Danny walked past one of the marble pillars, toward the doors leading inside the building. More tears threatened to descend and though the quiet interior gave him fewer witnesses for his break down, the high ceilings and tile floor threatened to make it echo toward what early-morning ears could hear it. Instead, he carried his suitcase in with him to the bathroom. Locking himself inside one of the stalls, he sat and shut his eyes, feeling what emotion he had suppressed rushing through him like a tidal wave. Tears turned to sobs and when he managed to bleed out enough to calm himself down, he emerged from his hiding place.

Splashing water on his face first, he walked back out into the main waiting area, settling into one of the high back, wooden benches and staring up at the ticker. Locations and times rattled into place, the idle thought of where he would go circling through his head, without any conclusion being arrived at. San Francisco, he thought. Maybe the completely opposite coast would be a welcomed change of pace. ‘I’m going to think about them if I stay here,’ he mused, until the heart-crushing revelation that he would think of them, no matter where he went, impacted.

“There isn’t anywhere you can go that I won’t be able to find you,” Mari had said. Danny sighed, wishing he had been able to exchange the sentiment. In another world, he would have been able to reply, “Good, because I’m carrying you no matter where I go.”

‘Carrying you. Like the blood you gave me to save my life.’

The first time the thought occurred to him, it didn’t connect. It wasn’t until he stood at the ticket counter, producing the money that Liam had shoved into his pocket when they left that he thought of it a second time, with just as much melancholy. Always with me, he thought. No matter where I go. The temptation to damn everything and return to the condo became overwhelming. After a day of wandering Manayunk, maybe, he mused, he could locate their condo…

“Did she mean literally find me?” he asked out loud, startling the man behind the plastic barrier who waited to receive Danny’s fare.

“What was that, sir?” he asked, his voice strange as it filtered through the speaker.

“She said she could find me.” Danny furrowed his brow, too lost in thought to bother with explaining the cryptic comment. He broke himself out of it long enough to smile apologetically. “Give me a moment,” he said, walking away from the booth and toward one of the benches again. Whatever the man said in response fell on deaf ears, Danny focusing on the concept of Mari’s blood and why it had been such a big deal to Liam. “She said something about it having other effects.”

While he knew it might be a stretch…

“Maybe it works in reverse, too,” he said. Grabbing his suitcase, he motioned for the door and froze only a few paces into the exodus. The abrupt halt to his steps made him take a deep breath, exhaling it as he realized why. Liam had said he couldn’t return to them.

At the same time, it served to encourage Danny’s theory.

“Okay, Liam said follow them back,” he said, continuing to reason through the situation out loud. “I’m assuming he meant to the condo.” The interpretation felt plausible, and though the entire thing bordered on little more than intuition, he remembered that intuition had brought him there in the first place. Instead of dwelling, he sat back down and nodded. “They’re leaving the house at sun set. I’m stuck here until then, so I should make the best of it.”

Danny managed to leave the train station when he convinced himself he wouldn’t be hailing a taxi to the condo. Settling in a small coffee shop, he nursed a coffee and bagel, using the time to reason through his plan. ‘Are you seriously going to gate crash the home of a vampire Marquis?’ he asked himself while taking a drink from the Styrofoam cup in his hand. “Well, I’m not going to do anything unless I figure out if this theory of mine is right,” he said.

But how did some silly, blood-bond map work?

He took a deep breath. Shutting his eyes, he thought about Mari and though the mental image of her broke his heart, he tried to push back anything acting as a barrier to his focus. Instead, while he visualized her, he felt past the aching in his soul, attempting to reach out and touch her. A spark of recognition ignited within him. While he opened his eyes, he turned his head in the direction it felt to be pointing him toward and nodded. Danny knew his feet would freeze again if he tried to follow it. At the same time, that didn’t mean he couldn’t circumvent that.

