.

How much of what I dreamed was real? Accurate? How much was tainted by drugs and time and Atramentous? There was only one way to find out, and that was by asking the man across from me to tell me the truth, even if it hurt, even if it left us both raw and empty.

“Let me go,” I rasped, and he folded his hands in his lap.

Wiping my face dry on the hem of my shirt, I focused on my breathing until my pulse stopped roaring in my ears and my breaths came easier. I don’t know how long I sat there while my hiccupping sobs tapered into a breathless quiet that ended with puffy eyes and a graveled voice.

“I found Maud sprawled on the carpet like she had fallen. Blood everywhere. Her chest…” I rubbed my throat, but it didn’t help. Maybe nothing would ever again. “Someone killed her and cut out her heart.”

“They wanted to punish her,” he said softly. “They took the heart to prevent us from performing the culmination.”

“They must have hated her,” I whispered, “to do that.”

The culmination was a ceremony where, hours after death, the heart was removed and burned to ash to release the spirit. The remains got swept into a box for the mantle. Necromancers didn’t bother with the rest. The graves. The flowers. Our bodies got incinerated then left for the wind to collect. It was the heart that mattered, and someone had taken hers.

I dropped my face into my hands and wept. I’m not sure where I found the tears. I should have run out by now. No one person should be able to hurt so much at once without dying.

The Grande Dame had entrusted Maud’s heart to me, the remains encased in a gold box, meaning they had recovered it at some point, but it must not have offered them any leads as to her killer’s identity.

Woolly gathered her consciousness around me, soothing as best she could, but I was hollow.

“Tell me the truth.” I couldn’t look him in the eye. “All of it.”

“I came to spend the weekend with Maud.” Entire minutes lapsed before he continued. “I was on break at Strophalos, and she had a new project she wanted a second opinion on. I met Mother for lunch. She wanted to see me, pretend hurt that I hadn’t stayed with her, but she wanted to know what her sister was working on more. When I got back to Woolly…” A horrible finality laced his voice. “I was too late.”

“Maud was dead when you arrived,” I said, not exactly a question.

“Yes.” Exhaustion made it sound like he had dragged the word up from his toes to his mouth. “You must have beaten me there by minutes.” He drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them like a child in need of comfort he knew better than to expect would come from anyone other than himself. “You were covered in blood, scooping handfuls off the floor to fill the hole in her chest.”

I crushed my eyes shut, but that didn’t stop me from hearing the rest.

“You were in shock. I was screaming at you to stop, to listen, but you didn’t hear me. You had covered her body in sigils I had never come across in all my studies.” He rested his forehead on his arms. “I couldn’t read them, but I could guess what they did.”

“I was trying to bring her back.” The horror of it struck me anew. “I was trying to resuscitate her.”

But necromantic magic doesn’t work on necromancers. We have one life, and that’s all. No extensions.

“Maud had no heart. She couldn’t return to her body. She wouldn’t have survived.” He kept going, voice going lower. “You called her soul, and it had nowhere to go.” He was barely whispering now. “I did what I had to do. I did the only thing for her—for you—that I could. I claimed her soul, bonded her to me as a wraith. That way at least she would be released into the afterlife when I died. Otherwise…”

Maud, one of the greatest necromancers of our time, would have been reduced to a flickering lamppost.

“But your sigil changed her.” Linus kept going, his voice muffled by his knees. “She was…something I have never seen before or since. I didn’t understand until I bound us. I had never bonded to a wraith, only read about it, but she…altered me.”

At last the true reason for all the side effects of bonding with a wraith were revealed.

Cletus was no ordinary wraith, and Linus no ordinary necromancer after their union.

Without the culmination, Maud would have been doomed to afterlife as a shade. The necromantic equivalent of ghosts, shades were imbued with the magic of their former lives. That power, and their ability to absorb energy from others, made them dangerous. Their hunger, over time, bloated them on power until they grew strong enough to possess the living.

That’s what happened to Ambrose.

That’s what created a…dybbuk.

Oh, goddess.

Someone must have hated Maud very much indeed to condemn her to an eternity as a parasite.

“I stopped sleeping, and then I stopped eating. My core temperature dropped, and I started manifesting the tattered cloak. The scythe came later, after I became hungry for…other things.” He glanced up then, and I met his gaze on reflex. His smile was brittle and terrible, and I wish I had never seen it. “I documented it all.”

“Of course you did,” I said softly, mind reeling with the implications.

“I’m not a dybbuk.” He tossed it out there before I could shape my thoughts, my words, into the damning question. “She and I struck no bargain, and our joining was only voluntary on my end. Even wraiths get a choice. They can bond or decline. She had none. I took it from her.”

The old house pressed in on me, and I sensed Linus through her. The scope of his pain was staggering. No wonder he sat before telling his side of the story. He might have collapsed otherwise.

