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“Brick took care of it. He said he scrubbed any record of Charles being picked up. Along with any record of him having been in prison in the first place. He didn’t want to give them the body in case they noticed the genetic differences. He thought it better if Charles just got labeled a ‘fugitive’ and is never found.”

Exhaling again, Black combed a hand through his black hair.

“From what I know, they started there and worked their way out. His people and our people handled D.C. and some of the leaders of the richer countries first. That includes everyone you’d been talking to in Europe, doc. Military commanders. Intelligence operatives. It was pretty easy to convince most of the regular politicians that they’d been part of a terrorist attack utilizing a new kind of biological weapon. In the United States, this was even easier. Your uncle had infiltrated so many levels of government, placing seers in roles all over the government. The fact that so many of those people simply disappeared… literally every seer who worked for Charles… made this a lot easier for people to believe.”

I shook my head, clicking softly.

“Jesus,” I said.

“I think they’ll be done with most of it in a few weeks,” Black added. “There’ll probably be areas of cleanup for a lot longer, but that will be easier.”

“It still seems insane,” I said flatly. “It just seems totallyinsanethat we would ever get away with something like this. Justerasingthis many people. I can’t help but think there’ll be too many we miss in the end. Too many will know. Whether they were able to do anything about it or not, they’ll remember.”

Black glanced at me, a faint apology in his eyes.

After a few more seconds, he shrugged.

“Honestly, doc… I think itcanbe done,” he confessed. “This isn’t like Old Earth. That was literally centuries of history that would have had to be erased. They had mechanisms in place to prevent that very thing happening. Here we’re only talking a few years. Barely that, really. And these past few years have been so chaotic.”

He gave me an even more apologetic look.

“And human memories are short,ilya.They’re highly suggestible even when theyaren’tconstantly being played and manipulated by seers… and that’s pretty much all your uncle’s been doing for the past three years now.”

Black leaned deeper into his leather plane seat, stroking my leg.

“As for all the vampire hate and whatnot, most of that was manufactured by your uncle in the first place. Since most of those humans never really knew why they were so against those groups to begin with, it will be relatively easy to make them forget why they hated them now. Most people don’t like to feel manipulated, so they’ll just pretend they knew it was all a hoax the whole time.”

I grunted, and Black gave me another wry smile.

“Anyway,” he added. “Which thing is easier to believe for most humans? That they were lied to by other humans, or that there reallyarebloodsucking vampires and super-psychic aliens running around, toying with their minds and feeding on them? Which is the thing they will mostwantto believe, doc?”

I thought about that, frowning more.

I knew he was right.

Just from what I knew of human psychology, I knew the capacity to deceive oneself, in all manner of areas, was more or less boundless.

And most humans really hadn’t encountered a vampire themselves.

They’d probably look back on this in a few years as the greatest successful hoax of all time. They’d compare it toWar of the Worlds… the radio broadcast that caused mass hysteria in towns and cities all across the United States. They’d chalk it up to just another time humans went collectively nuts for a little while.

And like Black said, any individual human you asked would claim they’d never personally been taken in. They’d say friends of theirs were, or family members, but that they themselves had known “all along” that the story didn’t pass the smell test.

It was a little scary, that all of this could just be buried like that.

It was also an enormous relief.

As much as I hated to admit it, Brick had just made our lives about a million times easier than they had been, even just a week before.

“You’re not feeling grateful to Brick, are you?” Black teased, glancing down at me with those stunning gold eyes. He smiled, but his voice carried a faint edge. “You might not want to let that to get back to him. He might decide to do us another ‘favor’… maybe this one on our honeymoon. One that doesn’t involve chartered jets or bilking him for designer bathing suits and sunglasses. Or giant bowls of caviar and cracked lobster claws.”

I met his gaze, smiling back.

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” I said.

He smiled, stroking my hair back from my face.

That time his smile looked real.