“Not going to the condo,” he said, finishing up his coffee and eating the last of his bagel. Standing, he threaded his arms through the sleeves of his coat and walked outside. A taxi parked by one of the station’s entrances idled, waiting for a passenger, and as he repeated his intentions to himself, Danny walked toward it and opened the back, passenger door.

“Where to?” the driver asked while Danny settled his suitcase on the seat beside him.

Danny opened his mouth, attempting disobedience and failing. The word Manayunk would not fall past his lips, no matter how many times he tried, maddening him with its futility. He tried to say Roxborough, and when that didn’t work, he finally spat out, “East Falls.”

“Any particular place in East Falls?”

“No, just…” Danny took a deep breath. “How much money would it be worth to you if you dropped me off at a diner, and came back after sunset?”

The driver didn’t answer at first. Instead, he paused in what Danny interpreted to be thought, using the chance to pull out of temporary parking and merge into the main flow of traffic. “Twenty bucks on top of this fare,” he finally said. “Plus, miles for wherever I’m taking you then.”

“Deal. I’ll even pre-pay that if you promise to be there.” When the driver agreed, Danny breathed a sigh of relief, awash with both mania and fatigue after the exhausting morning he had. He didn’t notice himself nodding off, but the sudden stop of the car’s ignition jarred him awake several minutes later.

“Here you go,” the driver chimed as Danny blinked and looked around. An unfamiliar neighborhood surrounded them, but when he saw the diner poised on the street corner, he assumed that they’d arrived in East Falls. Danny grunted, half-asleep still, and reached into his pocket for the fare, plus the twenty bucks he’d promised. The driver accepted them, saying, “After sunset,” to Danny.

“After sunset,” Danny repeated. Once he’d stepped out of the car, he yawned and checked the time first before walking into the diner, ready to argue for a seat he could occupy for several hours. The waitress received him with a sense of humor and offered him a dog-eared romance novel.

“Better tip well,” she said, wandering off to fetch him coffee.

From there, the waiting game commenced.

Danny drank down several cups and indulged another meal after lunch time passed. Each time the waitress checked in on him, he slipped her another dollar bill. Trying desperately not to pay attention to the minutes which ticked by, he sank into the book, but the later the hour the more his subconscious focused on it. On her, he realized once dusk had arrived, as if the beacon he’d switched on couldn’t be turned off again. The comfort of being closer to Mari washed over him, leading him to wonder if Liam hadn’t been partially correct. Feeding related or not, Danny felt better simply being in their proximity.

‘You can’t pretend you don’t love me,’ Danny thought. ‘After last night, I know better.’ The sun finished dipping in the horizon and what fatigue he still carried with him evaporated, his nerves taking flight. It only took a half hour past sunset for the driver to arrive, and when he did, Danny slapped more money on the table than his check and even a sizable tip would have required. Bolting out to the parking lot while still struggling with his coat, he threw the suitcase in the trunk this time and finished situating himself when he got into the car.

“Alright, where to now?” the driver asked.

“I’ll let you know in a minute,” Danny said. “Just bear with me for a second.” He closed his eyes, focusing on the fledgling sensation of Mari within him.

“Look, if you’re going to take another nap –”

“No. Just wait.” Danny took a deep breath and nodded. “Head north,” he said, opening his eyes again.

The driver turned in his seat. “North? North to where?”

“Start north. I’ll tell you from there.” Danny leaned forward in his seat, circling his arms around the passenger seat’s head rest. “This is going to be a weird trip. But I’m paying you for it, I promise.”

“It’s your money.” Shifting into drive, the man pulled out of the parking lot, turning onto the main road when the traffic cleared. He made another turn to head north, and while he drove, Danny shut his eyes again, the awareness of Mari being awake and, on the move, bringing an involuntary smile to his face. ‘Not in the condo now,’ he thought. ‘You really need to get better with your instructions, Liam.’ The hope that Liam had done that on purpose again – or had followed the subconscious compulsion to write in a loop hole for Danny – made warmth burst in his chest.

“Now, west,” Danny said.

