"So," Nick asked after a moment, "do you hate me yet?"

"Will you stop?" He hadn't been able to face her throughout the shameful tale, afraid of her reaction; now he looked over at her in surprise. "Nick, in all the time I've known what you are, known that you have killed, have I ever condemned you for it?"

"No."

"No. Because what matters to me is who you are now. Did you really think telling me details would change that?" She shook her head. "You really thought I would blame you for what happened to me."

"I do."

"You're impossible." At his questioning look, she amended, "No, I don't mean that. And don't you start thinking it either."

"I'll try," Nick conceded. "Now, as long as I promised not to sidestep, what else can I embarrass myself with?"

Frowning slightly, Nat asked, "What about Janette? I mean, you've never really said...what is she to you?"

A shadow passed over his face, and she was almost sorry she had asked. "Now there's a loaded question. Once...LaCroix's pawn, the bait for his traps. Now...I don't know." He shook his head. "For a long time I blamed her for drawing me into this, but she was as much his victim as I was. He sold her on all the same lies; the sad part is that she still believes them. Or if she doesn't, she's afraid to admit it."

"I'm sorry."

"Me too." Nick seemed lost in thought for a moment, then his gaze focussed on the window. "Sun's coming up."

Overriding Nat's objections to putting him out, Nick insisted she take the bedroom and let him sleep on the couch. "You'd better call in sick. What could keep you out for a few days, without having to go to the hospital or anything?"

"Strep'll work," she answered. "I'd be pretty miserable at least until tomorrow, especially if I had a high fever. Which would also give you an excuse to stay home and take care of me, if that's what you have in mind."

With a nod, Nick chuckled, "Perfect. Schanke'll never let me hear the end of it, though; I finally use a sick day because somebody else is sick. He gives me a hard time about you as it is, you know."

"Oh, really?" Nat stood by the window, watching the gradually-lightening sky. "And just what has he been--"

Nick rushed to her assistance as she leaned against the windowframe, wincing. "You okay?"

"No, I'm not okay!" she snapped. "You killed the wrong girl six hundred years ago, so this wacko takes it out on me. I don't know if I'm madder because of me or because he knew damn well it would hurt you; but I'm mad as hell. And I'm tired...and I'm hungry. And I don't even want to think about that."

"Neither do I," Nick responded gently, "but we have to." He put the remote control for the blinds in her hand and headed for the kitchen, returning a moment later with two very civilized glasses.

She took hers wordlessly, glaring at it as if it were responsible for the whole disastrous situation, then returned her attention to the growing daylight.

"Penny for 'em?" he asked, laying a hand on her shoulder.

"Grief stages," Nat replied. "It's weird when you recognize things in yourself that you got really tired of taking notes on. It just occurred to me; mourning my mortality, I suppose?" She swirled the dark liquid in the glass. "Shock, denial, anger..." Finally, steeling herself, she raised the glass and took a few swallows, then glowered at it again. "I don't think I want to get to resignation, Nick."


He left the key in the middle of the floor in the tower room. Let LaCroix puzzle out for himself how it got there; he would find out anyway.

"Nicolas." The whisper from the shadows startled him slightly as he descended the stairs; but the peculiar French sound of it--"Ni-co-la"--was Janette's. "You're a sentimental fool," she chided him. "He could just as easily decide to destroy you."

"Let him."

Her eyes widened. "You don't mean that!"

"No, probably not. I'm too much the coward."

"You, a coward?" She drew closer to him. "My Nicolas, my brave Crusader?"

Catching the hand running up his chest, he replied sharply, "Don't call me that. That ended the night I met you, and you know it."

She laughed softly, back in her throat. "But we can be whatever we wish!"

"No. Only what he wishes."

She pulled away coldly, a storm brewing in her eyes. "Very well, Nicolas. Enjoy your brooding; you will be doing it alone."

Nicholas watched her stride away down the corridor. Part of him wanted to call her back, pretend to laugh with her at the harsh things she denied with such apparent ease. Another part wanted to chase after her, shatter her infuriating arrogance, remind her that she was just as vulnerable to desire.

