Page 14

Finally, she drew a shaky breath. “I love you, Dominique, and I miss you more than words can say.”

He bowed his head but said nothing. She held his heart in her hands. She was why he dared to hope, and the reason he lived at all. For this, there were no words. There were only the tears sliding down his face.

Cassidy entered the cottage, her steps hesitant, and closed the door with a soft click.

“Et je te manque,” he whispered. “And I you.”

7

Blind Spots

When Dominique announced he would go out alone for a while on Friday night, Cassidy’s emotions waffled between regret and relief. Despite having taken her out in grand style for several nights in a row, emotionally he had pulled away so far by now that being near him was torture. He didn’t even enter the cottage—at least not while she was awake. Every morning, she found Eddie cowering under the bed, letting her know the vampire had recently lingered in the room.

While she was grateful for his efforts, they couldn’t make up for the widening chasm between them. He felt it too—she could see it in his bleak eyes—but did nothing. Whatever his reasons for not sharing his mind with her, by now they had taken on cataclysmic, world-ending proportions in her imagination and stoked her mounting anxiety.

Not long after he left, she couldn’t sit still any longer and walked down the lane to Samantha’s cottage. Serge opened the door before she even knocked. With his tousled, caramel-streaked hair, Hawaiian shirt and board shorts, he would have been the epitome of a hippie surfer if not for the hideous way the bright colors clashed with his supernaturally pale skin. They did, however, perfectly compliment his cheerful demeanor.

He ushered her inside what was essentially a mirror of her own cottage, but vastly more updated. Plush new furniture filled the living room to one side of the front door. On the other, modern appliances sparkled in the granite-festooned kitchen. Spotless white tile covered the floor throughout.

“Great timing,” Samantha greeted as she put down her phone. “I just ordered pizza.”

Cassidy frowned. “You don’t eat pizza.”

“But you do, right? Veggie pizza I can handle.”

“Thanks,” she murmured. Serge must have been watching her and alerted Samantha to get the comfort food organized. So much for forgetting her problems for a while.

She kept the conversation light and trivial, but once the food arrived, she realized her attempts at distracting herself were doomed. Serge took delivery of the pizza and handed it to Samantha. Then he dropped all human pretensions. In a voice vibrating with power, he ordered the delivery boy to present a vein. The young man’s color bordered on ashen by the time Serge—now well-fed—sent him on his way with a cheerful slap on the shoulder and a generous cash tip.

“I’m liking this century,” Serge declared cheerfully as he waved Samantha’s smartphone. “So much bounty to be summoned with such ease.” His tongue mopped a smear of blood off his lips as he returned to the sofa and resumed watching a black-and-white swashbuckling adventure film.

“Sam, you’re creating a monster,” Cassidy said under her breath.

Samantha pulled a fragrant cheese-oozing slice onto her plate. “Taming,” she corrected with a gentle smile.

Proving her brother wrong was probably closer to the truth. Serge had been Jackson’s first kill, and would have stayed that way if not for Samantha’s swift intervention. The old pirate had been her devoted shadow ever since.

By the end of her first slice, Cassidy gave up. She spilled the whole sad tale of her troubles with the vampire in her life.

Her friend listened, concern furrowing her delicate brow. “That doesn’t sound like Dominique.”

“Tell me about it.” She lifted the lid and pulled another gooey helping out of the box.

“My guess would be that he’s just trying to protect you from something.”

“That makes no sense.” Last time Dominique had tried that, they both had almost died. He knew better. “I’m on intimate terms with his alter ego. I’m never safer than when our link is strong.”

Samantha looked away and took a long drink of lemonade.

“Sorry,” Cassidy murmured. Her telepathic bond with Dominique was a sore spot for Samantha, whose relationship with Serge, no matter how solid, would never be more than a shadow of what Cassidy and Dominique enjoyed.

When Dominique allowed it.

“Then maybe it’s not you he’s protecting,” Samantha speculated.

“How do you mean?”

“It might be your relationship he wants to save.”