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To Nick, that distinction felt closer to centuries.

“It mightbecenturies,” Malek conceded calmly.

“Right,” Nick said.

He tugged at a stray, metallic thread on one sleeve. He still wore the clothes he’d thrown on after his shower at the fight arena, which included black pants, a green, long-sleeved T-shirt he normally only worked out in, and a warmer shirt that might have been called a sweatshirt on his old planet, but here was made of dense, metallic fibers. It was everything he’d worn to the crime scene apart from his boots and his long coat.

He might get reprimanded tonight, for not wearing his uniform yesterday. He might at least have to write up the reasonwhyhe hadn’t. But only if one of the street cops said something, or one of the drones clocked his outfit and reported it in.

“Do my eyes really not bother you?” Malek asked.

“They’re beautiful eyes, weirdo,” Nick said, matter of fact. “Of course they don’t bother me. Maybe some people stare because they find them fascinating?”

“Thank you, Nick. And no, that’s not usually why they stare, but I appreciate the thought. And your attempt to make me feel less strange about them.”

Nick fought not to roll his eyes.

Malek was such a funny person sometimes.

Nick wondered if that was due to the prescience the kid had been cursed with at birth, or something even more fundamental to his nature.

Whatever it was, Nick loved him for it, now that he knew him. He also understood Malek’s words as coming from a place of heartbreaking sincerity, an utterly guileless honesty he couldn’t seem to help, no matter what they were talking about. For the same reason, Nick didn’t doubt for a second that the kid meant them all literally.

If hehadn’tknown that, he might’ve thought Malek was fucking with him.

The mismatched eyes continued to study Nick’s. “You really don’t remember any of what we saw just now?”

Nick frowned, then slowly shook his head.

He glanced at Tai.

He knew she was even more of an anomaly than her brother, for a lot of reasons. One of those was that she could read his mind, even though he was a vampire. Most seers couldn’t read vampires. They got nothing from vampire minds at all.

Nick still wasn’tentirelycertain if Malek could read him, too, or if he was simply so connected to his sister that he picked up everything from her.

He suspected it was more the latter.

“Yes,” Malek said agreeably. “I suspect this, too. But it can be hard to tell, to be truthful. If it helps, I only hear you easily when the three of us are together, so thereiscircumstantial evidence to suggest I’m hearing you through Tai. If Icanhear you on my own, it’s certainly not as well, or as consistent.” He cleared his throat. “And she can’t hearallvampires so well, you know. She is particularly attuned to you. Other vampires can be difficult for her.”

Nick nodded. “Gotcha.”

“You don’t want to talk about your experiences just now?” Malek asked perceptively. “Is that why you keep thinking about other things, Nick?”

Despite what he’d been thinking about Malek’s disarming honesty only seconds before, Nick scowled at the young seer. As tended to happen when he was feeling particularly stressed and avoidant, he found Malek’s unearthly calm and even more unearthly insight slightly aggravating the moment it got personal.

“I told you, I don’t remember anything,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean you experienced nothing at all,” Malek pointed out reasonably. “Anything you can tell us might be helpful in getting you to remember more.”

Nick gave the young seer a flat look.

“What didyousee?” he asked, a touch aggressively.

Malek frowned. He exchanged looks with Tai, whose brow also furrowed.

Then Malek’s blue and near-black eyes returned to Nick.

“Would it really be useful for us to tell you that?” Mal asked, again with maddening reasonableness. “Will it mean anything to you, Nick, when you can’t remember it yourself? Or is talking about things you still can’t remember simply a way to avoid the feelings that are obviously coming up for you around the things you arestartingto remember?”