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  She took the words like a punch to the gut, and had to clamp her mouth shut not to shout at him to get out of her house. Instead, she contented herself with glaring at his back as he methodically walked from room to room on the first floor, then the second, before finally climbing to the attic. He examined each room again while going down to the basement. When he returned to the living room where Claire waited, he shook his head.

  "It seems your guest has left. What a shame."

  He tucked the stake and vial back into slots at his belt, and pulled out from inside his jacket a small plastic bag filled with a fine powder. Claire stepped out of his way as he walked to the front door. He opened it wide to sprinkle powder over the threshold.

  "So, any reason why you invited a bloodsucker into your house?” he asked, throwing Claire a quick glance. “You're not feeling suicidal, are you?"

  Her fists closed tight and she clenched her teeth not to interrupt him as he started chanting the spell that would make her home safe again. She would have given anything for another Special Enforcer to be there at that instant. Finally, he was done, and he looked at her with hard eyes.

  "If this was some twisted way to get back at me, like you did when you went to the police, you can stop before you get hurt. It's not going to work, just like your big mouth act was for nothing."

  She laughed incredulously. She wasn't surprised he knew she had talked to the police, he had to have figured out why he was being investigated, but what he thought her motives were just proved how little he knew her. And for him to pretend he didn't care about her inviting vampires in her home while looking at her as though she had debased herself was just hilarious.

  "Get back at you? A bit self-centered of you, wouldn't you say? And it's not like I called you to do that spell. You're the one who decided to come over and check what I was up to. Now you know. So get out of my house and be sure to send the bill by mail, because that vamp isn't the only one I don't want to see here again."

  To watch him step over the powdered line he had drawn over the threshold was one of the most liberating spectacles Claire had ever witnessed.

  "You'll get yourself hurt, Claire,” he warned her as she closed the door on him, and raised his voice to make himself heard. “Don't bother looking for me when you do."

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  Chapter Twelve

  From behind the living room curtains, Claire watched a clearly fuming Jonas stalk back to his car and pull away with the screech of tires on asphalt. Putting him firmly out of her mind, she retraced his steps, going from room to room and searching for a goodbye note, or anything that would have made the whole encounter with Matthew tangible. She found nothing. Even the picture albums he had been looking at in the morning were perfectly aligned on their shelf. If she hadn't known he had been there for the best part of a night and day, she wouldn't have guessed anyone had been there. She finished by going up to the attic. He might have returned there and left a note for her. She wasn't sure why she hoped so much for a note. An apology for his lie would have been nice.

  The old suitcase was still open, the letters back inside it. She sat down on the floor, like Matthew had a few hours earlier, and picked up a letter. She had read them all, once, when she had been fifteen or sixteen, the same summer she had found and read her mother's stash of romance novels.

  Left alone while her parents worked during the summer, she had spent several days in the too hot attic, reading the age-old letters and wishing she would someday find someone as romantic as her great, great grandfather had been. Someone who would write to her dozens and dozens of letters, all of them speaking of his love even when he was doing something as boring as describing the weather or a stroll out at night. She didn't remember everything she had read, but she was sure of one thing, and this one thing was what had convinced her that Matthew had been lying. Never, in any of the letters, did the writer allude to vampires or to being one himself.

  Idly, she pulled a letter out of an envelope and started reading it, although the words did not truly reach her mind as she wondered if it was possible that, just maybe, Matthew may have been telling the truth. As she reached the signature, she stared at it for a long while before shaking her head at her own gullibility. She was being silly. He had found the letters by snooping around, and by some coincidence the name at the foot of each of them had been the same as the one he had given her. He must have had quite a chuckle while coming up with his little story. As to why he had done it ... Claire had been asking herself the same question since he had first approached her.

  Putting the letter back, she straightened the contents of the suitcase, making neat piles of envelopes that would probably scatter again when she closed the lid. She was about to do just that when a nagging feeling struck her.

  Frowning, she looked through the envelopes once more, looking for a piece of paper thicker than the others, yellowed by time, with scalloped edges and the beautiful smiles of her great grand parents. When, years earlier, she had assembled the pictures of her family in albums under the supervision of her mother, they had decided together to leave this picture with the letters.

  And now, it was gone.

  She looked again, ruining her careful piles, emptying the suitcase until there was no doubt that the picture wasn't there anymore. She was cursing Matthew's name when she left the attic. She couldn't believe he had stolen the photograph from her. She found it even more unbelievable that she was surprised he had. He was a vampire, after all. He had blatantly lied to her. Stealing was only a step further. She probably ought to have considered herself lucky that he hadn't taken anything more than a picture.

  * * * *

  As night started falling, Matthew figured that Claire wouldn't be long to come back now and probably with unpleasant company. While he was fairly confident that a Special Enforcer wouldn't find cause to stake him, some Enforcers did not always play by the law. It was probably best if he left before she returned, as she had demanded.

