My lip quivered for a second before I drew back the grief and replaced it with fighting strength. “It happened after the lighthouse.”
“The lighthouse?” He followed me to where I sat back on the sofa. “After you fell?”
I nodded. “But Petey says it’s a Mark of Betrayal.”
“Betrayal?” He almost slipped off the seat. “What the hell’d you do, girl?”
“I’m not sure. I . . . I don’t remember.”
“Cah!” He scoffed, flipping his hair back with one hand. “Convenient.”
“I really don’t, Eric. I’m not lying.”
His head turned very slowly until his foggy brown eyes met mine; he searched inside my soul for a moment then looked away. “Do you suspect foul play?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you told David you think it’s a Mark of . . . Betrayal?”
“He thinks it’s a rash. He hasn’t seen it since it went dark and took on the shape of letters.”
“So, you haven’t had sex with him?” he asked playfully.
I wasn’t sure if I should answer. “Last time we did, the rash wasn’t as bad but . . . after I woke up the next morning, it was searing hot and the symbols had taken on real shape.”
“So, what, making love to your husband makes the rash worse?” he suggested as well as asked. “Maybe you’re allergic to him.”
“Ha-ha.” I reached over and flicked his earlobe. “Funny.”
He sat back, exhaling rather loudly for the quiet space we were in, then lopped his arm over the back of the sofa and around my shoulders. “Forget reading for tonight. You can investigate memory loss and icky rashes all day tomorrow. But you’ve only got me for one night.”
“And what do you suggest we do?” I sat up and removed his arm from my body.
“Jog your memory.” His lips angled into that sharp grin I loved.
“How will we do that?”
“Go jump off a lighthouse.”
I held my awkward smile, not sure if he was kidding or not, shaping it into a frown when he stood up and offered me his hand.
“Come on,” he said. “Who knows? Maybe if we sit up there and watch the sun rise for a bit, you might remember something.”
“Okay.” I took his hand and stood. “But Quaid’s coming with us.”
“Quaid?” He looked over his shoulder. “Why him?”
“He’s my night guard. I take him everywhere.”
Eric’s brows shot up to his hairline. “Wow. Things have changed around here.”
“I’ve missed this place,” Eric said, dangling his legs over the platform and into the abyss below.
I sat down beside him, hugging the railing with both my arm and my chin. “So, if you miss it so much, why not come back to us?”
“I can’t. I finally have a life, Ara.”
“You had a life here.”
“I had a job here, following you around and offering advice. No offence.” He bumped me with his elbow. “I got better things to do with my eternity.”
“Fair enough,” I said, casting my attention then on the yellow glow reaching out to sea from behind us, lighting up my hands and making eerie shadows of the rocks below each time it passed. The fierce wind roared up here, whipped past the metal railing, shaking everything that wasn’t made of iron, while the sea called beneath us—hundreds of meters down where it bashed the rocks in some angry attempt to prove greater might than the land. My hair moved around my face in a wild dance, strapping my eyes every few seconds, leaving them kind of teary with the sting.
“I love the way the ocean smells when it’s late at night,” Eric said.
“Mm.” I smiled, watching the dark sky with almost new eyes. “I think the glow of the stars gives it an almost richer, more dreamy flavour.”
“God, girl. Don’t go all poetic on me.” He reached into his pocket. “The king might have cause to worry ‘bout your intentions.”
“What, between you and I?” I scoffed. “In your dreams.”
He just smirked, looking out to sea again, tapping a small, silver case about the size of a card deck against his leg. “I sat in on a class today.”
“Class?”
“Yeah. Down at the barracks.” He flipped the case open and offered me the contents. I declined with a scrunched-up nose. “Mike’s got some pretty good stuff goin’ on down there.”
“I know. I came to sit in on the ‘How to Kill a Vampire Without Venom’ and ‘Putting a Vamp Down in Three-Seconds’ lectures last month.”
“Blade was giving that one today—to the newbs.” He lit a smoke, cupping his hand around it so the flame wouldn’t blow out in the wind, then shook the match and dropped it over the edge. “They’ve got this one move, where they jam a dagger into the back of the neck—” He used the two fingers holding the smoke to make a line over the top of his spine, “—slip it between the third and fourth vertebrae or something,” he said suggestively.
“Yeah, severs the spinal cord and sends them down fast. Takes at least a day to rejuvenate.”
“Unless you’re Lilithian.”
“In which case, you die.”
