the strange bed, or the fact that there was a vampire downstairs, but sleep eluded her.
Finally, she slipped out of bed, drew a comforter around her shoulders, and curled up in the window-seat. She stared out the window, her mind replaying the conversation she'd had with Dominic earlier. It was beyond belief that he had existed for so long, or that she had lived many lives.
So, if he was truly a vampire, and she had little doubt now that he was, what was it like for him never to grow old, to watch the world change and evolve while he always stayed the same? What had it been like to watch her die in his arms time after time? For the first time, she considered how awful it must have been for him. If he loved her as he said he did, it must have been painful to tell her goodbye over and over again, unsettling to wonder if he would be able to find her when she was reborn. What had he done while waiting for her return? How much time passed between one lifetime and the next?
Questions,and each one more eerily weird than the last. Were the answers as bizarre?
A movement outside caught her eye and she leaned forward to get a better look. At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at and then, when he moved out of the shadows, she realized that it was Dominic walking in the moonlight. His cloak billowed behind him, stirred by the same breeze that whispered through the trees.
He moved fluidly, lightly, as though his feet barely touched the ground. And when he passed under one of the lamps, she saw that he cast no shadow. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Everything in the yard cast a shadow on the ground, save Dominic.
After everything he had told her, after everything she had seen, it was that fact that convinced her of the truth once and for all.
He came to her the next night as soon as the sun was down. One minute she was alone and the next he was there, standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her dry the dishes.
She pressed a hand to her heart. "You startled me!"
"Forgive me."
She wiped the last dish and put it away; then, feeling slightly self-conscious for no reason that she could discern, she slipped past him and went into the living room. She sat down on the sofa, her heart skipping a beat when he sat beside her, close enough to touch.
"How did you spend your day?" he asked.
She shrugged. "I painted a little. I wandered around the yard. I finished readingWutheringHeights . She regarded him for a moment. "I wondered where you were... sleeping. Is it like sleeping? Do you dream?"
"It is like death," he replied quietly. "There are no dreams. And yet..." And now it was his turn to regard her through narrowed eyes. "Back in Nightingale House, I dreamed of you."
"I saw you last night. You were walking in the gardens."
"Indeed?"
She nodded. "You had no shadow."
"Perhaps, like Peter Pan, I have merely lost it."
Tracystared at him,then burst out laughing. Peter Pan! Now that was funny! And yet, they were very much alike. Like Pan, Dominic never aged.
"It's true, isn't it?" she said. "You really are a vampire."
He nodded.
"What did you do all those years when I was between lives and you were waiting for me to be... to be reborn?"
"I educated myself," he said, "over and over again. I traveled the world, learning to speak other languages so that I would be able to speak your language, whatever it might be. It was no easy thing, keeping up with the world. Vampires are reluctant to change. We try and cling to the life we knew before the change came upon us. But those who do not change do not endure.So many new inventions with every century.New languages.New countries.New ways of life. I came from a poor village. We raised sheep for a living." He laughed softly. "In my day, people rarely traveled beyond the place where they were born. Today, you can be across the world in a matter of hours. It is a remarkable time."
"You're the one who's remarkable. Don't you ever get tired of, well, of living?"
"Only when you are not in the world with me."
Sincere words, quietly spoken.They went straight to her heart.
"Dominic..." She lifted a hand to his cheek. His skin was cool beneath her fingertips.
He went utterly still at her touch.