Page 81 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“Yes.”

“As someone else.”

“Yes.”

I think of the photographs. Volkov. Thorne. Volkov again.

“You could have gone anywhere.”

“I did.”

That stops me.

Julian walks into the little room and takes down one of the oldest volumes, vellum cracked nearly white along the spine.

“Between Blackthorne and Voss, I left. Properly. The first time. I thought it would be simpler.”

“Where did you go?”

“Nova Scotia, that time. Lisbon later. Bristol for eleven years, which I do not recommend.”

“Why?”

“Bristol or leaving?”

“Either.”

“Bristol knows what it did.”

I laugh despite myself, and he looks down at the journal.

“I was comfortable. I was safe. I was also visiting.”

“For how long?”

“Nearly a century, altogether.”

“That’s a hell of a visit.”

“Yes.”

He turns the vellum volume over once in his hands.

“I had believed distance would make grief easier. In some respects, it did. I outran the grief.” His eyes lift to mine. “I also outran being a person.”

I don’t say anything.

“There are only so many times one can introduce oneself in a place where the name means nothing. No one knows what you dislike. No one remembers what you did when you were twenty. No one asks after someone you mentioned ten years ago because they have known you for eleven.” He puts the journal back. “Eventually I understood that there is a difference between privacy and having no continuity at all.”

“So you came home.”

His eyes come back to me.

“Yes.”

The word is very quiet.

“This is the only place on this earth where I am not a guest.”