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“I was told a long time ago that if I held on, I’d meet the one I was waiting for, the one it would be worth it for. It’s her.”
That was oddly sweet, even if it was still creepy. I supposed it might be an old-dog-new-trick situation. Kase came from atime when just declaring ownership over a woman made it true.
“So why don’t you talk to her?”
“Because I have nothing to say to her.” He stared down at his hands, and despite them being clean, I had no doubt he saw the blood from before. “What if I’m nothing more thanthis? What is the point in meeting her, in speaking to her, if I have nothing else to offer?” He dropped his hands to his lap. “Just knowing she exists, maybe that’s enough.”
It isn’t enough for me.I tried to imagine what would have happened if he’d left it like that, if he’d never hired me that first night, if I didn’t know him as I did now.
Empty.
It felt like the abyss, like that blackness outside the image of him.
He blew out a breath before shifting and looking at me. How he didn’t recognize me, I wasn’t sure, but he didn’t seem to. “Do you ever feel trapped? As if everything in your life is headed one way and nothing you can do will change it?”
I thought back to before I’d met him, to when each day had felt like a repeat of the one before. “Yeah. It feels like you’re on this track and nothing matters. You’re always going to end up in the same place whether you like it or not.”
He nodded. “Exactly. I think I learned early where I was headed, and no matter what, that’s where I am always going to go. I’ve tried to change, to shift my direction, but I just feel closer and closer to that same place.” In his eyes, I saw where his endpoint was, at least the one he thought of.
“You aren’tyour maker. You won’t ever be him.”
He tilted his head, as if the comment was unexpected. “Maybe.”
His phone rang and he frowned at it. He answered, and after a moment, he hung up. “Maybe,” he said softly, again. “Maybe fate has a few more twists left.” After that, he made one more call. Inside, Gran looked at her phone, then answered. She stepped aside, out of earshot of the other me.
“It seems I need to hire that mortal acquaintance of yours,” he said.
Gran’s laughter was like a whiff of apple pie—something that took me straight back home, to a feeling of safety and happiness. “Finally sick of pretending that it isn’ther?”
He made a soft sound full of annoyance. “It isn’t like that. I simply need her for a job. We have a missing vampire, named Olin, and I require her skills to find him.”
The name hit me, let me place the time. This had to be the night before Kase had shown up at my house for help…
When he hung up, after Gran gave him my address—the meddling woman—Kase looked at me. “Nothing really changes. I don’t know why I thought she would make it all different.”
I reached out and grabbed his arm, surprised when I could, when I didn’t pass through him. Was this therealhim? Or just a stronger, fractured part of him? “It does change. Itdidchange. You aren’t the person you’re afraid of.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know you. I’ve seen you.”
“I’ve killed people.”
“So? In my world now, anyone who hasn’t killed people is suspicious. You don’t enjoy killing, and you don’t do it for no reason.”
“What if I end up hurting her? What if after all that waiting, I didn’t learn enough, I’m not good enough, and I lose her because I hurt her? Or because she realizes what I am?”
“That won’t happen. Kase, I know exactly who and what you are.”
“And what is that?” He didn’t ask it like a challenge, but rather like a real question, as if he desperately needed that answer but didn’t know what it was.
And there was only one answer that would work. “You’remine,” I told him. “You’re the person who dragged me kicking and screaming into this world, who changed where I was headed when I didn’t think anything could.”
He blinked slowly, then, after a moment, frowned. “Ava?”
I leaned in to kiss him, wanting to prove it was me, but when I did, I tumbled forward into the empty darkness.
Was that a good sign? Did that mean he’d traversed the abyss around limbo? That he’d broken through and reached the other side?
I wanted to know, but I had no time to worry.
Instead, a roar I recognized echoed through the darkness, so loud I pressed my hands over my ears to try and block it out.
And in front of me?
A scene somehow even worse than Kase, perhaps because I hadn’t been forced to witness Kase’s pain, but only to hear it.
Troy was on the ground, blood covering him, a body clutched in his arms, his body shifted and crazed.
Troy cradled the body of his murdered mate.
