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“Like you were chosen?”

He grunted and scooted back to fuss with the boat’s rudders. “Not much wisdom there. But he was old.”

She considered this. “Dominique’s sire was old.”

In the shadows, Dominique became corpse-still, like prey in a predator’s presence. He could almost smell Kambyses’s cedar smoke essence streaming in the wind, even glanced at the sea, half-expecting to spot the shadowy bulk of his sire’s floating lair.

“Yes. Old. Very old.” Serge tested the hinge of a rudder, secured it back into place. “No one would have known better how to choose a new blood-child.”

Dominique’s eyes narrowed. The lunatic sounded more certain of himself than usual.

“And he chose magnificently,” she said.

Serge stretched out on his back beneath the gently flapping sail and sighed his contentment. “Yes. Yes, he did.”

She stroked his wild, curling hair and kissed his forehead. “I don’t want it. I promise I don’t.” The pirate’s grubby bare toes curled with pleasure and, possibly, restraint. Their relationship was a platonic one and could be nothing more. Not if she was to continue breathing.

“Are you ever going to take this thing out?” she said, getting up. “Or will you just be sailing the dune?”

“I need time to get to know my vessel.”

Samantha snorted, and Dominique stifled a similar reaction. Serge may have been a seafarer in his mortal life, but several near-drownings had taught him to fear water the way other things feared fire. That, as a vampire, he didn’t need to breathe meant nothing in the face of his terror at being unable to float, much less swim. The sailboat was a gift from Samantha to help him conquer his phobia—when he was ready, which at this rate, might take a decade or two.

“All right, you do that. But I hear a cup of hot chocolate calling my name.” She pulled up her hoodie and headed toward her cottage. “When you’re ready, I found a new pirate movie I think you’ll like.”

She was barely out of sight when Dominique took her still-warm place on the smooth pontoon. “What do you truly know of the miscreant that spawned me?”

Serge kept his eyes closed and grinned. “Greetings, blood-child. So impatient tonight.”

“I want a straight answer out of you,” Dominique snapped. “For once, I want to hear all that you think you know.”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet? What does that mean?”

Serge sat up as though spring-powered at the hips. “The prophecy will not be rushed. You will know what you need to when you need to know it. Not before. I cannot interfere. I must not interfere. You know this.”

Dominique let out a sound of pure frustration. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

“And without me, you would have also killed the sweet Cassidy. Then where would we be?” He shook his head. “Everything is and will be as it must.”

“Is it? So what happened to me last night was supposed to happen?”

Serge studied Dominique, his enormous chocolate eyes going eerily out of focus, seeing futures unfold. What Dominique used to shrug off as the antics of an unhinged mind now sent shivers galloping down his arms.

“So it begins.” Serge nodded to himself. “You have met her.”

“Who is she?” Dominique demanded in a terse whisper, as though the green-eyed she-demon already lurked in the shadows.

“A harbinger.”

“Of—”

In an instant, Serge had Dominique by the scruff and pulled him so close their noses pressed together. “Your destiny,” he whispered, his cool, wet-forest breath brushing Dominique’s cheek. Two heartbeats later, he let go. And cackled.

Unnerved, Dominique jumped up and moved out of Serge’s easy reach.

“You claim my destiny is tied to Cassidy. This doesn’t concern her and it never will.” Even if it meant not drinking from her, not maintaining their bond, and altering their relationship, perhaps for a while, perhaps forever, perhaps beyond mending. He would not expose her to this dark new twist of his hunger or, worse, risk having her fall prey to it.