  He cleaned up the traces of his passage, placing the picture albums back on the shelves and the coffee mugs in the sink. Then he called a cab, giving the operator special instructions. He had done this before, although not often. Some prey were lovely enough to make him forget about passing time, and he had found himself still in their homes after sunrise, in need of a way to safely return to his lair.

  Twenty minutes later, a cab with blacked out windows arrived. The driver knew to walk to the door with a large blanket to shield Matthew from the descending sun. Matthew engaged the latch before he closed the door behind him, making sure it would lock, and hurried to the cab. His hand kept coming back to the piece of paper he held inside his shirt against his chest. Claire would probably be upset he had stolen the picture, but he had known he would take it with him since he had laid eyes on it upon opening the suitcase.

  It wasn't entirely by chance that he had discovered the letters. He had climbed to the attic to try and figure out more pieces of the puzzle that Claire was turning out to be, and immediately the barest thread of a familiar scent had struck him: his own. It was so faint, so faded that he might not have noticed if he hadn't known his own scent so well. He had followed that tenuous line to the aged suitcase, and crouched down to flip it open. The letters were his own, and he had been unable to resist a trip back through his memories and his first years as a vampire.

  "Sir? We're here."

  The driver's words jolted Matthew back to the present, and he fished a few bills out of his wallet to pay him. The sun had practically disappeared below the horizon, and he didn't need help reaching the front steps of the building without incident. For the first time since morning, he allowed himself to become aware of the hunger that was screaming in him, and hurried to his apartment where blood waited. He wasn't all that surprised to discover that Diane was there when he stepped in, and he said a distracted hello to her on his way to the kitchen. The bag of blood took only moments to warm up, and soon he was seated at the bar, a hot
mug in one hand and a faded picture in the other.

  "Hungry?” Diane commented as she walked in and sat near him. “I guess that answers my question as to what happened with your girl."

  She reached over and gently took the picture from him.

  "You always were a handsome man,” she said, the fondness clear in her voice and in her touch when she wove the fingers of her free hand through his hair.

  He closed his eyes and tilted his head toward her, following her touch, but did not reply. He hadn't taken the picture to look at himself, and Diane knew it as well as he did.

  "I'll stay in tonight,” he said after taking a few more sips. “I don't feel like hunting."

  A disapproving cluck of Diane's tongue told him what she thought of that. Her hand left his head to squeeze his shoulder instead.

  "That girl is messing with your head, Childe,” she said coolly. “You're not getting anywhere with the S.E. and my patience is coming to an end. We will not stay in this town much longer."

  There was a tone of finality to her words that Matthew knew better than to oppose. She had spoken the same way before. The last time had been five years earlier, and while Matthew had not been keen on leaving town—who knew what could have happened to Claire, with her boyfriend being a Special Enforcer?—he had dutifully followed his Sire.

  This time, though, he found that he didn't want to object to the idea of leaving. He had given himself to Claire, had told her who he was in a way that he had never expressed aloud before, and she had all but laughed at him. She had called him a liar, and refused to hear the truth in his words. She had hurt him far more than he would have thought possible. Until Claire, protecting Helena's family had always been about a duty; she had changed that without him realizing it, and now he wasn't even able to protect her anymore.

  "Where do you want to go when we leave?” he asked.

  Diane gave him a beaming smile. “Anywhere. Everywhere. You'll choose."

  She returned the picture to him, and Matthew traced the image of Helena with a finger.

  "Back home, maybe,” he murmured. “It's been a long time since I visited her grave."

  Diane moved so quickly that she had left the kitchen before he raised his head again.

  "I'm going to hunt,” she called out, her voice suddenly icy. “I'll see you tomorrow."

  Matthew shrugged, unsure why her mood had changed so abruptly. Even after living with her for more than a century, he didn't pretend to always understand his Sire.

  Setting another bag of blood to warm, he walked to his bedroom and pulled out a metal box from beneath his bed. Its contents had traveled with him all over the world, and he had each word, each comma committed to memory. If they didn't convince Claire that he had been telling the truth, nothing would.

  * * * *

  It was late that night when a knock on her door woke Claire up in a jump. She had lain down on the sofa beneath a thick quilt to watch some senseless television show that would not require her to think in any way, and fallen asleep halfway through it. The show was long over now, she realized when she glanced at the time, and it was no hour for anyone to be visiting her. Unless, of course, her visitor did not follow the same schedule humans did.

  With a tight knot forming in her throat, she wrapped the quilt over her shoulders and took light steps toward the door. She was safe, she repeated to herself under her breath. No vampire could walk inside her home without her express permission to do so. Even if it were Matthew on the other side of the door, he would not be able to come in to try to convince her again that these fantastic confabulations of his were true.

  Yet when she cautiously opened the door, she was disappointed to discover that no one was there. She almost closed the door again before noticing the simple, full-sized envelope lying on her doormat. She picked it up after looking around to check that no one was hiding just out of sight. It seemed to be filled to its maximum, its sides bulging. Her name was scrawled over the top of it, and beneath it, a smaller message was impossible to read without more light. Claire closed and locked the door before taking the envelope to the kitchen and its bright lights. She knew who had left the envelope the instant she read the message.