He did neither, turning away instead to return to his own chamber and await LaCroix's caprices. At this moment he did not care enough even to wonder what punishment the master vampire would choose.


Nick rose from the depths of dreaming to find himself on the couch; it took him several seconds to remember what he was doing there. A glance at the clock on the mantel told him it was three o'clock. Much too early for him to be getting up; but he was wide awake now.

Soundlessly he padded up the stairs to check on Natalie. He had warned her that a vampire's dreams were as vivid as his sharpened senses; he hoped that hers were affording her some escape from the nightmare of reality, and not tormenting her further. A little smile quirked at the corners of his mouth at his friend's sleeping face, innocent for now of anger or sarcasm or painful knowledge. "One of a kind" he had called her more than once, only half-teasing. Her questing mind and generous heart had led her to help shoulder his dark burden without a second thought.

She knew how to draw out secrets he had never intended to reveal, and each time he was certain he'd lose her faith in him forever. But for whatever unfathomable reason, she continued to care for him, to trust him, offering her seemingly boundless strength to support him in his search for something that might well be impossible.

And this was her reward. There was no denying that he deserved such a blow, but why her? Where was the justice in punishing Nat for giving of herself, just because she chose the

wrong person to receive that gift? And no matter how vehemently she denied it, the blame rested squarely on himself. He should never have allowed her to trust him, when he knew full well he didn't deserve it. If he had made more than a token effort to frighten her off when they had first met, her life could still have been safely normal; but now he had to admit he had hoped all along she wouldn't run away, this puzzling woman who had never for a moment feared him. He had betrayed her, as surely as if he'd attacked her himself. His desperate need for human contact, his longing for the daylight, had succeeded only in dragging Nat into the darkness he could not escape. The bargain had been struck, and like some latter-day Midas he destroyed everything he touched. His dearest friend's life, for instance.

Back on the main level he pointed the remote control at one of the windows, admitting a broad shaft of lethal light. Not long ago Nat had stood in that spot, fear for him adding force to the inadequate mortal strength she pitted against his halfhearted attempts at self-destruction. He should have gone through with it; at least then Paul would have left her alone. Instead he had

let her draw him back to his precarious place among the living, remind him how he longed to feel the sunshine that had gilded her hair and lent its luster to her angry face. A simple thing, that unique glow on human skin; yet he had clung to the image, hoarded it--it had been so long since he had seen such a wonder. Now he strove to etch it even more indelibly in his mind, acutely aware that the sun might never fall on her face again, that it was death to her as certainly as to himself. As certainly as it had been to Richard, in this very same spot.

And it was for that reason he could not even consider that escape, though he felt as lost and hopeless now as he had after Erica's suicide. Maybe more so. But through that crisis and others, Natalie had been there for him; he could not repay her fierce loyalty by abandoning her.


Well after dark, and they had seen no sign of LaCroix. He had left the château, presumably to hunt, before either of them was up and about, and now they sat in silence in the great empty dining hall, occasionally facing each other across a corner of the disused high table.

It was Janette who broke the silence, her voice uncharacteristically subdued. "Why did you let him go, Nicolas?"

"I had to. I owed him that much for friendship, even if I hadn't taken the girl." He shook his head. "Why must he forever set us against each other, Janette? Why can he abide no loyalty unless it is to him?"

"Always questions with you," she chided, her brittle smile returning as she reached to ruffle his hair. "Things are as they are. Isn't it better to live with what we cannot change?"

He turned away. "I'm not so sure."

"Nicolas." He looked up at the purring change in her tone, and she settled herself on the arm of his chair. "At least he has not set you and me against each other, n'est-ce pas?"

"From the moment we met," he corrected. "He made sure I could never trust your motives; they always seem to be his, don't they?"

"Do you hate me for that?" she asked; the notion did not seem to cause her much concern.

"Sometimes."

She kissed the top of his head as if he were a child, then slid off the arm of the chair into his lap. "But right now?"

In spite of himself, he smiled at this. "No."

"That is all that matters, Nicolas," she whispered, leaning in to kiss him. "For right now is when we must live."