"What did you call me?"
"Neighbor," he said quickly.
"Before that."
"Nothing."
Okay, this was too friggin' weird. And she wanted, no she needed, an explanation.
"Talon," she said, leaving the chair to stand before him. "Tell me what's going on. You know who Nynia is, don't you?"
His obsidian eyes flashed. "Do you?"
Oh God, it was true! He knew her. Somehow he remembered the past too.
He hadn't changed a bit. He couldn't be in daylight. He wasn't an American citizen and yet...
Oh, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Somehow, Talon was Speirr.
He was a vampire or an immortal or something. She knew it.
"How do you remember me?" she asked him.
"How could I ever forget you?"
She ducked his lips and pushed him back again. "Smooth, but that doesn't answer my question. There's something really odd about you, Talon. And it doesn't make sense that you are now as you were in my dreams. Not even I look the same. But you do. Why?"
Talon wanted to tell her, but couldn't find the words. After you died I sold my soul for vengeance to a Greek goddess who now owns me so that I can spend eternity hunting down and killing vampires for her. Even he had a hard time believing the truth of that statement and he'd been living the reality of it for fifteen hundred years.
She growled at him. "You're stiff again."
"Can't you just live for the moment? Accept me as I am?"
"Okay. But answer me one thing."
"What?"
"When did you graduate high school?"
He looked uncomfortable with her question. "I didn't."
"What year did you drop out then?"
Talon backed away from her. These were things he couldn't answer. Things he refused to answer.
The hurt in her eyes tugged at his heart.
"What's the deal, Talon? I'm not stupid. No one is so allergic to sunlight that they can't even walk in front of a window. And don't think it has escaped my notice that you never show your teeth. If I get too close to them when we kiss, you immediately pull away."
Talon wished he dared use his powers to make her forget him. To change this subject to something less volatile. "What? You want me to admit that I'm a vampire? That I howl at the moon when it's full?"
"Are you? Do you?" She stepped up to him and placed her hand against his chin as if ready to pry his mouth open. "Show me your teeth, Talon."
He stepped back. "I can't."
She gave him a mean glare. "You're Speirr, aren't you? Somehow it is you, you, I see when I dream. Isn't it?"
He looked away.