For one second, I almost lie. I almost give him a smaller truth, something with soft edges, something he can sleep beside until morning. But every gentle lie I've ever told has eventually become a cage, and I can't bear to build another around him while he's still holding my shirt like a lifeline.
"It's magic," I say.
His grip tightens.
I lead him to the bed because he's swaying, not because I've got any right to direct him. He sits on the edge, and I lower myself onto the chair near the nightstand, close enough that the quiet holds but far enough that he's got space to bolt if he needs it.
"I don't have clean words for all of it," I say. "Not words your seminary'd approve of. There are things in this city older than the church that taught you to name them. Witches. Exorcists. Vampires. Spirits that are only lost, and spirits that've been bound by magic that should never have touched them."
Aven laughs once, thin and frightened. "Great. Excellent. Love finding out the youth group pamphlets undersold the situation."
"This isn't a joke."
"No, Cain, it's obviously not a joke. Jokes are funnier and usually involve fewer undead men in my bedroom."
I let the sharpness pass because it's the only shield he's managed to lift. "You're not sick. You're not imagining them. What you see is real, and what you are makes the dead come close."
"What I am," he repeats.
I hear the trap close around the words too late.
"You're open to them in a way most living people aren't," I say carefully. "And something in my magic quiets the door they use to reach you."
His eyes move over my face, my pale skin, my stillness, the fangs I'm no longer trying hard enough to hide. "Something in your magic."
"Yes."
"The vampire magic."
"Yes."
The relief in him changes shape. I watch it harden into fear, and guilt presses its hand against my throat.
"There are others," I say, because stopping now'd leave him with only the worst of it. "A witch named Soren. An exorcist named Ira. The bond doesn't end with us."
"Bond." He stands too fast, the quiet flickering around him as distance opens between us. "That's what you're calling this? Like it means something less terrifying if you say it gently?"
"It means connection."
"It means I don't get a choice?"
"No." I rise too, then stop when he flinches. "No, Aven. Not that. It can pull. It can hurt. It can make need feel like truthbefore either of us has earned trust. But it doesn't make your choices for you."
"You say that like you didn't just break into my apartment."
The words strike cleanly because they're true. "You called me."
"And you opened the lock with magic."
"Yes."
He looks at me, breathing hard, and I hate that I've got no defense that isn't also an excuse.
"I should've knocked," I say.
The admission doesn't calm him. If anything, it makes him look more afraid, because apologies are only useful when the harm's small enough for them to hold. He backs away until his hip hits the desk. His hand skims over papers, a book, the empty whiskey glass from the night before, searching without looking.
"What else?" he asks. "What else is real?"
