“St. Clare’s, if you must know,” she said. “Father Bernard was kind enough to take Jon and me in after my apartment was unfortunately-”

“You didn’t go look at it, did you?” he interrupted, quickly dropping his hands. He didn’t want her to see her apartment. Especially the bed and what the graffiti over it said.

“No,” she said. “But Jon did. And he said-”

“Don’t,” he said. This was very important. “Promise me you won’t ever go there again. Just have someone take everything out of there and throw it away. Then sell the place. Don’t ever go back.”

“I’ll do that,” she said. “I promise. But I’m not holding out for more money, Alaric. The truth is…I’m not taking the job.”

He felt as if someone had sliced open another vein. Maybe in his heart.

“What?” he said stupidly.

“It was very kind of Dr. Holtzman to offer,” she said all in a rush. “I’m really very flattered. But I…I just don’t think I can do that. Go to work for…the people you work for. Right now.”

Alaric stared at her. “But I thought you said Lucien asked you to go away with him,” he said. “And you said no.”

“I did say no,” Meena said. She had shrunk in on herself, as if she were cold. “But that was…before.”

“Before when?” Comprehension slowly dawned. “Wait…before he turned into a dragon and tried to kill us all?”

She nodded wordlessly.

“So you haven’t actually seen him again since that night?”

She nodded again.

“So you’re not actually living at St. Clare’s,” he said. Everything was becoming clear. Maybe too clear. “You’re hiding there. You’re hiding from him. Because you’re scared to death of him.”

“Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

“How else would you put it, then?” he demanded. “If you’re not scared of him, what are you scared of? Yourself? Scared you might say yes if he asks you again?” Alaric could hardly believe it. But it was right there, written all over her face.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Meena said primly. “I just came in here to say hello to you, not to get one of your lectures.”

Lectures!

“But if you’re going to be like this,” she said, in the same tone of voice, “I’m leaving. I think they have you on too many pain meds.”

She got up to leave…but not soon enough. Because, even bedridden, he was too fast for her. He managed to reach out and snatch up her uninjured hand in his.

He wasn’t letting her go anywhere.

“I’m not on anything,” he said in his kindest voice, the one he reserved for Simone and…well, no one else, actually. “And it’s all right to be afraid, Meena.”

She stood there for a second or two, looking down at his fingers holding on to hers. Then, abruptly, she sank back down into the pink vinyl chair.

“Okay,” she said, raising her gaze to meet his again. Her brown eyes were wide and troubled. “You’re right. I’m terrified. As soon as the sun goes down every night, I take Jack Bauer and go into one of those windowless rooms in the convent they stuck Yalena in. And I stay there. I don’t come out until morning. Because I know he can’t get to me in there. I mean, if he’s even looking for me, which I don’t know. He turned into a dragon, Alaric. He tried to kill us all.”

“Not you,” Alaric said. He couldn’t believe he was actually defending Lucien Dracula. But amazingly, his desire to see her smiling again was stronger than his hatred for the prince. “He did his best to try to keep you from getting killed.”

She gave him a sarcastic look. “He turned into a dragon,” she reminded him.

Alaric looked down at her hand, so small in his. She was holding on to his rather tightly.

She was afraid. She was very afraid.

Alaric had seen this before. People-grown men and women, other guards just like him-who’d come back from missions exactly the way Meena was right now, slinking around in abject terror, afraid of their own shadows because of the demonic horrors they’d seen in the field.

He didn’t want her going off with the prince.

But he couldn’t let her go on this way, either.

Even if it meant losing her.

He took a deep breath and said, “If I’ve learned anything in this life, Meena, it’s that there are a lot of scary things out there. Sometimes I just want to go into a windowless room until the sun comes back up, and the scary things have gone away. But the truth is…those scary things aren’t going to just go away on their own.”

Meena, as if she sensed where he was headed with this, started to pull her hand away, shaking her head. Her eyes had filled with tears.

But he wouldn’t release her fingers from his. Because she had to hear it.

No matter how much she didn’t want to. “Because it turns out I have a gift,” he went on. “And that gift is that I’m good at killing scary things. So I use my gift to help others who aren’t as strong as I am, in order to make the world a safer place for them. I can’t lock myself into a windowless room until the sun comes back up, Meena. No matter how much I might want to sometimes.”

She whipped her head toward him, starting to protest.

But he just held her hand and went on.

“Because my job is to face the scary things. And I think deep down, Meena, you know that’s your job, too. That maybe the reason people like you and me were put here on this earth was so that everyone else-people who don’t have our gifts-can sleep in their windowless rooms while we make the world a little bit safer for them.”

She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he saw why.

She was crying.

Well…he hadn’t meant to make her cry.

Maybe he couldn’t do anything right. Maybe there was no Alaric Wulf magic. Maybe Holtzman was right, and he really did need that counseling.

After a little while she looked up and said, “I’ve been a fool.”

“I don’t think you’re a fool,” he said.

He wanted to say a lot of other things. But he wasn’t suffering from blood loss anymore. So he kept silent.

She yanked on her hand again. This time, he let go.

She took that hand and pressed it, along with her casted hand, to her eyes, which were red with unshed tears.

“You really are annoying sometimes,” she said.

Martin often told him the same thing. “I know,” he said, agreeing.

“Why do you do this to me?” she asked, drying her eyes with the edge of his bedsheet. He doubted she’d find it very absorbent. The thread count couldn’t have been very high at all.

He longed to put his arms around her, to hold her.

But he was afraid she’d slap him.

Or that Holtzman would walk in. Either would have been equally embarrassing.

And besides, he couldn’t lean forward far enough to get his arms around her because of his stupid leg, which was hanging in traction.

Then, her eyes dry, she stood up.

She’d be leaving now, he supposed, his depression complete. And he had no idea if he’d ever even see her again.

Except, to his surprise, instead of leaving, she laid her uninjured hand on his chest.

“I don’t suppose,” she said, “we’re even now, are we?”

He shook his head, not understanding what she meant.

His confusion increased when she bent down and kissed him gently on the cheek, the way she had in the rectory that night.

“Probably not,” she said when she straightened. “I think I still owe you. Plus, you saved Jack, too.”

Oh. She meant all the times he’d saved her life. But she didn’t owe him for that. That was his job.

“You need a shave,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Tomorrow do you want me to bring you some stuff to shave with?”

“Yes,” he said, his mood suddenly brightening.

She’d been the only one to offer. The only one.

This was why he loved her.

Plus, she’d said she was coming to visit again tomorrow.

No, it wasn’t the same as saying she was going to take the job.

And maybe it was only because she was going to be visiting her friend in the maternity ward, anyway, and so it was easy for her to swing by to see him, too.