He drew on his cigarette, puffing the fumes out with “And the guns are new.”
I laughed, thinking about Mike’s face when he first opened the crates. “The bullets are spiked, you know? Some with Created and some with Pureblood venom.”
“I know. Mike gave me one—a gun.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Just the Created venom, though. Told me to watch out for Drake. Said it was standard issue now—all guards and knights keep one on their sword belts.”
I nodded. “They all keep a syringe handy, too—just in case they need to arrest someone that puts up a fight.”
“I know.” He took a puff of that smoke again and blew it out. “They took Lice down with it today.”
“Did they?”
“Yeah. Once they got him around the corner, they jammed it in his neck.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“S’okay.” He moved his shoulder up. “He was puttin’ up a bit of a fight.”
“I would have, too.”
He laughed then, nodding. “Yeah.”
“So, did Mike show you how to shoot a vampire? ‘Cause those bullets won’t go through bone.”
“Yeah.” He flicked his cigarette bud over the edge and the little flickering orange glow burned its way out of sight. “He said to aim for the eye—that the bullet bounces off the skull of a vampire and stays inside, just jumpin’ around.” He tapped his head. “Mashing up the brain.”
I nodded. “Yup. Or go for the belly.” I made a gun-like motion to my own belly. “Balls work well, too.”
“Ha! I bet.” He leaned forward and stuffed his smoke case in his back pocket. “So, do you get a gun?”
“Nah. I have a sword, but I don’t walk around with it on me.”
“Why not? King does.”
I thought about how sexy David looked with that sword hanging down by his leg, all tall and strong and stern, kinda like an eighteenth-century prince. “I have a dozen or so guards that carry swords. I don’t need it.”
“Fairs enough.”
I smiled, resting my chin on the railing. The night seemed to have worn on to morning across the far horizon too quickly, leaving the ocean with an almost red glow as far out as the eye could see. “Sailor’s warning,” I said, nodding toward it.
“Huh?”
“The red sky. They say that if it’s red at night, it’s a sailor’s delight—”
“Right.” He nodded. “Red sky in morning, a sailor’s warning.”
“You’ve heard that one before?”
“Kiddo, I was in the Navy for a decade.”
“What Navy?”
He looked slowly away. “It was a long time ago.”
“When you were human?”
“Yeah,” he said, his shoulders sinking a little.
“Do you miss being human?”
His lips moved quickly into that coy grin, making his eyes light up. “Not even a little bit.”
“Good.” I wrapped my arm across his waist and gave him a little squeeze. “‘Cause I like you as a vampire. You’re cocky and kinda sadistic, but there’s no one else like you, Eric.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It is, silly.” I laughed, and he laid his arm over mine, patting my elbow a few times.
When I first met him, I always thought music was the way David connected to the deeper, more soulful part inside himself. He never played for show, never paraded himself or his musical talents, and was never arrogant about it. But I never saw in him the emotion I saw in other true musicians when they’d play alone—when they thought no one else was around. I could sit at the piano and play for hours, tears streaming down my cheeks, the very soul of the song coming to life because of me. And I’d watched David sit for hours, too—snuck up and hid behind the door to the Great Hall—waited for the sad song he was playing to draw some raw emotion from him. But never. Not once. He played, but he never let go.
I stood by the bedroom door, my arms folded, and watched him where he sat on the bed with his guitar across his lap, his thoughts somewhere out there on the day over the balcony ledge. He played a sad song, sitting slightly more hunched than he usually did, and sang the words as if he was compelled to, yet wasn’t really performing either—he was just singing for himself. And this—the curve of his spine, the angle of his chin against the grasp of the world, and the very absence of that smile in his eyes—was his tell. This was his raw emotion shining through. He would never bleed tears into an empty room. He would never let emotion come up on its own and steal his composure, but his body couldn’t pretend he felt no pain in his heart.
I walked over and sat behind him on the bed, wrapping one hand under his arm and turning it to cup his shoulder, laying my cheek on the other. “Everything okay?”
He received my affection with what sounded like a breath of relief, gently resting his jaw against my eyebrow. “It is now.”
“Good,” I whispered back, smiling into his shoulder blade.
“What you doing?”
“Just watching you sing.”
He glanced back at the open door and sighed, shaking his head as he turned his gaze on the day again. “I thought I shut that.”
“You did. I opened it.”
He nodded to himself.
“Hey, David?”
“Yes, my love.”
“I’m worried.”