jerked at the word “thoughts.”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“And why are there so few of us? I used to read accounts of mortals dealing with our kind all over Europe. Now there are six—five, with Edward gone.” I paused, remembering a painful talk I’d had with Edward a hundred years ago. “What happened to the rest? Edward told me . . . he thought Julian killed some of us, but he didn’t know why.”
“Stop it, Leisha.” She closed her eyes.
“Don’t you ever wonder why we all came from the same generation? That we were all made within thirty years of each other?”
“It doesn’t matter!”
“How can you say that?” I was angry. It seemed so foolish to fear discussing our own state of existence. “You think you’re some woman of the world and I’m this ignorant little girl who doesn’t know anything beyond caring for an old man. But you follow Julian’s and Philip’s laws. You don’t ask any questions, and you’ve been rotting in this house by yourself because they said you should!”
My outburst disturbed her, but I realized that even if she did know more, she wasn’t going to tell me. Opening her eyes again, she stared at me—as if she was frightened.
I got up and moved to her. “You’re glad we’re here, aren’t you? Otherwise you never would have called Philip.”
“What do you want me to say?” Her low, breathy voice shook slightly. “That I didn’t expect things to turn out like this? Okay, I didn’t. That I’m scared you might take William and leave? Okay, I am. Is that what you want?”
I got down on my knees and laid my head in her lap. “We’re not going anywhere if you want us to stay. But those cops are still looking for me.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Could that man who’s tracking you be one of us?”
“No, I’d have picked that up. He’s confused.”
“I don’t think he’ll find you here, then. Not if he has to be in the same room.”
She reached out and began stroking my hair. I stopped talking and enjoyed her attention. Her emotions toward me were difficult to read, but I seemed to fit in a niche somewhere between sister and daughter. William had become father or grandfather. We were forming a family. I thought it natural. She thought it strange.
“Let’s get dressed and go hunting,” I said suddenly. “We need to get out for a while.”
“Should we wake William and feed him first?”
Her concern for the old man touched me. Last week, she and I had set up rabbit hutches in the backyard. Her willingness to help with something so menial surprised me. But she had simply said, “It’s been a long time since I built anything.”
“No,” I said to her question about feeding William. “Let him sleep. I’ll feed him when we get back.”
Maggie called for a cab. Twenty minutes later, we were both made-up, miniskirted, and out the door. We decided to head back for Madison.
The streets downtown were busy. I didn’t feel like sitting in a bar, so we just walked around talking to people we knew. Maggie was still a bit shaky about our earlier conversation. I didn’t want to hurt or confuse her, but she could be such a sheep sometimes.
The streetlights felt good.
“Why did you leave Philip?” I asked suddenly. I’m sure she was sick of my questions, but now that the floodgates were open, I couldn’t seem to stop.
She didn’t brush me off. Instead, she kept walking, looking for words. “You had to know him before he was turned. We had one of those stupid, storybook romances where he was willing to give up his title and his family home just to marry me.” She smiled cynically. “It was all quite romantic unless you knew the whole truth. His father was a bastard, beat him with a riding crop from the day he learned to walk . . . even burned him once with a lit cigar. His mother was no help, too spineless to do anything besides needlepoint. Philip needed an escape.”
“And he picked you?”
“Yes, and then he disappeared for a few months. I couldn’t stop crying. But he showed up in my bedroom in Gascony one night with white skin and wild eyes. He couldn’t remember my name.”
“After he was turned? Why?”
“I don’t know. But for some reason he’d lost all memories of his mortal life. Perhaps because he’d been so unhappy, but my Philip, my schoolgirl’s-wet-dream Philip had died, leaving a sorry stranger