The driver turned as soon as he was able. Regardless of how odd it must have looked to the driver, Danny kept his eyes shut. His focus remained locked on Mari. “We need to go North again.”

“We’re about to cross the river. Which side?”

“Western side. At least I’m pretty sure.”

A sigh served as the driver’s response, but he followed the request regardless. Several other direction changes followed, turning into lefts and rights when Danny’s internal compass got twisted around, and as the location started to feel more imminent, Danny finally opened his eyes again. An expansive, affluent series of houses came into view. Seeing them made Danny’s pulse race in his chest.

“Let me off at the next cross street,” Danny said. “I can find the rest of the way from here.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” the driver said. At the same time, curiosity plagued his voice, and a small amount of disappointment danced in his eyes when Danny paid him and thanked him for his assistance. Danny felt the eyes of the driver on him through his walk away from the street corner, but soon even that became a distant thought. Instead, he carried his suitcase with him up to the iron gates separating him from the vampires he loved.

When they failed to open for him, he walked partly around the perimeter of the house, knowing that security could very well find him at any moment and make quick work of him. Leaving the suitcase on the outside of the house, Danny looked up, studying the high bars which blocked him from the estate grounds and suddenly wishing he’d been more athletic as a kid. It took a struggle for him to pull himself up, and as he landed on the other side, his knees buckled, body crashing down onto the manicured lawn.

“Fuck,” he spat, gathering himself enough to get to his feet, and grateful when his legs only groaned in minor protest.

Even that faded within a few seconds. Danny couldn’t be sure whether it was adrenaline pushing him onward or simple desire, but he quickly launched into a sprint, eager to get inside the house. When he reached the front of the house, he spotted two men running in his direction, and when they moved at a normal, human speed, he said thanks to whatever gods were listening. Reaching the front doors first, Danny expressed added thanks when one opened to allow him inside.

Slamming it shut, he fumbled for the locks before turning to run for the room where the Marquis held his meetings. Danny, however, only made it to the vacant butlers who kept watch over the vestibule. The front doors burst open. And the guards reached him inches shy of the room.

“Hey!” Danny called out as one of the guards wrestled him onto the hard floor. Pressing his face against the lacquer, the guard reached for his hands while Danny continued to yell. “I want an audience with the Marquis,” he said. “I want an audience.” One guard worked on securing his wrists and the other paced around him. As Danny looked up, he noticed him lifting a baton, as if to knock Danny unconscious.

The door to the meeting room swung open first, though, before he could.

An unfamiliar woman stood on the other side. She eyed the cacophony, curious, and when Danny recognized her as a vampire, he laughed. “Thank God,” he said. “Hey. Hey, you. Please, Miss. I need to speak to the Marquis.”

She focused her attention on Danny and while she studied him, confused, she paced closer. “Get him up,” she said. “His Lordship wants to know what the hell is going on out here.”

“We tried to stop him,” the guard that had been pinning Danny to the ground said. He lifted, though, and he and his compatriot reached to bring Danny to his feet.

“You obviously failed.” Danny came to his feet and the vampire raised an eyebrow at him once he was at eye level with her. “You might regret getting your wish,” she said, walking up beside them.

“We’ll see about that in a moment,” Danny said. She took his arm and, with the guards taking up the rear, escorted him into the large meeting room, which still looked the same. A similar collection of men, women, and vampires gathered around the expansive space, with the Marquis seated at the front of the room, overlooking the oddity of a human being walked closer to where he sat. Danny spotted Liam and Mari immediately, and though Liam watched with fear washing over his expression, Mari couldn’t contain the faint smile curling her lips.

“What is all of this?” Youssef asked as Danny stopped a few paces shy of Liam and Mari.

“I am requesting an audience,” Danny said again. Ignoring the two vampires – his two lovers, he thought with warmth filling him again in equal measure with fear – he directed his attention to the Marquis. Tilting his chin, he took a deep breath, not knowing how this would turn out.

“I want your permission to stay with Liam and Mari,” he added. “And this time, without a ticking clock.”