the corners of her eyes with her pinky, careful not to smudge her makeup, he reached across and touched her arm.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right.” She took a deep breath. “It just . . . wasn’t meant to be.”
The pain in her face was so difficult to witness, and in that moment, he hated the aristocracy. Undoubtedly the male had heard about the broken arrangement and hadn’t wanted to deal with the baggage.
“The glymera is a bad place,” he muttered.
“I’m very sorry about your father,” she said roughly.
He opened his mouth to share that sentiment out of a sense of propriety—and couldn’t get the lie out. “Thank you. It was rather unexpected.”
“Life is unexpected.”
“Too true.”
If anyone would have told him a year ago that the pair of them would be sitting here, unchaperoned, after his father’s death, with him now a soldier and her unmated? He’d have you’re-nuts’d the person.
As the silence stretched out, he wanted to ask her more about her male, and he had a feeling that she wanted to know more about what had happened to his sire. But they were both lost in their own mourning, grief like a third wheel who was taking up all the conversational airspace in the room.
The two of them just sat across from each other, the tea she had made them both untouched and gradually losing its warmth.
Until it was stone cold.
* * *
Dawn crept up slowly on Caldwell, the sun’s rays ushering in the start of the workday for the human population, the end of the work night for vampires. The fact that the glowing bastard’s arrival took a while was the only thing good about winter as far as Vishous was concerned.
He got back to the Brotherhood’s crib from that LARPers club downtown just in time, and as he re-formed at the mansion’s cathedral-worthy front entrance, his retinas burned and his skin prickled under his leathers. Overhead, the sky was thick with clouds, but that didn’t mean shit considering the stakes at play. You got caught outside? One slice of blue heaven peeking through all the overcast and you needed to get the barbecue sauce and an urn for your ashes.
Cranking open the heavy front door, he entered the vestibule and put his mug into the security camera. Fritz did the duty on the other side, the butler’s wrinkly face stretching into a wide smile.
“Sire, welcome back!”
Okay, so, V hated cheerful people. Spunky people. Folks that would be described as “happy,” “chirpy,” “perky,” and/or “peppy.”
Especially those peppy fuckers.
But Fritz, the Brotherhood’s head of household, was another story. The old butler was just so unreservedly delighted by all the people around him. He lived to serve the needs of his masters and mistresses, and how could anyone, even a misanthropic motherf ’er like Vishous, not love the guy? After all, just because 99 percent of the mansion’s occupants could not tolerate sunlight, that didn’t mean the place couldn’t use a little sunshine. And all Fritz had to do was walk into a room, and the doggen brought that kind of warmth and optimism with him.
“How you doin’, my man?” V said as he shut the vestibule door behind himself.
“May I get for you some Grey Goose, sire?”
“Nah, that’s okay. I’ll . . .”
As the doggen’s face drooped into total, abject sorrow, V’s voice dried up. Jesus Christ, it was like he’d kicked a puppy.
“Ah, that’d be great. Thank you, I’ll take a double.”
Cue the return of that brilliant smile and the bounce in that step. “I shall make you the most perfect tumbler! Right away!”
Fritz took off for the billiards room like a winning lottery ticket had been left out on the bar, and V could only shake his head. He really didn’t want to be waited on, but for all the S&M he had enjoyed over the course of his lifetime, he couldn’t stand the pain of disappointing that doggen.
The butler was like kryptonite.
On the other side of the majestic, multicolored foyer, Last Meal was in full swing in the dining room, the members of the household sitting around that long-ass table, all kinds of doggen serving food and drink, the loud voices and raucous laughter the kind of thing that emanated outward and filled every room in the house, no matter how remote. Ordinarily, V would have headed in there, but he took out his phone and checked his texts. Yup. Jane was wrapping things up in the training center’s clinic, and then they were