Balthazar stepped through and made sure the door closed. “Hey.”
Syn nodded and looked at his boots, noting that there was lesser blood on them. Then again, there was lesser blood down the front of his shirt. On the sleeves of his leather jacket. On his hands and under his nails.
“I should have taken a shower first,” he heard himself say.
“That shit doesn’t bother me.”
“Not before seeing you.” Before being with Jo, goddamn it.
“You okay, cousin?”
Syn focused on the floor in the center of the foyer, on the mosaic depiction of an apple tree in full bloom. When he tried to speak, he just ended up rubbing his nose. His brow. His jaw.
“Tell me,” Balthazar said, “that you didn’t kill her.”
“Kill who?” When his cousin gave him a level look, Syn cursed. “Are you fucking kidding me. She’s with Manny right now.”
“All right. Good.” Balthazar glanced around. “So do I need a shovel for another reason?”
Syn drew his palm down his face. “No.”
In the silence that followed, his eyes surfed over the other luxurious details of the mansion’s formal receiving area. Considering he had spent most of his life sleeping inside caves and tree trunks in the forests of the Old Country, he still could not fathom how he’d ended up in this royal castle of marble and malachite columns, and gold-leafed mirrors and sconces, and crystal chandeliers. It made him feel like an interloper.
Then again, he had often felt other-than, even among people he knew well.
“I love her,” he blurted roughly.
There was a pause. As if Balthazar couldn’t understand what had been spoken to him. “Jo? What are you—wait—”
“And for that reason, I am going to ask you to . . . to service her during her transition. You’re the only person I can trust with the female I love.”
As much as she wanted to use Syn himself, he couldn’t let that happen, especially not after he’d heard her talking about her conception. His violent nature was too close to that which she feared was true about her sire’s—and though she did not know this parallel, he most certainly did. He had never done to a female what her father might well have done to her mahmen, but as if killing females—even if they deserved it—was much better? He had taken lives in a perversion of justice, as a vigilante who accepted money he did not need nor use for his deeds— and oddly, it wasn’t until now that he felt the burdens of his crimes.
After everything he had done, Jo would not accept him if she knew his truths, and he could not bear to tell her them.
Therefore, he had to act as if she had full knowledge of him.
And get someone else for her.
It was only the decent thing to do for the one he loved.
Guess Syn wasn’t coming back, Jo thought as she put her phone away and paced around the break room. She had returned to this caloric enclave about an hour ago, after she and Manny had talked for a long time about their childhoods. Their households growing up. What they had studied in school. And on the subject of higher education, he had made a point to tell her that their mother would be proud of her for having gone to Williams and been accepted into that Yale program. Those comments, coming from him, had made Jo tear up all over again—though she had hid the reaction as best she could. No more Kleenex for her. At least not in front of him.
Not in front of anybody.
They had also spoken a lot about what it meant to be a vampire. What the war with the Lessening Society was. What the Brotherhood and the Band of Bastards were. How the religion worked and the way the civilians and the aristocrats lived.
Also the importance of the species being separate and staying separate from humans.
That reality was what stuck with her the most, although everything he had shared with her had seemed important. If she did go through the change, she was going to have a lot to adjust to, and she wanted to get a head start on all of it, if she could.
Refocusing, she went back over to the vending machine. There was no need to put any coins or bills in. It was a dispenser only, not about any kind of revenue stream—and the free food, in addition to