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“I sent him away.” I sounded blank.
Claire hugged me harder, and didn’t say anything.
“I loved him, and I sent him away.” It was my voice, but there was a note I’d never heard in it. Not grief, not anger. More like wonder.
Like even my brain thought I was crazy.
“This is about Dorina,” Claire said, after a moment.
It wasn’t a question, but I pulled back and nodded.
She didn’t say anything. But I knew her expressions. I knew she wanted to.
I laughed suddenly; it sounded harsh. “I thought you’d be pleased.”
She didn’t look pleased. She looked stricken. “No. Oh, no. Dory, I’m so sorry!”
“For what?”
She wrapped her arms around herself, like she still needed someone to hold on to. “He was . . . he was nice, when you were ill. I expected him to be angry.” She laughed a little, not happily. “I have terrible timing. I realized I must have interrupted something the other day, when you were in the bath—”
“How?”
She shook her head. “He came to the door in a towel, with soap in his hair. He was blushing.”
“He does that a lot.” Redhead complexion. And his kind doesn’t exactly tan.
“I didn’t think they could do that,” she said. “Vampires, I mean.”
“Louis-Cesare isn’t a normal vampire.”
I wanted her to go. It felt like somebody had yanked my heart out of my chest and crumpled it into a little ball. I wanted nothing more than to curl around the pain and—
But Claire almost looked like she was in pain, too.
“You told me not to lump them all together,” she said. “I didn’t listen.”
“It’s all right—”
“It’s not all right.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Especially now.
“It matters!” She stared at me. “He was so worried, Dory, when they brought you back from those fights. I told him I thought you were okay, but that someone really should check you out, just to be sure, but he said he didn’t know anyone else here—”
“That’s great, Claire—”
“No, listen. I asked him why he didn’t contact one of his people, you know, mentally.”
I nodded.
“And have them find a healer. But he said that takes concentration, and he couldn’t manage it right then. So I dug out the emergency number, for the all-night service, and gave it to him. But he couldn’t dial it. His hands were shaking too much—”
I’d started digging through the dresser, looking for something to wear to Horatiu’s, but now I rounded on her. “Why are you doing this?”
She bit her lip. “I don’t know. I just—I realized then that I’d made a mistake. He did—he does—love you, and you love him—”
“None of which matters!”
