shadow between streetlights, and leaned one shoulder against the wall of the building. He bowed his head, and stayed that way for a minute, then two.
I waited. I didn’t need to ask my brother what was wrong. The display of strength and power he’d used on Madeline had cost him energy—energy that other vampires gained by feeding on victims, as Madeline had done to that poor sap inside. He wasn’t upset by what had happened in Zero. He was hungry.
Thomas’s struggle against his own hunger was complicated, difficult, and maybe impossible to sustain. That never stopped him from trying, though. The rest of the Raith family thought he was insane.
But I got it.
He walked back over to me a minute later, his cool features distant and untouchable as Antarctic mountains.
He fell into pace beside me as we began walking down the street toward the lot where he’d parked his car.
“Ask you a question?” I said.
He nodded.
“The White Court only get burned when they try to feed on someone touched by true love, right?”
“It isn’t as simple as that,” Thomas said quietly. “It’s got to do with how much control the hunger has over you when you touch.”
I grunted. “But when they feed, the hunger’s in control.”
Thomas nodded slowly.
“So why’d Madeline try to feed on Justine? She had to know it would hurt her.”
“Same reason I do,” Thomas said. “She can’t help it. It’s reflex.”
I frowned. “I don’t get it.”
He was quiet long enough to make me think he wasn’t going to say anything, before he finally spoke. “Justine and I were together for years. And she . . . means a lot to me. When I’m near her, I can’t think about anything else but her. And when I touch her, everything in me wants to be nearer to her.”
“Including your hunger,” I said quietly.
He nodded. “We agree on that point, my demon and I. So I can’t touch Justine without it being . . . close to the surface, I suppose you could call it.”
“And it gets burned,” I said.
He nodded. “Madeline is the other end of the spectrum. She thinks she should get to feed on anyone she wants, anywhere, anytime. She doesn’t see other people. She just sees food. Her hunger controls her completely.” He smiled a bitter little smile. “So for her it’s reflex, just like for me.”
“You’re different. For her it’s everyone,” I said, “not only Justine.”
He shrugged. “I don’t care about everyone. I care about Justine.”
“You’re different,” I said.
Thomas turned to face me, his expression rigid and cold. “Shut up, Harry.”
“But—”
His voice dropped to a low snarl. “Shut. Up.”
It was a little scary.
He stared hard at me for a while longer, then shook his head and exhaled slowly. “I’ll get the car. Wait here.”
“Sure,” I said.
He walked away on silent feet, his hands in his pockets, his head bowed. Every woman he passed, and some of the men, turned their heads to watch him go by. He ignored them.
I got a lot of looks, too, but that was because I was standing on a sidewalk near a lot of Chicago’s night spots on a hot summer night wearing a long leather coat and carrying a quarterstaff carved with mystic runes. Thomas’s looks had all been subtitled: Yum. My looks all said: Weirdo.
Tough to believe I was coming out ahead on that one.
While I waited, my instincts nagged me again, a hairs-on-the-back-of-my-neck certainty that someone was focused on me. My instincts had been on a streak, so I paid attention to them, quietly preparing my shield bracelet as I turned my head in a slow, casual look up and down the street. I didn’t spot anybody, but my vision sort of flickered as it passed over an alley across the street. I focused on that point intently for a moment, concentrating, and was able to make out a vaguely human shape there.
Then the flicker was abruptly replaced with the form of Anastasia Luccio, who raised a hand and beckoned me.
Yikes.
I jaywalked over to her, timing my crossing in between the occasional passing car, and we took several steps back into the alley.
“Evening, Stacy,” I said.
She turned to me and, in a single motion, drew a curved saber from a sheath at her hip and produced a gun in her other hand. The tip of the blade menaced my face, and I had to jerk my head back, which put me off balance, and I wound up with my shoulders pressed up against a wall.
Anastasia arched