We walked back along the hall to Carine's office. I paused at the door, waiting for her invitation.

"Come in," Carine said.

I led him inside and watched him animatedly examine this new room. It was darker than the rest of the house; the deep mahogany wood reminded Carine of her earliest home. Beau's eyes ran across the rows and rows of books. I knew him well enough to see that the sight of so many books in one room was something of a dream to him.

Carine marked the page in the one she was reading and then stood to welcome us.

"What can I do for you?" she asked.

Of course, she'd heard all our conversation in the hall, and she knew we were here for the next installment. She wasn't bothered by my sharing her story; she didn't seem surprised that I would tell him everything.

"I wanted to show Beau some of our history. Well, your history, actually."

"We didn't mean to disturb you," Beau said quietly.

"Not at all," Carine assured him. "Where are you going to start?"

"The Waggoner," I said.

I put one hand on his shoulder and turned him gently to face the wall behind us. I heard his heartbeat react to my touch, and then Carine's almost silent laugh at his reaction.

Interesting, she thought.

I watched Beau's eyes widen as he took in the gallery wall of Carine's office. I could imagine the way it might disorient a person seeing it for the first time. There were seventy-three works, in all sizes, mediums, and colors, crammed together like a wall-sized puzzle with only rectangular pieces. His gaze couldn't find anywhere to settle.

I took his hand and led him to the beginning. Carine followed. As on the page of a book, the story began at the far left. It was not a showy piece, monochromatic and map-like. In fact, it was part of a map, hand-painted by an amateur cartographer, one of the very few originals that had survived the centuries.

His brows furrowed.

"London in the sixteen-fifties," I explained.

"The London of my youth," Carine added from a few feet behind us. Beau flinched, surprised by her closeness. Of course he wouldn't have heard her movements. I squeezed his hand, trying to reassure him. This house was a strange place for him to be, but nothing here would hurt him.

"Will you tell the story?" I asked her, and Beau turned to see what she would say.

I'm sorry, I wish I could.

She smiled at Beau and spoke aloud to him. "I would, but I'm actually running a bit late. The hospital called this morning—Dr. Snow is taking a sick day. But Beau won't miss anything"—she looked to me—"you know the stories as well as I do."

Carine smiled warmly at Beau as she exited. Once she had gone, he turned back to examine the small painting again.

"What came next?" he asked after a moment. "When she knew what had happened to her?"

Automatically, I looked to a larger painting, one column over and one row down. It wasn't a cheerful image: a gloomy, deserted landscape, a sky thick with oppressive clouds, colors that seemed to suggest the sun would never return. Carine had seen this piece through the window of a minor castle in Scotland. It so perfectly reminded her of her life at its darkest point that she'd wanted to keep it, though the old memory was painful. To her, the existence of this devastated landscape meant that someone else had once understood.

"When she knew what she had become, she despaired... and then rebelled. She tried to destroy herself. But that's not easily done."

"How?" he gasped.

I kept my eyes on the evocative emptiness of the painting as I described Carine's suicide attempts.

"She jumped from great heights. She tried to drown herself in the ocean... but she was young to the new life, and very strong. It is amazing that she was able to resist... feeding"—I glanced quickly at him but he was staring at the painting—"while she was still so new. The instinct is more powerful then, it takes over everything. But she was so repelled by herself that she had the strength to try to kill herself with starvation."

"Is that possible?" he whispered.

"No, there are very few ways we can be killed."

He opened his mouth to ask the most obvious follow-up, but I spoke quickly to distract him.

"So she grew very hungry, and eventually weak. She strayed as far as she could from the human populace, recognizing that her willpower was weakening, too. For months she wandered by night, seeking the loneliest places, loathing herself..."

I described the night she found another way to live, the compromise of animal blood, and her recovery to a rational creature. Then leaving for the continent—

"She swam to France?" he interrupted, disbelieving.

"People swim the Channel all the time, Beau," I pointed out.

"That's true, I guess. It just sounded funny in that context. Go on."

"Swimming is easy for us—"

"Everything is easy for you," he complained.

I smiled at him, waiting to be sure he was done.

