squinted at him. Then I spoke carefully and slowly. “If you don’t take care of yourself and act like a sane person,” I said, “maybe we’ll find out.”
He scowled and started to speak, his expression darkening.
“No,” I said simply. “No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to go into an emo vampire angst spiral over this. Because that’s selfish, and you can’t afford to think that way. Not anymore.”
He stared at me for a while, his expression furious, then thoughtful, then disturbed.
Waves rolled in on the beach.
“I have to think of them,” he said.
“Good man would,” I said.
His grey eyes stared out at the lake. “Everything is going to change,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m scared,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Something in his body language relaxed, and suddenly he was just my brother again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That I got edgy. I … don’t like to talk vampire stuff with you.”
“You’d rather pretend we were just normal brothers, with normal problems,” I said.
“Wouldn’t you?” he asked.
I squinted down at my feet for a while. “Maybe. But you can’t ignore things that are real just because they’re uncomfortable. I’ll sit on you and make you take care of yourself if I have to. But it’s probably better for them if you do it.”
He nodded. “Probably. I have a solution in mind,” he said. “I’ll work on it. Good enough?”
I raised both of my hands, palms out. “I’m not your dad,” I said. Then it was my turn to frown. “Your dad’s side of the family going to be an issue?”
“When aren’t they an issue?”
“Heh,” I said. Silence stretched. Over the lake, the sky began to swell with the first faint band of deep orange. It had already gotten to the skyscrapers behind us. The light moved steadily down the buildings’ sides.
“Sometimes,” Thomas said, “I hate what I am. I hate being me.”
“Maybe it’s time to work on that,” I said to him. “Isn’t really the kind of thing you want to teach to a little kid.”
He glowered at me. Then he said, “When the hell did you get deep?”
“Through experience, wisdom I have earned,” I said in Yoda’s voice. But it tickled my throat weirdly and made me start coughing. I dealt with that for longer than I should have needed to and was straightening up again when Thomas said, his tone suddenly tighter, “Harry.”
I looked up to see a young man approaching us.
Carlos Ramirez was of average height, maybe of a little more than average muscle. He was filling out, getting that solid adult look to him, though for some reason I still expected to see a gangly kid in his early twenties whenever I saw him. He’d grown his dark hair out longer. His skin was bronzed from inclination and the sun. He walked with difficulty, limping and leaning on a thick cane carved with symbols—his wizard’s staff. He wore jeans and a tank top and a light jacket. Ramirez was solid, a proven fighter, a good man to have at your back, and was one of a very few people on the White Council of Wizardry whom I considered a friend.
“Harry,” he said. He nodded warily at Thomas. “Raith.”
My brother nodded back. “Been a while.”
“Since the Deeps,” Ramirez agreed.
“Carlos,” I said. “How’s your back?”
“I know when it’s going to rain now,” he said, flashing me a quick grin. “Won’t be dancing much for a while. But I won’t miss that damned chair.”
He held up a hand. I bumped fists with him. “What brings you out from the coast?”
“Council business,” he said.
Thomas nodded and said, “I’ll go.”
“No need,” Ramirez said. “This is going public this morning. McCoy thought it would be good for someone you knew to tell you, Harry.”
I grunted and unfastened the damned weighted vest. White Council business, typically, gave me a headache. “What is it this time?”
“Peace talks,” Ramirez said.
I arched an eyebrow. “What, seriously? With the Fomor?”
The supernatural world had been kind of topsy-turvy lately. Some lunatic had managed to wipe out the Red Court of Vampires completely, and the resulting vacuum had destabilized balances of power that were centuries old. The biggest result of the chaos was that the Fomor, an undersea power hardly anyone had spoken about during my lifetime, had risen up with a vengeance, taking territory from various powers and wreaking havoc on ordinary humans—mostly the poor, migrants, people without many champions to stand for them.
“A convocation of the Unseelie Accord signatories,” Ramirez confirmed. “Every major power is coming to the meeting. Apparently,