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“I’m not going to throw up.” I dropped my hands. “You don’t sweat. You don’t eat. You’re ice cold. You— you were on the ice for sixty minutes and your face was dry. You’ve been in my room for two nights and you haven’t slept once. You never — Jesus Christ, you haven’t blinked in a minute. “

“I am concentrating on not frightening you.”

“You’re failing!”

“Yes,” Maksim agreed. “I am aware.”

That’s when I stood up. I don’t know what I wanted to do. Yell, run, hit him. Hit him seemed right. I was on my feet and across the room in three steps, and I had my finger up in his face, and I said:

“You listen to me. I don’t care what you are. I don’t care how old you are. You don’t get to look at people like snacks and walk around wearing a Ravens jersey. I’m going to tell someone. I’m going to tell everyone. I’m going to post it on every website I know—”

He didn’t step back. He didn’t lift a hand. He simply looked at me, and as he looked, something in his face went very quiet.

“Please,” he said.

The word stopped me like a wall.

“Please do not tell anyone.”

It wasn’t a command. That’s the part I couldn’t get past. He’d had the whole speech ready, the voice, the eyes, the I will bury you. And what came out instead was one word, soft, in a voice that sounded like it had been dragged over gravel.

“There are people,” he said. “They call themselves hunters. They are not a myth. They believe everything like me is a murderer, and they do not check. They found a friend of mine in Prague. They found his wife.” He held my eyes. “If you talk, and someone believes you, they will come. Not just for me. For everyone who has stood next to me. Tamsin. My sister. The men on my team. And for you, Lex, because you would be the one who knew. “

I had never heard him say my name before.

“Is that a threat?”

“It is a warning.”

“It sounds like a threat.”

“I know it does.” His voice was very low. “I am sorry. I am very bad at this. I am not accustomed to explaining myself.”

There was a silence. Snow tapped the window. Somewhere down the hall a vending machine rattled.

And I found, to my complete horror, that my heart was not doing what it was supposed to be doing. It was supposed to be running, or sprinting, or exploding in a healthy and understandable way. Instead it was steady and hard and going very deep, and every beat seemed to hit something behind my ribs and echo.

Get a grip, Pendleton. This man drinks blood. This man told you he could bury you. Get a grip.

“Fine,” I said hoarsely. “I won’t tell.”

“You will not?”

“I said fine.”

“Thank you.”

He did not smile. But something in his shoulders let go, just slightly, and I noticed, because I was standing too close and had spent two days learning where he held tension. He looked at me as if I’d handed him something breakable and he was trying not to drop it.

I wanted to get out of there.

I also, and this is the truly unforgivable part, wanted to take one more step toward him.

I did neither. I said, “I need air.”

“Of course.”

“I’m going to go find Jason.”