He frowned. "I won't interrupt again, I promise."

My smile widened, knowing what his reaction would be to the next bit.

"Because, technically, we don't need to breathe."

"You—"

I laughed and put one finger against his lips. "No, no, you promised. Do you want to hear the story or not?"

His lips moved against my touch. "You can't spring something like that on me, and then expect me not to say anything."

I let my hand fall to rest against his chest.

"You don't have to breathe?"

I shrugged. "No, it's not necessary. Just a habit."

"How long can you go... without breathing?"

"Indefinitely, I suppose; I don't know." The longest I'd ever gone was a few days, all of it underwater. "It gets a bit uncomfortable—being without a sense of smell."

"A bit uncomfortable," he repeated in a fragile voice, barely over a whisper.

His eyebrows were drawn together, his eyes narrowed, his shoulders rigid. The exchange, which had been funny to me a moment before, was abruptly humorless.

We were so different. Though we'd once belonged to the same species, we shared only a few superficial traits now. He must finally feel the weight of the distortion, the distance between us. I lifted my hand from him and dropped it to my side. My alien touch would only make that gap more obvious.

I stared at his troubled expression, waiting to see if this would be one truth too many. After a few long seconds, the stress in his features eased. His eyes focused on my face, and a different kind of unease marked him.

He reached up with no hesitation to press his fingers against my cheek. "What is it?"

Concern for me again. So apparently this wasn't the too much I'd been fearing.

I took a deep breath. "I know that at some point, something I tell you or something you see is going to be too much. And then you'll run away from me, screaming as you go." I tried to smile at him, but I didn't do a very good job. "I won't stop you when that happens. I want it to happen, because I want you to be safe. And yet, I want to be with you. The two desires are impossible to reconcile..."

He squared his shoulders, his chin jutted out. "I'm not running anywhere," he promised.

I had to smile at his brave façade. "We'll see."

"Back to the story," he insisted, scowling a little at my doubtful response. "Carine was swimming to France."

I measured his mood for one more second, then turned back to the gallery. This time I pointed him toward the most ostentatious of all the paintings, the brightest, the most garish. It was meant to be a portrayal of the final judgment, but half the thrashing figures seemed to be involved in some kind of orgy, the other half in a violent, bloody combat. Only the judges, suspended above the pandemonium on marble balustrades, were serene.

This one had been a gift. It wasn't something Carine would have ever picked out for herself. But when the Volturi had pressed upon her the souvenir of their time together, it wasn't as if she could have said no.

Hhe had some affection for the gaudy piece—and for the distant vampire overlords depicted in it—so she kept it with her other favorites. They had been very kind to her in many ways, after all. And Earnest liked the small portrait of Carine hidden in the midst of the mayhem.

While I explained Carine's first few years in Europe, Beau stared at the painting, trying to make sense of all the figures and swirling colors. I found my voice becoming less casual. It was hard to think of Carine's quest to subdue her nature, to become a blessing to mankind rather than a parasite, without feeling again all the awe her journey deserved.

I'd always envied Carine's perfect control but, at the same time, believed it was impossible for me to duplicate. I realized now that I'd chosen the lazy way, the path of least resistance, admiring her greatly, but never putting in the effort to become more like her. This crash course in restraint that Beau was teaching me might have been less fraught if I'd worked harder to improve in the last seven decades.

Beau was staring at me now. I tapped the relevant scene in front of us to refocus his attention on the story.

"She was studying in Italy when she discovered the others there. They were much more civilized and educated than the wraiths of the London sewers."

He concentrated on the tableau I indicated, and then laughed suddenly, a little shocked. He'd recognized Carine despite the robe-like costume she was painted in.

"Solimena was greatly inspired by Carine's friends. He often painted them as gods. Sulpicia, Marcus, and Athenodora." I gestured to each as I said their names. "Nighttime patrons of the arts."

His finger hesitated just above the canvas. "What about that one?"

He was pointing to the small girl kneeling next to Sulpicia where she clung to her skirt.

"Mele. A... servant, I suppose you could call her. Sulpicia's little thief."

"What happened to them?" he wondered.

