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“I should call Mom and Dad,” she said, just to break the silence in the car. “They won’t be able to make it back tonight. Their organization usually springs for a hotel room in Albany when that happens.”
Balthazar said, “I’m sorry if I hurt you this morning.”
Skye stared over at him. “That’s not what we were talking about.”
“It’s just a relief to have you talking to me,” he admitted. “I mean it. I shouldn’t have been as—rough on you. Or as rude. And I shouldn’t have bitten you.”
He didn’t regret walking away from her, Skye decided. He only regretted letting her get close at all.
She said only, “You’re here to protect me. That’s it. I understand now.”
“All right.” He sounded as if he didn’t entirely believe her. Fair enough, she figured; she didn’t entirely believe herself. “Hopefully we can still hang around—”
“I don’t think so.” Riding together in the snow. Sparring in her basement, flushed and sweaty and enjoying every touch. Texting each other throughout study hall. Did she have to give it all up? Yes. Skye knew she had to be ruthless for her own sake. “You’re still here, and I appreciate that—you’ll never know how—anyway. But we should move on.”
“Move on,” Balthazar repeated, as he finally steered the car into her driveway.
“You’ll do—whatever you’d do otherwise. I’ll hang out with Madison more. Study at home, even. It’s not like it would kill me. I’m even going to the Valentine’s Dance with Keith Kramer. So—yeah. Moving on.”
He gave her a look—oh, God, why did he look his absolute hottest when he was crazy jealous? The absurdity of any guy as amazing as Balthazar being jealous of cardboard-cutout Keith would’ve been hilarious at any other time. As it was, it stung almost as badly as his rejection had that morning.
“Thanks again,” Skye said as she got out of the car. “Good night.” She walked inside and shut the door behind her without a backward glance.
Moving on, she repeated to herself, meaning it. That means you don’t get to think about the fact that you’ve made Balthazar jealous. That can’t be why you go to the dance.
Though I guess you can enjoy it a little bit.
The Time Between: Interlude Three
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
October 1918
FOR A VAMPIRE, ONLY ONE CALAMITY PROVIDED more abundant feeding grounds than wartime: plague.
That made 1918 a very good year for the undead.
Although the war had not yet ended, it was clearly in its last gasps; armistice was expected any day. With the conclusion of the bloodiest conflict in history near, Philadelphia ought to have been cheerful and bustling with activity. Instead, Balthazar found himself walking along deserted streets.
In the past few weeks, a deadly wave of the Spanish flu had swept through the city with the same virulence with which it had killed millions from the Arctic Circle to South Africa. Victims—oddly, usually the youngest and strongest—began coughing and complaining of earaches or headaches. Then came the fevers, scorching hot. The pulses of the sick quickened so that Balthazar could hear them, fast and tremulous as the hearts of rabbits before the kill, from far away. Death seized them through the lungs, infecting and swelling them so that air could no longer course through the body. The sufferers turned blue-black with suffocation before their terrible deaths.
Sometimes he could spare them that. Their blood tasted foul to him; viruses could not poison vampires, but this one was so wretched that it spoiled even the pleasure of drinking from humans without guilt. But if providing a merciful death for a few sick people was the lone service he could provide for humanity, then he would provide it.
In Philadelphia, the Spanish flu epidemic was so severe that city officials had ordered trenches dug for mass graves. Some undertakers, taking opportunity of rising demand, had raised their fees; others told survivors they’d have to dig loved ones’ graves themselves. Doctors and nurses were in desperately short supply.
Which was why a suspiciously young-looking man could describe himself as a medical student from “out west” and get away with it.
Balthazar wore a cloth mask over his face as he walked along the street making his “rounds.” Although he of course could not contract the flu—death provided the only absolute immunity—he would have attracted too much notice by not wearing it. Everyone wore the masks now in a futile effort to keep the epidemic at bay. Now he looked the part in his dark brown suit, high-collared shirt, and low-brimmed hat; a long coat and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses allowed him to look a few years older than he was. A police paddy wagon farther down the road took a small bundle wrapped in a sheet and tossed it unceremoniously in the back; that would be a young child, dead in a city that no longer had the wood for coffins.
Witnessing the devastation of the influenza had made Balthazar wish desperately that he could do something beyond providing a merciful death for the sickest among them. When he’d been alive, medicine had been little more than guesswork; anything approaching an actual drug had been condemned as witchcraft. But in the twentieth century, maybe he’d have the opportunity to learn more. Maybe someday he could be a healer instead of a bringer of death.
For now, though, death was his only gift.
As he approached the house he sought, he saw a young nurse walking along, white headdress falling past her cheeks, a basket of food for the sick clutched in her hands. She was the first legitimate medical professional he’d seen in days; the few who weren’t ill were too busy to leave the clinics. Balthazar raised a hand to her in greeting, but she stopped in her tracks as if startled.
Above her mask, he recognized Charity’s eyes.
The first words Balthazar could find were: “Where’s Redgrave?”
