speed up, my heart beat faster, the panicky traits that always came back when I remembered. My knees drew up and pressed together. “I guess I was five,” I babbled, talking faster and faster, “I know you can tell, he never actually, ah, screwed me, but he did other stuff,” and now my hands were shaking in front of my eyes where I held them to shield them from Bill’s gaze. “And the worst thing, Bill, the worst thing,” I went on, just unable to stop, “is that every time he came to visit, I always knew what he was going to do because I could read his mind! And there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it!” I clamped my hands over my mouth to make myself shut up. I wasn’t supposed to talk about it. I rolled over onto my stomach to conceal myself, and held my body absolutely rigid.

After a long time, I felt Bill’s cool hand on my shoulder. It lay there, comforting.

“This was before your parents died?” he said in his usual calm voice. I still couldn’t look at him.

“Yes.”

“You told your mama? She did nothing?”

“No. She thought I was dirty minded, or that I’d found some book at the library that taught me something she didn’t feel I was ready to know.” I could remember her face, framed in hair about two shades darker than my medium blond. Her face pinched with distaste. She had come from a very conservative family, and any public display of affection or any mention of a subject she thought indecent was flatly discouraged.

“I wonder that she and my father seemed happy,” I told my vampire. “They were so different.” Then I saw how ludicrous my saying that was. I rolled over to my side. “As if we aren’t,” I told Bill, and tried to smile. Bill’s face was quite still, but I could see a muscle in his neck jumping.

“Did you tell your father?”

“Yes, right before he died. I was too embarrassed to talk to him about it when I was younger; and Mother didn’t believe me. But I couldn’t stand it anymore, knowing I was going to see my great-uncle Bartlett at least two weekends out of every month when he drove up to visit.”

“He still lives?”

“Uncle Bartlett? Oh, sure. He’s Gran’s brother, and Gran was my dad’s mother. My uncle lives in Shreveport. But when Jason and I went to live with Gran, after my parents died, the first time Uncle Bartlett came to her house I hid. When she found me and asked me why, I told her. And she believed me.” I felt the relief of that day all over again, the beautiful sound of my grandmother’s voice promising me I’d never have to see her brother again, that he would never never come to the house.

And he hadn’t. She had cut off her own brother to protect me. He’d tried with Gran’s daughter, Linda, too, when she was a small girl, but my grandmother had buried the incident in her own mind, dismissed it as something misunderstood. She had told me that she’d never left her brother alone with Linda at any time after that, had almost quit inviting him to her home, while not quite letting herself believe that he’d touched her little girl’s privates.

“So he’s a Stackhouse, too?”

“Oh, no. See, Gran became a Stackhouse when she married, but she was a Hale before.” I wondered at having to spell this out for Bill. He was sure Southern enough, even if he was a vampire, to keep track of a simple family relationship like that.

Bill looked distant, miles away. I had put him off with my grim nasty little story, and I had chilled my own blood, that was for sure.

“Here, I’ll leave,” I said and slid out of bed, bending to retrieve my clothes. Quicker than I could see, he was off the bed and taking the clothes from my hands.

“Don’t leave me now,” he said. “Stay.”

“I’m a weepy ol’ thing tonight.” Two tears trickled down my cheeks, and I smiled at him.

His fingers wiped the tears from my face, and his tongue traced their marks.

“Stay with me till dawn,” he said.

“But you have to get in your hidey hole by then.”

“My what?”

“Wherever you spend the day. I don’t want to know where it is!” I held up my hands to emphasize that. “But don’t you have to get in there before it’s even a little light?”

“Oh,” he said, “I’ll