"They're still there. As they have been for millennia. Carine stayed with them only for a short time, just a few decades. She admired their civility, their refinement, but they persisted in trying to cure her aversion to her natural food source, as they called it. They tried to persuade her, and she tried to persuade them, to no avail. At that point, Carine decided to try the New World. She dreamed of finding others like herself. She was very lonely, you see."

I touched only lightly on the following decades, as Carine struggled with her isolation and finally began to consider a course of action. The story turned more personal, and also more repetitive. He'd heard some of this before: Carine finding me on my deathbed and making the decision that had changed my destiny. And now, that decision was affecting Beau's destiny, too.

"And now we've come full circle," I concluded.

"So you've always been with Carine?" he asked.

With unerring instinct, he'd found the one question I least wanted to answer.

"Almost always," I answered.

I placed my hand in his to guide him out of Carine's office, wishing I could also guide him away from this train of thought. But I knew he was not going to let that stand. Sure enough...

"Almost?"

I sighed, unwilling.

"You don't want to answer that, do you?"

"It wasn't my finest hour."

We started up the stairs.

"You can tell me anything."

"I suppose I owe you that. You should know who I am."

I took a deep breath. Honesty must take precedence over shame. "I had a typical bout of rebellious adolescence—about ten years after I was born, created, whatever you want to call it. I wasn't sold on Carine's life of abstinence, and I resented her for curbing my appetite. So I went off on my own for a time."

"Really?" His intonation was not what I expected. Rather than being disgusted, he sounded eager to hear more. This didn't match his reaction in the meadow, when he'd seemed so surprised that I was guilty of murder, as though that truth had never occurred to him. Perhaps he'd grown used to the idea.

"That doesn't repulse you?" I asked.

He considered that for half a second. "No."

I found his answer upsetting. "Why not?" I nearly demanded.

"I guess... it sounds reasonable." His explanation ended on a higher pitch, like a question.

Reasonable. I laughed, the sound too harsh.

But instead of telling him all the ways it was neither reasonable nor forgivable, I found myself giving a defense.

"From the time of my new birth, I had the advantage of knowing what everyone around me was thinking, both human and nonhuman alike. That's why it took me ten years to defy Carine. I could read her perfect sincerity, understand exactly why she lived the way she did."

I wondered if I would ever have gone astray if I had not met Seán and others like him. If I hadn't been aware that every other creature like myself—we'd not yet stumbled across Taran and his sisters—thought the way Carine lived was ludicrous. If I had only known Carine, and never discovered another code of conduct, I think I would have stayed. It made me ashamed that I'd let myself be influenced by others who were never Carine's equals. But I'd envied their freedom. And I'd thought I would be able to live above the moral abyss they all sank to. Because I was special. I shook my head at the arrogance.

"It took me only a few years to return to Carine and recommit to her vision. I thought I would be exempt from the depression that accompanies a conscience. Because I knew the thoughts of my prey, I could pass over the innocent and pursue only the evil. If I followed a murderer down a dark alley where he stalked a young girl—if I saved her, then surely I wasn't so terrible."

There were a great many humans I'd saved this way, and yet, it never seemed to balance out the tally. So many faces flashed through my memories, the guilty I'd executed and the innocents I'd saved.

One face lingered, both guilty and innocent.

September 1930. It had been a very bad year. Everywhere, the humans struggled to survive bank failures, droughts, and dust storms. Displaced farmers and their families flooded cities that had no room for them. At the time, I wondered whether the pervasive despair and dread in the minds around me were a contributing factor to the melancholy that was beginning to plague me, but I think even then I knew that my personal depression was wholly due to my own choices.

I was passing through Milwaukee, as I'd passed through Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Columbus, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Montreal, Toronto, city after city, and then returned, over and over again, truly nomadic for the first time in my life. I never strayed farther south—I knew better than to hunt near that hotbed of newborn nightmare armies—nor farther east, as I was also avoiding Carine, less for self-preservation and more out of shame in that case. I never stayed more than a few days in any one place, never interacted with the humans I wasn't hunting. After more than four years, it had become a simple thing to locate the minds I sought. I knew where I was likely to find them, and when they were usually active. It was disturbing how easy it was to pinpoint my ideal victims; there were so many of them.