  "I thought I owed you something in exchange for the picture. Now maybe you'll believe me."

  With some trepidation, Claire opened the envelope and tilted its content onto the counter. Dozens of letters fell out, spreading on the tiles in front of her. Putting the envelope to one side, she picked up a letter and read the address. Written in an elegant cursive handwriting, it spelled out Matthew's name and an address in Dublin. Claire's hands were trembling when she pulled a letter out and unfolded it. She started reading sotto voce, her eyes easily sliding over the aged paper.

  "My dearest Matthew,

  A second winter is starting since your departure, and I find myself saddened that you will not be here to enjoy the fireside with me. Our house seems terribly empty, without you.

  Mother has been visiting me every day for the past week, and trying to convince me to meet this gentleman, a son of her friend. I know already what she has in mind, and..."

  She stopped reading at that point, remembering something, and stood abruptly. She needed only a couple of minutes to climb to the attic and return with the suitcase. She laid it on the table next to the pile of letters and flipped the top open. After a few minutes of scanning through the letters inside, she found the one she needed, the one that referred to the cold winter air and the pleasantness of fireplaces, and hinted that if Helena wanted to meet other men, and maybe remarry, Matthew would be happy for her. She compared the dates, and sure enough Matthew's had been composed less than two weeks after Helena's.

  Feverishly, she began pulling the letters out of their envelopes and organizing them by date. She mixed the letters from the suitcase and the ones she had just received, finding it easy to order them in a correspondence that had gone back and forth for more than thirty years, to the rhythm of four or five letters from each in any given year.

  It took her almost an hour to accomplish her task, but when she was finally done, she had in front of her three stacks of about a hundred letters each, the oldest at the very top of the closest pile in front of her. She picked up the stack and carried it almost reverently to her living room, where she sat down in her favorite armchair and started reading.

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  Chapter Thirteen

  Matthew's hands moved from her waist to the small of her back, pressing her closer to him, and Claire sighed against his bare chest. This had to be heaven.

  The music she had turned on when they had walked into her house had long since stopped playing, and yet they kept swaying together, slow and gentle, enjoying the quiet and each other's presence after a couple of hours in the loud and crowded ambiance of the club.

  A little earlier, Claire had unbuttoned Matthew's shirt and slipped it off his shoulders just so she could enjoy the feel of his skin against her cheek. He had retaliated by pulling free the laces that held her top together from the back, and it had joined his shirt on the floor. Eventually, she knew, they would divest each other of the rest of their clothes and she would lead him to the bedroom. There was no rush, however. They had the night in front of them—they had forever.

  * * * *

  Maggie paused, the coffee cup never reaching her lips, and looked at Claire through wide eyes.

  "OK, I take it back. I don't want to know more about those dreams of yours.” Placing the cup down on the table in front of her, she fanned herself with her hand. “Wow. Is it me or did the heat jump up suddenly?"

  Claire gave her friend a lopsided smile. “And that's nothing. I gave you the PG version."

  She looked around them meaningfully. The coffee shop was full and buzzing with customers. It was the first time since Claire had found a new job that they had met for coffee after work, and Maggie had started asking Claire about it. The discussion, however, had quickly shifted toward Claire's vis
its to On The Edge, Matthew, his stories, and the dreams that had plagued Claire since she had last seen him. Maggie had been shocked, at first, but she had quickly shown acceptance and curiosity, asking questions and pushing Claire to say much more than she had ever wanted to tell.

  Maggie picked up her cup again and took a long sip, her eyes never leaving Claire. Then she leaned forward intently, all mirth gone as she turned very serious.

  "Listen, I'm no shrink but it looks pretty clear that this vamp is still on your mind."

  Claire hid a snort in her cup. It was quite an understatement. That she was obsessed with him was closer to the truth.

  At first, the dreams had been simple. They merely repeated the events that had led to Claire meeting Matthew. She watched him dance, as she had for nights, and he finally came to her, spoke to her. Then they had changed, and with a twist on the real events’ timeline he told her about knowing her great grandmother. She believed him right away, in these fantasies, and asked the hundreds of questions that had come to her mind when she had read his and Helena's letters. His answers always made sense, always explained everything to perfection, but she never remembered them in the morning, only the feeling that, if she had simply given his story a chance rather than refusing to hear him, she might have received an answer to the questions that now plagued her mind.

  These simple, innocent dreams hadn't lasted, however, and in the past week they had evolved into things that could have happened if Matthew had been any less of a gentleman, or if Claire hadn't been so wary of him—and of herself. Possibilities presented themselves to her, night after night, and all of these dreams ended with her sleeping with Matthew.

  Sometimes, they touched for what seemed like forever, teasing each other almost until completion and back, before rutting as wildly as animals. Sometimes, they clawed at each other's clothes, but when Matthew finally pushed into Claire, when she finally guided him inside her body, things slowed down, became tender, and they made love as though they had eternity in front of them.