“All this time, Amelie and Boaz have blamed me for the decisions they made in their lives, of their own free will.” I wiped my face dry with the backs of my hands. “I did this to you. I made you what you are.”

“An Eidolon.” He stared at the wall in front of him, at nothing. “A phantom.”

Eidolon. First a dybbuk and then vampires had hurled the word at Linus. But it wasn’t a title, it was a classification. “What does it mean?”

“The essence of other wraiths sustains me. I don’t devour them the way a dybbuk does, I gather them to me. They’re each a patch in the cloak I wear. Our joining is…symbiotic. They could separate if they wish, but I give them substance. Most choose to stay, at least for a little while, until they grow strong enough to leave again. Maud is the only wraith within my control strong enough to manifest.”

All those wraiths tied to him. Maud bound to him. Because of me. Because I was weak. Because I was selfish. Because I had been a child who had lost too much and refused to be alone again.

“How can you stand to look at me?” I hid my face behind my cupped hands. “How can you stand to be in the same house as me, the same city?” The same city… But he didn’t live in Savannah. I dropped my palms to the floor to steady myself after this latest wretched revelation. “You moved to Atlanta because of this, because of me. You’re a potentate because I—”

“What I am,” he said, cutting me off, “I’ve done to myself. I’m unnatural, an aberration that shouldn’t exist.”

“No.”

“I’m a predator, Grier. Don’t pretend otherwise. You’ve seen me. I hunt because the urge drives me, not because I’m a good or decent person. I didn’t accept the mantle of potentate for Atlanta’s sake. I took it for myself.” He unfolded a bit, but not for the sake of comfort. He still looked miserable. “Potentates do bond with wraiths. Powerful necromancers do take on more than one. The position gave me a reason to hunt, an excuse for violence. It protects me, camouflages me, and I do my best to atone for my deceit by giving my all to my city.”

Giving his all. He had certainly done that. He had given everything he had and then some. For me.

“I have to see…Cletus.” I stood before I lost my nerve. “I’m going to the porch.”

Linus kept his head bent, his gaze distant, his hands laced on his lap where they twitched like he wanted to reach for me but didn’t dare try.

Downstairs, I procrastinated under the foyer chandelier, telling myself I was waiting for Linus to join me. But he didn’t come. Through Woolly, I saw he remained where he’d set down his burden, the twisted chains of his past anchoring him to the spot.

Finally, I worked up the courage to ask the old house, “Do you remember how Maud died?”

The lights dimmed, the walls leaning in, and the wet gurgle of the water heater sounded like a sob.

Hands balled into fists, fingernails pricking palms, I readied myself for the truth. “Can you show me?”

Eyes shut, I waited for the deluge, for the movie to play along the backs of my eyelids that would put the past to rest.

Only the blackness of expectation greeted me.

“I don’t understand.” I probed her consciousness. “Why can’t you share what happened that night?”

Woolly broadcasted a series of images: Maud climbing the stairs from the basement, the front door opening, and then…nothing.

“You don’t know, do you?” I placed my open palm against the door. “You didn’t see.”

The list of people Maud would have welcomed into her home wasn’t all that long. The list of people able to bypass Woolly in her heyday was shorter still. Other than myself, Linus was the only one I could name off the top of my head. Odette would know the details, if there were any, but she wasn’t here to ask.

“What’s the first thing you remember after that?”

An overhead shot of me kneeling in blood, screaming for Maud, flashed in my head. The perspective was skewed, but the scene came straight out of my dreams.

Through her, I watched Linus choose to finish what I started. I watched him buck and writhe as her soul knitted together with his, heard him scream until he lost his voice. And when it was done, when he had condemned himself, he looked at me with eyes gone full black. I recoiled from him, from what I had done, and the mask of Scion Lawson snapped into place, obscuring the fathomless pools of his gaze.

Even then, he had shielded the worst of himself from me, and I had been too blind to notice.

“It will be all right.” His hands were bloody when he reached for me, but mine were too, and he was all I had in that moment. I hugged him close, sobbing against his shoulder, his arms stiff as wood around me. “We’ll find out who did this, and I promise they will pay.”

The rest of Woolly’s recollection showed him calling for help that would come too late, and the way the Elite stormed the house. Their gazes fastened on me, on the blood covering me from head to toe, and the verdict was passed on the spot.

Guilty.

Traitor.

Murderer.

One sentinel hooked his arms around my middle, hauling me away from Linus like I might pose a threat to him, while another one clamped down on Linus’s shoulders to keep him kneeling. Linus held on to me, our hands grasping, but the blood made our fingers too slick to clasp, and the Elite pulled us apart.

Three more Elite piled on Linus when he started swinging at them. They knocked him down and shoved his face in the blood to keep him from coming after me. I was howling for him, for Maud, for anyone to help me.

Woolly had been oddly inert. I remembered that now. How the Elite burst into my home and dragged me kicking and screeching out the door without any pushback from the old house who would have given her life, such as it was, to protect me.