Perhaps that was part of the melancholy, too.

The minds I hunted were usually hardened to all human pity—and most other emotions besides greed and desire. There was a coldness and a focus that stood out from the normal, less dangerous minds around them. Of course, it had taken most of them some time to reach this point, where they saw themselves as predators first, and anything else second. So there was always a line of victims I had been too late to save. I could only save the next one.

Scanning for such minds, I was able to tune out everything more human for the most part. But that evening in Milwaukee, as I moved quietly through the darkness—strolling when there were witnesses, running when there were not—a different kind of mind caught my attention.

He was a young man, poor, living in the slums on the outskirts of the industrial district. He was in a state of mental anguish that intruded upon my awareness, though anguish was not an uncommon emotion in those days. But unlike the others who feared hunger, eviction, cold, sickness—want in so many forms—this man feared himself.

I can't. I can't. I can't do this. I can't. I can't. It was like a mantra in his head, repeating endlessly. It never resolved into anything stronger, never became I won't. He thought the negatives, but meanwhile he was planning.

The man hadn't done anything... yet. He had only dreamed of what he wanted. He had only watched the girl in the tenement up the alley, never spoken to her.

I was a bit flummoxed. I had never condemned anyone to death whose hands were clean. But it seemed likely this man would not have clean hands for long. And the girl in his mind was just a young child.

Unsure, I decided to wait. Perhaps he would overcome the temptation.

I doubted it. My recent study of the basest of human natures had left little room for optimism.

Down the alley where he lived, where the buildings leaned precariously together, there was a narrow house with a recently collapsed roof. No one could get to the second floor safely, so that was where I hid, motionless, while I listened through the next several days. Examining the thoughts of the people crowded into the sagging buildings, it didn't take me long to find the child's thin face in a different, healthier set of thoughts. I found the room where she lived with her mother and two older brothers and watched her through the day. This was easy; she was only five or six and so didn't wander far. Her mother called her back when she rambled out of sight; Betty was her name.

The man watched, too, when he wasn't scouring the streets for day labor. But he kept his distance from her in the daytime. It was at night that he paused outside the window, hiding in the shadows while a single candle burned in her family's room. He marked at what time the candle was blown out. He noted the location of the child's bed—just a newspaper-stuffed cushion under the open window. It was getting cool at night, but the smells in the overcrowded house were unpleasant. Everyone kept their windows open.

I can't do this. I can't. I can't. His mantra continued, but he began to prepare. A piece of rope he found in a gutter. Some rags he plucked off a clothesline during his nighttime surveillance that would work as a gag. Ironically, he chose the same dilapidated house where I hid to store his collection. There was a cave-like space under the collapsed stairs. This was where he would bring the child.

Still I waited, unwilling to punish before I was positive of the crime.

The hardest part, the part he struggled with, was that he knew he would have to kill her afterward. This was distasteful, and he didn't like to consider the how of it. But this qualm, too, was overcome. It took another week.

By this time, I was quite thirsty, and bored with the repetition in his mind. However, I knew I could not justify my own murders unless I was acting within the rules I'd created for myself. Punish only the guilty, only those who would grievously harm others if they were spared.

I was oddly disappointed the night he came for his ropes and gags. Against reason, I'd hoped he would stay guiltless.

I followed him to the open window where the child slept. He didn't hear me behind him, would not have seen me in the shadows if he had turned. The chanting in his head was over. He could, he had realized. He could do this.

I waited until he reached through the window, until his fingers brushed her arm, looking for a good hold...

I grabbed him by the neck and leaped to the roof three stories up, where we landed with a low thud.

Of course he was terrified by the ice-cold fingers wrapped around his throat, bewildered by the sudden flight through the air, confused as to what was happening. But when I spun him to face me, somehow he understood. He didn't see a woman when he looked at me. He saw my empty black eyes, my death-pale skin, and he saw judgment. Though he didn't come close to guessing what I actually was, he was absolutely correct about what was happening.

He realized that I had saved the child from him, and he was relieved. Not hardened like the others, not cold and sure.

