“I know. She’s nearly as much trouble to me as you are to Niko.” The smile was gentle, but it cut with the best of any of my knives. “But we both love you all the same.”

Damn it. Promise was so smart too.

“If you start saying things like that, being a liar will be the least of your problems,” I said matter-of-factly.

I wasn’t pissed that she’d said it. It was true. I hadn’t asked to be born, much less born a freak, and I hadn’t asked for the Auphe to first use me, then to try to kill me and everyone around me, and now want me as a sire to renew their goddamn race. No, I hadn’t asked for any of that on my Christmas list, but I’d gotten it anyway. And because I had, so had Nik. I was the very worst kind of trouble to him—I knew it. But I couldn’t tell him that, because he wouldn’t listen. No one else could tell him either, especially Promise—because he would listen then. And he’d be extremely unhappy with what he heard.

Niko was the most practical, grounded person in the goddamn world. Self-delusion wasn’t something he gave in to, but he did have one huge-ass blind spot. Me. He knew me, faults and all, better than I knew myself, but he didn’t know—refused to believe—he’d be better off without me. And pity the person who suggested it, even if the person was Promise.

He wouldn’t let me go, but he might turn Promise loose. If she pushed it. She had pushed me once before and had sworn never to again. She had one lie on board now, a big one. Add betrayal to that and it would sink her—permanently; it didn’t matter if she was telling the truth. If Nik had the faintest suspicion she might betray me for his own good, they would be over and done with just that fast.

She flushed, then the color faded along with the anger as she backed down. “I know she brought it on herself,” she said solemnly, “but she is my daughter. I don’t want to hear the truth about her any more than Niko wants to hear it about you. Even if it is a different truth.”

She was right. I’d been an ass, just as I always was an ass. This was her family and you didn’t get to talk shit about family unless it was your own. “Yeah, I get that. Sorry.” I held out a hand. Surprised, she took it, and I pulled her a few steps closer to me as the gray light behind her shimmered then blinked out of existence. Like a popped soap bubble, the gate was gone. The gate that had led to a very bad place. Tumulus. Auphe home. Auphe hell.

One push . . .

I hadn’t been pissed, not really. She’d only said the truth, and what was the point at being pissed at that, right? I didn’t care if that truth reminded me I was a freak. I knew I was a freak, a thing, a monster—one even acceptable to the Auphe now. Sometimes I’d forget, let Niko convince me differently, but deep down, that knowledge was always there. And in that deep is where gates are made.

It had been there a split second before I saw it. I’d made it, and I hadn’t even tried. I hadn’t even known . . .

One push.

Holy fuck.

8

I woke up to the sound of Cal vomiting. I pulled on my shirt and was in the hall in seconds. Robin, Cherish, and that Xolo creature were sleeping in the upper part of the two-story loft. I’d taken Seamus’s room, while Cal had the couch and Promise first watch. Now Promise stood outside the closed bathroom door, looking bewildered and not a little worried.

“I woke him for his watch. He was fine. We talked . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence, setting a hand against the wall beside the door. “And then he said he was sick.” Truly confused, she shook her head. “Humans. You get sick. Does he need a doctor?”

Humans got sick, but Cal had only once—when he was small. At the time, I’d thought it was stomach flu, but as time passed more and more I was beginning to think he’d drunk something toxic while I wasn’t watching him closely enough. A lethal dose of Sophia’s whiskey, perhaps—something that would’ve killed a completely human child, because he’d never been sick before or again. An advanced immune system; the only good thing to ever come out of an Auphe genetic inheritance.

And she, our doting mother, had so many bottles lying about that it was impossible to dispose of them all. Not that I hadn’t tried . . . for Cal’s sake. But Sophia had been a lost cause long before I was born.

“No,” I said immediately. “No doctor.” No doctor to spot what shouldn’t exist in the mundane world.

“Yes, I forgot.” She stepped back as I turned the knob and opened the door.

“Wake Robin for watch,” I suggested as I stepped through.

“No. I’ll wait. I couldn’t sleep anyway.” The worry deepened. “We were but talking,” she murmured, with a touch of guilt in her voice. It was a guilt I’d have to worry about later.

I closed the door behind me. “Cal?”

Done for the moment, he had his forehead resting on the toilet seat. He turned to look at me, sweat-drenched strands of black hair plastered to his jaw and forehead. “She never saw it,” he said hoarsely. “It was right behind her and she never saw it. Oh, Jesus.” He threw up again, more dry heaving than anything else, and when he was done, I was there with a wet washcloth and a white tube.

“You know it’s a crappy day when you’re using a dead vampire’s toothpaste. Ultrafright—it figures.” He gave me a sickly grin to go with the bad joke as he washed his face, avoiding his reflection as always, then put an inch of paste on his finger and started scrubbing his teeth with a grimace.

I waited until he was done spitting and rinsing before asking, “What didn’t she see?” The glance he slid me was so lost and glassy, I hated to ask again, but I did. “What didn’t Promise see? You were talking to her, you became sick. What didn’t she see?”

“No wonder they want me. No wonder they’re so goddamn sure I’m the answer to everything. I am.” He threw the tube of toothpaste in the sink and slammed both fists against the bathroom mirror, the lost quality turning to fury. The mirror cracked, but stayed in one piece. That wasn’t true of the glass surrounding the shower when Cal ripped the toilet lid free and slung it. The glass flew inward, some down to the tile floor, some bouncing off the tile wall. If he’d had his combat boots on, the other wall would’ve been kicked in in several spots. As it was, he had to settle for a few deep breaths to regain control.

“Done?” I asked. I didn’t dwell on how quickly he had done all that damage—how he’d been much faster than he normally was. As fast as I was, which he never had been, and nearly as fast as the Auphe.

A hank of hair had broken free of the tie to hang down several inches past his jaw as he turned his head to stare at me. “We have to go. Just for an hour or two, but we have to go.” He moved past me, flung the door open, and was yelling Robin’s name.

It happened in a remarkably short period of time. Robin, as well as the others, was told that Cal and I were leaving. When Robin protested about what had happened to the staying together to save our lives scenario, Cal had replied, “Call my cell. One ring and I’ll make a gate. We’ll travel back. Nik and I both will. We’ll be here in seconds.” He knew how I felt about that and shot me a darkly desperate look, and I’d given a nod of agreement. Something was wrong, obviously. The sooner I found out what it was, the better. Ignorance is never bliss, it’s only ignorance—often with a less-than-tasty coating of your oblivious blood.

It’s always better to know.

And I still thought that when we sat on the outskirts of Seward Park and Cal told me what had happened. He huddled under his jacket against the cold. “I wasn’t mad.” He’d hooked his fingers through the metal of the park bench on either side of his legs and clenched them there until the skin blanched white. “I wasn’t even that pissed. Hell, I’d started it, trash talking her kid. I wasn’t mad,” he repeated, dropping his head with that still-loose piece of hair swinging low.