“You’re teaching at the high school?” said his new landlady, one Mrs. Findley. “My girl Madison’s a senior there.”
“I think she’s in my first-period homeroom.” Balthazar wrote the check out without worrying about the amount; investing well over the past few centuries meant money was the least of his concerns. “But it shouldn’t be awkward. I keep to myself, mostly.”
“And we’ll let you do that, never fear. Madison’s always out, and my husband and I let the tenants do what they like as long as we don’t hear screams or see fire.” Mrs. Findley obviously meant it as a joke, but Balthazar was uncomfortably aware that he couldn’t rule either of those possibilities out. “Here’s your key. Get yourself settled in, and let me know if you need anything.”
His new home was a carriage house, located far enough back from the Findley home that Balthazar could scarcely see it through the trees. Good. He’d have his privacy. Although the interior wasn’t of much interest to him, at least it was pleasant; the Findleys apparently normally rented it out to tourists who came to hike and sightsee in better weather, and so it was furnished with simple, older wooden furniture. Just three rooms—a small kitchen, a dated but shining clean bathroom, and a large bedroom with a gas fireplace and a huge four-poster bed. For honeymooners, he supposed. That bed was larger than their entire sleeping area had been in his childhood home.
For a moment, the memory flared brighter in his mind. He remembered the fields of grass, Fido’s barking, the sound of Charity murmuring nonsense words in her sleep. He remembered the first time he’d seen Redgrave, and how suspicious he’d been. Yet not suspicious enough.
Balthazar tossed his few things onto the bed and went back out, taking stock of his surroundings. If he’d judged the area correctly, he was within half a mile from Skye’s home—a distance he could cover quickly. He walked due south, past the Findley home and back into the woods, surer and surer that he was headed in the correct direction … then stopped.
Between the Findleys’ home and the Tierneys’ was a river.
No, not a river—a stream, but one large enough to still bubble with water despite the cold temperatures. Balthazar knew this because he could feel the deep, illogical and yet irresistible dread any vampire felt near running water.
I can’t cross this, he thought—then immediately rejected that idea. He could cross it. If he had to, he would. It just wouldn’t be easy. Crossing any kind of river or stream was, for a vampire, unpleasant at best, paralyzing at worst.
He imagined looking across the river and seeing her as he had that first evening, riding in the afternoon light. The sunset light now was much the same, and he could picture Skye perfectly: her alert gaze, the set of her shoulders, the outlines of her slim legs against the blackness of her horse. If she were over there, in trouble…
Yes. He could cross the water.
Resolved, Balthazar turned back so that he could begin the journey back to school for the basketball game. After a few steps, though, he realized that he wasn’t alone.
Constantia stood among the trees, so tall that she seemed to belong to the forest, so ethereal and mysterious, he wondered if she was an illusion. He hated that he still felt a twinge of longing at the sight of her. She watched him quietly, hands in the pockets of her long coat, saying nothing. Instinctively he understood that she hadn’t come here to fight him, that Redgrave’s tribe had no interest in hurting him when he wasn’t standing between them and Skye.
No, then their interest in him was far more insidious.
“Following me?” Balthazar said. “I thought you’d given that up.”
“You’re a bit of a bore.” Constantia’s voice held a curl of laughter; her eyes, as always, half mocked him, half devoured. “I keep waiting for you to start being fun, Balthazar. The first century or so, it was worth the wait. These days, not so much. Being near you is like trying to make wet tinder catch flame.”
“Starting a fire requires a spark we don’t have.”
Her thin-lipped smile could be unspeakably cruel. “The first century and a half we knew each other—you didn’t seem to think so.”
Balthazar bit back a surge of anger. Constantia’s selfish, thoughtless desires had led her to beg Redgrave for a toy. And he’d made her one—Balthazar himself. He’d been killed for her. His life, his mortality, perhaps his very soul: They’d all been destroyed to make her a young vampire plaything.
He tried to stay focused. “If you’re not here to kill me, then why are you here, Constantia?”
“I’m here to explain how much easier it would be if you’d give up this—stubborn independence of yours and rejoin us.”
“You can’t seriously believe that will ever happen.”
“You still don’t see what the girl is.”
This was his chance to find out what they wanted, though he would have to be cagey about it. Asking her outright would only make her laugh in his face. “How do you know Redgrave isn’t selling you more of his lies?”
“Lorenzo tasted her blood. Then he let us drink from him.”
She said no more; she didn’t have to. Between vampires, blood drinking was a way of communicating that went infinitely deeper than words—the taste of another vampire’s blood let you experience his life, his emotions, even his pleasure. Balthazar had learned that by drinking Constantia’s blood and tasting her desire for him, which had flowed into him until he had no choice but to desire her in turn. By sharing his blood, Lorenzo had made certain that every vampire knew Skye was worth pursuing. And Balthazar was still no closer to figuring out why.