I didn't, he thought as I lunged. The words were not a defense. He was glad he had been stopped.

He had been my only technically innocent victim, the one who had not lived to become the monster. Ending his progression toward evil had been the right thing, the only thing to do.

As I considered them all, every one of those I'd executed, I didn't regret any of their deaths individually. The world was a better place for each one of their absences. But somehow this didn't matter.

And in the end, blood was just blood. It quenched my thirst for a few days or weeks, and that was all. Though there was physical pleasure, it was too marred by the pain of my mind. Stubborn as I was, I could not avoid the truth. I was happier without human blood.

The total sum of death became too much for me. It was only a few months later that I gave up on my selfish crusade, gave up trying to find something meaningful in the slaughter.

"But as time went on," I continued, wondering how much he'd intuited that I hadn't said, "I began to see the monster in my eyes. I couldn't escape the debt of so much human life taken, no matter how justified. And I went back to Carine and Earnest. They welcomed me back like the prodigal. It was more than I deserved." I remembered their arms around me, remembered the joy in their minds when I returned.

The way he looked at me now was also more than I deserved. I supposed my defense had worked, no matter how weak it sounded to me. But Beau must have been used to making excuses for me by now. I couldn't imagine how else he could bear to be around me.

We'd reached the last door along the hallway.

"My room," I informed him as I held it open.

I expected his reaction. The close scrutiny returned. He analyzed the view of the river, the abundance of shelving for my music, the stereo, the lack of traditional furniture, his eyes skipping from one detail to the next. I wondered if it was as interesting to him as his room had been to me.

His eyes lingered on the wall treatments.

"Good acoustics?"

I laughed and nodded, then turned on the sound system. Even as low as the volume was, the speakers hidden in the walls and ceiling made it sound like we were in a concert hall with the performers. He smiled, then wandered over to the closest shelf of CDs.

It felt surreal to see him in the center of a space that was almost always an isolated retreat. We'd spent most of our time together in the human world—school, town, his home—and it had always made me feel the interloper, the one who didn't belong. Less than a week ago, I couldn't have believed he would ever be so relaxed and comfortable in the middle of my world. He was no interloper; he belonged perfectly. It was as if the room had never been complete till now.

And he was here under no pretext. I'd told no lies, revealed every one of my sins. He knew it all, and still wanted to be in this room, alone with me.

"How do you have these organized?" he wondered, trying to make sense of my collection.

My mind was so caught up in the pleasure of having him here, it took me a second to respond.

"Ummm, by year, and then by personal preference within that frame."

Beau could hear the abstraction in my voice. He glanced up at me, trying to understand why I was staring at him so intently.

"What?" he asked, his hand straying self-consciously to his hair.

"I was prepared to feel... relieved. Having you know about everything, not needing to keep secrets from you. But I didn't expect to feel more than that. I like it. It makes me... happy."

We smiled together.

"I'm glad," he said.

It was easy to see he was telling nothing but the truth. There were no shadows in his eyes. It brought him as much pleasure to be in my world as being in his brought me.

A flicker of unease twisted my expression. I thought of pomegranate seeds for the first time in a while. It felt right to have him here, but was that just my selfishness blinding me? Nothing had scared him away from me, but that didn't mean that he shouldn't be frightened. He'd always been too brave for his own good.

Beau watched my face change. "You're still waiting for the running and the screaming, aren't you?"

Close enough. I nodded.

"I hate to burst your bubble," he said, his voice blasé, "but you're just not as scary as you think you are. I honestly can't imagine being afraid of you."

It was a well-performed lie, especially considering his usual lack of success with deception, but I knew he made the joke mostly to keep me from feeling dejected or worried. Though I sometimes regretted the depth of his leniency toward me, it did shift my mood. It was a funny joke, and I couldn't resist playing along.

I smiled, showing too much of my teeth. "You probably shouldn't have said that."

He'd asked to see me hunt, after all.

I coiled into a parody of my actual hunting stance, a loose, playful version. Exposing even more of my teeth, I growled softly; it was almost a purr.

