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“Better?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Good. Drink your wine. Sit for ten minutes. Do not brood.”

“I do not brood.”

“You have brooded in this office nine winters. There’s a dent in the chair.”

She made me sit and she made me eat, a plate of bread and cheese that tasted of paper. She said it was for the ritual, so that I would remember what it felt like to be a man who ate. Then she perched on the edge of her desk, and her face changed, and I knew we were done with the easy part.

“Marcus ran the plate,” she said.

“I know. He told me.”

“Not everything.” She picked up a folded sheet of paper. “Gideon Roake. Surgeon, Boston General, retired at fifty-two. Wife’s name was Elena. She died six years ago on a camping trip in the Adirondacks. Cause of death recorded as ‘animal attack.’ The coroner’s notes say torn throat, blood loss, and, this is the part Marcus dug up, no animal tracks found within a half mile of the body.”

I said nothing.

“A week after the funeral,” Tamsin continued, “Roake liquidated his practice. Bought a house in Providence. Started attending a support group for bereaved spouses, and then stopped attending. Started attending something else. A private list. People who believe things.”

“Hunters.”

“He isn’t one. Not by blood. He’s a surgeon. He’s a grieving man with a great deal of money who has decided that every one of us is the thing that took his wife.” Her mouth thinned. “Marcus talked to a woman in Montreal who used to work security for the Sable there. Roake came to her bar four times last spring. Sat at the counter. Ordered water. Watched the door. When he left, two of the regulars were gone the next week. Not dead. Just gone. Left town in the night.”

“Frightened.”

“Wisely.” She folded the paper. “He hasn’t got proof. That’s what saves you, Maks. He’s got a feeling and a lot of money and a long lens. But if he gets a photograph, one clear, undeniable photograph of a professional athlete doing something no man can do—”

“He will not.”

“He will, if you keep looking at that boy like you looked at him when you walked in here.” She said it gently. “You’re not subtle. You never were. You go blank when you’re afraid, and you go soft when you’re happy, and it’s obvious to anyone with eyes, and someone’s got eyes.”

“I know.”

“So what do you do?”

I turned the empty glass in my fingers.

“I could send him away,” I said slowly. “Lex. I could tell him it was a mistake. That the bond was a delusion. That he should go home to a woman and a normal life and forget he ever saw my face. It would protect him. If I am nothing to him, there is nothing to photograph.”

“Would it work?”

“He would not believe it.”

“Would you?”

The question sat on the desk between us.

“No,” I said.

“Right. So that’s stupid.” She slid down and stood in front of me, hands on her hips. “Listen. You’ve been sitting on this for eleven hundred years. You’ve got exactly one rule and it’s a good rule, and I’m not asking you to break it. But I’ve noticed something about your rule, Maksim.”

“What?”

“It’s all about what you won’t do. Never bite without a yes. Never compel. Never take. It’s a wall around the person you might hurt.” She tapped my chest. “And that’s beautiful. It’s why I like you. But have you ever once, in all this time, asked him what he wants? “

“I have told him he has time.”