and picked up the note Jason had left her that morning.
Returning to the den, she compared the handwriting on the note to the signature on the painting. They were the same.
With growing certainty she continued her search. There was a service porch off the kitchen-and a door?a locked door. She stared at it for a long moment, and then she placed her hand against the wood and knew, without doubt, that Jason was behind the door.
Getting a chair from the kitchen, she sat down to wait.
* * *
He felt her presence in the house as soon as he awoke. He'd been aware of her nearness all day, aware of the turmoil in her mind. He knew he could use the power of his mind to put her at ease, to make her forget the questions and suspicions that troubled her. But he could not do such a thing. She deserved the truth, and he would give it to her.
He shrugged the quilt off his shoulders and stood up. His feet felt weighted with lead as he climbed the narrow stairway and unlocked the door.
She would know the truth the minute she saw his face.
Leanne's heart climbed into her throat as she watched the doorknob turn and the door swing open.
"Jason."
A faintly mocking grin touched his lips as he met her gaze. "Sorry to keep you waiting so long."
"You know I was here?"
"Of course."
She glanced past him to the darkness beyond the doorway. "What's? what's down there?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"You don't believe me?" He flicked on a light switch. "Perhaps you'd care to see for yourself?"
The thought of going down those stairs filled her with dread, but she had to know, had to see for herself.
Summoning every ounce of courage she possessed, she stepped past Jason and walked slowly down the stairs, wondering, as she did so, if she was making the biggest mistake of her life. What if he followed her? If he was truly a vampire, he wouldn't want anyone to know where he rested during the day.
She paused at the foot of the stairs and looked around, but there was nothing to see, only a patchwork quilt.
And a small mound of earth. She swallowed hard. Wasn't there some kind of vampire edict that made it mandatory for the undead to rest on the soil of their native homeland?
"What were you doing down there so long?" she asked when she returned to the laundry room.
"Sleeping."
There was no emotion in his voice, no inflection of any kind; it was merely a simple statement of fact.
"I thought?"
"You thought to find a coffin." He gave a slight shrug. "I tried sleeping in one once, but I found it?" He paused a moment. "Distasteful."
"How long have you been? been a??"
"Three hundred years."
It couldn't be true. She glanced around, thinking how bizarre it was to be having such an outlandish conversation in a laundry room. And even as she tried to tell herself she must be dreaming, she knew that everything she had feared was true. She felt it in her heart, saw the truth of it in his eyes.
For the first time, she noticed how pale he was. His skin was drawn tight over the planes of his face, and there was a burning intensity in his eyes as he stared at her throat.
Unconsciously, she lifted a hand to her neck. "How could you keep such a secret?"
"How could I tell you?"
"But? we made love?" She stared at him, the horror of what she'd done making her sick inside. She'd made love to a man who was a ghoul.
The revulsion in her eyes sliced through him, and he cursed the hand of fate that had turned him into a monster, cursed the hunger that clawed at him even now, urging him to drink from. her one more time.
For a moment Jason closed his eyes. Her nearness, her goodness, reached out to him. She shouldn't be here, not now, not when the desire to feed pounded relentlessly through him. The remembered taste of her blood on his lips, warm and sweet, drew a groan from deep in his throat.
She was close, too close. Needing to put some distance between them, he went into the living room. Standing in front of the fireplace, Jason braced one arm on the mantel and stared at the ashes in the hearth. A blink of his eye brought the cold embers to life.
A sigh rose from deep within him. She knew what he was now, knew where he rested during the day,