He started to back away, though there was no real fear on his face. At least, no fear of physical harm. He did look a little afraid that he was about to become the butt of his own joke.

He swallowed loudly. "Um... Edythe?"

I sprang.

He wasn't able to see much of the action; I moved at immortal speed.

Launching myself across the room, I scooped him up into my arms as I flew by. I shaped myself into a sort of defensive armor around him, so that when we collided with the sofa, he felt none of the impact.

By design, I'd landed on my back. I flipped him over, still curled within my arms. He seemed a little disoriented, as though he wasn't sure which way was up. He struggled to sit, but I wasn't finished making my point.

He tried to glare at me, but his eyes were too wide to make the expression effective. "Wow."

"You were saying?" I asked, my voice a playful snarl.

He tried to catch his breath. "Um, that you are... a very, very... terrifying monster."

I grinned at him. "Much better."

"And that I am so completely in love with you."

Archie and Jessamine were bounding up the stairs. I could hear Archie's eagerness to offer an invitation. He was also very curious about the sounds of a struggle emanating from my room. He hadn't been watching me, so now he only saw what he would find when they arrived; the way we'd gotten so disarranged was already in the past.

"Beau," I warned him.

I laughed at his continued breathlessness. Despite his overconfidence, I'd still been able to truly startle him.

"Can we come in?" Archie asked from the hallway, aloud for Beau's sake.

I sat up, my legs draped over Beau's lap. There was no need to pretend here, though I assumed a more respectful distance would be necessary in front of Charlie.

Archie was already walking into the room as I answered, "Please."

While Jessamine hesitated in the doorway, he settled himself in the middle of my rug, a wide grin on his face. "It sounded like you were having Beau for lunch, and we came to see if you would share," he teased.

Beau braced himself, his eyes flying to my face for reassurance.

"Sorry, I'm not in a mood to share."

"Fair enough."

Jessamine followed him into the room, unable to help herself. The emotions inside were nearly intoxicating to her. In this moment, I knew Beau's feelings were just the same as mine, for there was no counterbalance to the atmosphere of bliss that Jessamine was getting high on now.

"Actually," she said, changing the subject. I could see that she wanted to control what she was feeling, to regulate it. The ambience was overwhelming. "Archie says there's going to be a real storm tonight, and Eleanor wants to play ball. Are you game?"

I paused, looking to Archie.

Lightning fast, he ran through a few hundred images from that possible future. Royal was absent, but Eleanor wouldn't miss a game. Sometimes her team won, sometimes mine did. Beau was there watching, his face delighted by the otherworldly display.

"Of course you should bring Beau," he encouraged, knowing me well enough to understand my hesitation.

Oh. Jessamine was caught off guard. Internally, she readjusted her idea of what was to come. She would not be able to relax, as she'd planned. But experiencing the emotions Beau and I made each other feel... that was a trade she could accept.

"Do you want to go?" I asked Beau.

"Sure," he answered quickly. And then after a tiny pause, "Um, where are we going?"

"We have to wait for thunder to play ball," I explained. "You'll see why."

His concern was more obvious now. "Should I bring an umbrella?"

I laughed that this was his worry, and Archie and Jessamine joined in.

"Should he?" Jessamine asked Archie.

Another flash of images, this time tracking the course of the storm.

"No. The storm will hit over town. It'll be dry enough in the clearing."

"Good," Jessamine said. She found that she was excited by the idea of spending more time with Beau and me. Her enthusiasm spread out from her body, infecting the rest of us. Beau's expression changed from cautious to eager.

Cool, Archie thought, glad that his plan was now certain. He wanted recreational time with Beau, too. I'll leave you to sort out the details.

"Let's call Carine and se if she's in," he said, bouncing up from the floor.

Jessamine poked his in the ribs. "Like you don't already know."

He was out the door in the same breath. Jessamine followed more slowly, savoring each second near us. She paused to shut the door behind herself, an excuse to linger that much longer.

"So... what are we playing?" Beau asked as soon as the door was closed.

"You will be watching. We will be playing baseball."

He looked at me skeptically. "Vampires like baseball?"

I answered him with put-on gravitas. "It's the American pastime."