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I give him a small smile. “I know. It’s not your fault. Even though all these past lives are still so new to me, I’ve made peace with their passing along the way.”
His brow quirks up. “Even Dahlia’s?”
I swallow, my throat suddenly thick. “Maybe not yet. But I will. That’s why I’m here. To get closure.”
“Is that all?” he asks carefully, eyeing me with discernment. “Just closure? You’re not still in love with him?”
I let out a pitiful laugh, my heart feeling pinched and squeezed beneath my ribs. “How can I not be? I remember Dahlia’s last moments. I remember being in love with him as Dahlia, and I remember being in love with him as Lucy and Mina.”
“Moments before he killed you.”
“Not something I need to be reminded of.”
“But true all the same. So you do love him, even now as Rose. Very interesting.” He strokes his chin as he thinks. “One would have thought the last twenty-one years in a new life with no memory of the others might have tempered that love a bit.”
I nod slowly. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
He gives his head a shake, making a low sound of disappointment. “Solon explained to you how Valtu is now, did he not? He doesn’t remember you. He purposefully drank the formula to rid you from his mind, from his heart. The man you love, the relationship you had, that doesn’t exist anymore. Not to him.”
I can’t help but flinch as if Abe just slapped me across the face.
“Sorry,” he quickly says, licking his lips. “That wasn’t very kind of me. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. You’ve come such a long way and I’m afraid you’re not going to get what you’ve come here for.”
He looks around the airport, as if suddenly remembering where we are, and puts his hand at my back. “Come on, I parked in the short-term lot and I don’t want to get towed. We’ll get you into Germany, if this is still what you want to do.”
I give him a steady look. “You know I do.” Like hell I’m turning back now. “You think any of this is scaring me off?”
He gives me a sheepish smile, awe momentarily flitting across his face. “And there you have it. There’s the girl I know. Coming through after all this time.”
We start walking toward the exit. “Or maybe it’s just me, Rose Harper, and I’ve always been like this,” I point out. “You don’t know.” I may have lived many lives before, but the life I’m currently living is still my own, and still valid.
“Mmm. Very true. You know, one day, if you’re ever up to it, I would love to have you at the lab in Oxford.”
I stop dead in my tracks and give him an incredulous look. “You want to study me in a lab!?” My heart skips a beat. I’m remembering why Bellamy wanted Lenore, my mother, Dylan, and Leif. All for tests. Why not me next? I have the same genes that they do.
Good lord, is Van Helsing in on it?
His brows furrow at my reaction. “What’s wrong? I would just love to explore your past lives, your reincarnation. Why you and no one else.”
“How do you know there isn’t anyone else who has been reincarnated in the same body?” I say, folding my arms, still feeling cagey about all of this. “And what do you think science can do? You can’t measure God that way.”
He chuckles. “That I know, but it doesn’t stop us from trying.”
“You know, there are other reasons why scientists want to study me,” I say, keeping my voice down, though the passengers milling about aren’t paying us any attention.
He frowns for a moment then his eyes widen. “Ah. Yes. Of course. I take it you know what happened to your brother, Leif,” he says solemnly. “Another regret of mine was being unable to convince Valtu to help. So strange how your lives are so intertwined, even moments after your death.”
I don’t want to think about Valtu somehow turning his back on my family.
I ignore it. “Do you know where Leif is now? Do you know if I’m in any danger, if my brother Dylan is? My mom?”
His head shakes and we walk through the doors to the outside, the frigid winter mountain blasting my face. Even though the cold doesn’t hurt me as a vampire, it’s still a shock to my senses and I’m finally registering that I’m in another continent entirely, in the Alps. I blink at the cloudy yet harsh light and take out my sunglasses, slipping them on.
“Bellamy’s trail went cold not long after the abduction,” Abe says.
“But how can that be? How can he have been gone for over twenty-one years without a trace?”
“I wish I knew,” he says, guiding me toward the neatly plowed parking lot across the road. “The way I see it is it’s not necessarily a bad thing. He’s leaving us alone. If he had tried to come after any vampire again, we would know about it.”
