the ballroom wall and looked into one of the mirrors, staring back at his visage as if it were unfamiliar.
“I have done things.” He shook his head. “Throughout my life, I have worked to build communities, to strengthen individuals. I ran for mayor here, in this time and this city, to help those efforts. But somewhere I fell off course. I endangered people who trusted me. I promoted the sale of drugs to vampires.” He put a hand to his temple. “It made sense at the time?”
He met my gaze in the mirror. “I owe you a specific apology, Ballerina. Particularly for the things that happened in my office. For putting you through hell. I had information. About your father.” Seth glanced at the others in the room. “About the manner in which you were made a vampire,” he carefully said. “I thought you had the right to know.”
“At the fund-raiser,” I said. “You said you wanted to talk to me. That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”
Seth nodded. “There was never time to say the words, and when the confession finally came out, it came out in violence. It caused violence.” He looked away. “Whatever her faults, Celina did not deserve to die at my hand. Or yours.”
Something clenched in my gut, the monumental regret that I’d taken a life, even one as wasted as Celina’s. She hadn’t been the first I’d killed, but she was undoubtedly the most memorable.
“And there’s nothing we can do now to change what happened,” I added.
“Not to change it,” Seth said, “but perhaps to atone for it.”
“Those actions may not have been yours,” Ethan said. “If Dominic was somehow inside you, leading you astray…”
“Maybe it was Dominic. Maybe it was the slow, creeping influence of the Maleficium. Maybe it was just me. But I have never killed. And I would never do so. He must be stopped. I’ll help however I can. I will make my atonement in that fashion. I will stand here, and I will help you face him.”
There was strength in his eyes, but I knew it was going to take a lot of time before he was truly healed again. And even if his scar faded, he would be tortured for a very long time.
“What did you have in mind?” Luc asked. “Do you know how to stop him?”
“I do not. I’d hoped your magical friend might have some idea. Her people bound Dominic and the others into the Maleficium in the first place. Perhaps we could bind him there again?”
I broke the bad news. “The Maleficium was destroyed when you split apart. But surely there’s something else we can do. If he was born, he can die, just like the rest of us.”
“We saw the footage from his attack at the lockup,” Luc said. “He’s powerful. Strong. Bullets don’t affect him.”
“Bullets don’t affect us, either,” I pointed out. “He may be strong, but we already know he’s susceptible to magic—that’s why the conjuring spell worked. What magic could we work now to bring him down again? Could we create another Maleficium?”
“The Maleficium was the work of hundreds of sorcerers over decades,” Seth said, raining on my parade. “That wouldn’t be possible. Not in the near term.”
And not before he killed more people. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
“There must be a way,” I said. “There will be a way. There were battles against demons—Carthage, Sodom, Gomorrah. There must have been some fatalities on the demons’ side.”
Ethan nodded. “We have to try something. We are immortal. Better we take a chance on putting him away than humans he could so easily injure. Or worse.” Ethan looked at Luc. “Find Paige and get her and Seth in a room together to discuss the magical underpinnings.”
Luc nodded, then held out an arm to guide Seth back to the door. Seth walked back to us and picked up his cassock from the ground. He stopped when he reached me.
“I am sorry.”
I wasn’t sure I owed him honesty, but I decided I needed it. “I killed someone there, I watched my lover staked through the heart, and you made me believe my father paid him to make me a vampire. Forgiveness will take time.”
He nodded. “Then I accept the challenge of my contrition.” He put a hand on my shoulder, then walked past me toward the door, lemons and sugar in his wake.
Lindsey leaned toward me. “Is it wrong that I really want to eat a cookie right now?”