The last flash showed the black look Linus turned on the Elite while he struggled to hold on and not explode into the grim creature now prowling beneath his skin, eager for the fight, ready to kill for me.

As a boy I sometimes ate across the table from, he had been willing to end lives to save mine.

This was in the aftermath of Maud’s death. How much worse must his reaction have been when I was sentenced to Atramentous? How much deadlier had his rage grown before he harnessed his new appetites? How much agony had he endured knowing I had bound him to a creature, a shadow of a woman he loved like a mother, who bore no resemblance to her at all, who would never be more than an extension of his will?

Until I started changing the wraith, twisting its purpose, opening its eyes.

The dark pulse of hope that she might continue to heal I crushed underfoot with each measured step onto the porch. It would hurt too much to believe she might be restored when there was so much we didn’t know about my condition and how my blood affected others.

Cletus waited for me with a rose torn from its bush dangling from one hand.

Linus must have sent him.

Her.

Maud.

“Thanks.” I accepted the flower, Maud’s favorite variety, and inhaled the fragrant bloom. “I don’t know what to say.” I reached for the wraith, and he—she—took my hand in her bony fingers. “This is all my fault. I did this to you. I don’t know how much you remember, how much you understand, but I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, for all of this. I should have let you go. I shouldn’t have tried to hold on. It was wrong of me, and…” A fresh sob from a seemingly endless supply choked me. “What can I do? How can I make this better? For you? For Linus?” The papery skin covering those long fingers stroked my cheek in a caress I should have recognized a thousand times over but hadn’t given a second thought. “Are you…?”

Okay.

What a stupid thing to ask. What a stupid thing to wonder. What a stupid, selfish wish.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

A low moan rattled the wraith’s throat, the closest she could come to speaking, but I swear I heard my name in the sound.

“I’m going to spend the day on Abercorn.”

I spun away from the wraith to find Linus standing a few steps behind me. “You’re leaving?”

Surprise widened his eyes before he shuttered them, hiding his emotions behind a mask.

Hurt, anger, and grief welled in me, and I was about to light into him, but he raised a hand to silence me.

“You need time to think.” He adjusted the strap on the bag slung over his shoulder. “You have decisions to make.”

“I want Ma—Cletus—to stay with me.” I kept hold of the wraith. “I don’t want to let her—him—go just yet.”

“I understand.” He eased past me, careful not to brush my shoulder. “Lethe is waiting for you in the kitchen with Corbin. Hood is on patrol.”

“Linus?”

He took the steps but hesitated in the grass. “Yes?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“The Cletus you first met is the only Cletus I had ever known until you. Wraiths are spirit and bone. They follow orders, they don’t make their own decisions. They don’t think, they don’t feel. They exist. That’s all.” He almost glanced back, the muscles in his neck twitching, but he wouldn’t look at me. “I would have told you if there was anything left of her, but there wasn’t, there still might not be, and giving you hope would have been cruel.” His head came up when lights splashed over the driveway. “I broke your friendship rules.” No more lying, no more omissions, no more skulking, no more attempting to get in the basement. Those had been my rules. “I omitted the truth about Cletus. It was a choice within my control, and I made it. Punish me however you see fit. I accept your ruling without question.”

Punish.

Of course, he would expect me to hurt him. Tit for tat. That’s what he had been taught. That’s all he knew. And I had warned him if he broke my trust again, I was done.

The urge to follow through with my threat, to cut him off cold turkey, was there. I didn’t want it to be. I wanted to be better than this. But I was heartsore. And I was so very tired of being hurt by those I cared for most.

That didn’t stop me from following him to the gate, taking his hand, and drawing the protective sigil on his wrist.

I didn’t say anything, and neither did he. He was out of words, and I had yet to find mine.

A crimson sedan pulled to a stop at the curb, and the driver got out, nodding to me and then Linus.

I turned away, unable to watch him get in the car, unable to bear him leaving, unable to ask him to stay.

Tires crunched as the sedan pulled back into the street. A wrenching pain in my chest made me wonder if this was how Maud felt having her soul ripped from her body.

Lethe met me halfway to the porch, tackled me with a bone-crunching hug, and we sank onto the grass in a tangle of limbs. Collapsing against her, my head on her shoulder, my tears soaking her shirt, I let the grief sweep me away, right up the stairway into my head, where there was no pain.

A long time later, when I was down to hiccups, Lethe gathered me in her arms and lifted me against her chest. She carried me to my room, laid me on the bed, and then climbed in behind me. She held me until I stopped trembling, her grip unbreakable, like she might hold me together through sheer will alone, but there was nothing to be done for my heart. It was breaking, shattering into a million glittery pieces, each edge sharpened with a memory that cut. I should have bled to death from all the tiny slices, but death was easy, and nothing in my life had ever been that.