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“I do not think she meant harm.”

“Oh my God. Oh, Maksim. “ He was crying with laughter. He wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist and looked at me, wet-lashed, flushed, hair stuck to his forehead, and something in his face went soft and huge. “Come here.”

“I am here.”

“Closer.” He tugged, and I lay down beside him, careful, on top of the covers in my clothes, and he pulled my arm around him and settled his head in the hollow of my shoulder like a man settling into a home. “Just this. For a while. Okay?”

I could feel my heart do a foolish thing. It does not beat. It did it anyway.

“Okay,” I said.

“And Maksim?”

“Yes.”

“Which book?”

“I would prefer not to say.”

“I’m going to find out.”

“I know,” I said, and held him closer, and outside the window the snow came down over the birches, and inside, in the warm dark, for the first time in eleven hundred years, I closed my eyes and rested.

Chapter 16

LEX

The First Time, Properly

The note was under my pillow when I woke up.

I don’t know how it got there. I’d fallen asleep in Room 214 the night before, curled against a vampire who was doing an impression of a marble statue, and woken up in Room 118 at dawn, in my own cot, with my own blanket over me. I have no memory of moving. Jason says he didn’t hear anything. I’ve decided not to ask how this works.

The note said, in that lovely, upright, typeset handwriting:

Lex,

This evening. Nine o’clock. Room 214.

Please bring nothing. I have taken care of everything. If you have changed your mind, no message is required. Simply do not come, and I will understand, and I will not think less of you.

If you have not changed your mind: I will be very glad.

—M.

P.S. Please eat dinner first.

I read it four times. I put it in my sock drawer. I took it out and read it again. Then I got dressed, walked into the hallway, and immediately ran into Jason, who took one look at my face and said, “Dude. Are you okay? You look like you just won the lottery and lost your wallet.”

“Fine.”

“You’re smiling.”

“I’m not smiling.”

“You’re doing a thing with your mouth.”

“It’s a tic.”