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He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Maybe your mom would tell you now. Maybe you should ask one more time.”

She set a hand on his arm and held his eyes with the intensity behind hers, the glimmer of opal. Her voice gained its full vampire resonance with her next words, and for once she didn’t seem startled by the emergence of her own self.

“I have known my mother for thirty years, Ryker. She willnevertell me. Not unless I bring some leverage.” Her mouth twisted into a grimace.

It had to hurt to be shut out by her parents. It would crush Ryker if Mom or Dad did this to him, if he had no idea where he’d come from, if they wouldn’t speak of the vampire generations that composed his own history.

“Now that I’ve started really wondering,” Leslie said softly, “it’s going to be a gaping hole for the rest of my life. Until I know.”

She was right. She’d tried to be respectful toward her parents, and their silence had cut her off from that route. So yes, of course he would help.

He said, “You said your dad’s people are in Knoxville. Is that where he was born?”

“Yeah. My mom’s from Missouri originally, but that’s all I know until they met in their thirties. She was working for a local art gallery. My dad came in one day, and they started talking about the works that were for sale, and then about other random art stuff. They exchanged email about a piece he was interested in—it’s this fiery orange blown-glass sculpture with colors worked in that only we can see. To humans, it looks plain orange.”

“Sounds like you’ve seen it.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s beautiful, don’t get me wrong. But it’s been the centerpiece of our dining table since I was little, and I’ve heard the story countless times. How he was smitten with her from the day they met, how he asked her to dinner the day he picked up the sculpture from the gallery, how she’d been planning to ask him if he hadn’t asked her. I love how much they love each other, but if I never hear the story again, I’ll still remember every detail for the rest of my life.”

Ryker nodded and tried not to let the puzzle-solving corner of his brain take over the rest of it. He’d work on this another time. Really, he would. “Did your mom ever name a city in Missouri?”

Her lips parted, and she blinked at him. “Actually…no. It’s always just been Missouri.”

“What are their full names?”

“Debra Renee Wilkins Snow and Paul Quentin Snow. Mom spells her name the shorter way, D-E-B-R-A.”

“Got it.”

“All of it? Do you want to write it down?”

“Nah.”

“Showoff.” She smiled, but it didn’t last. “Thanks.”

“Whatever there is to find, I’ll find it.”

He felt the promise take root inside him. Leslie deserved answers, needed answers. He wouldn’t rest until she got them. Then again, maybe hewouldrest if he needed to. Maybe that was the better path to sustained productivity.

Or maybe it was the better path altogether, because he was a person, separate from his accomplishments, deserving of rest like everybody else. Yeah, maybe so.

Twenty-Four

They left Slake It Off a little quiet, a little spent. Back at Ryker’s condo, they didn’t immediately pick up their conversation, but Ryker didn’t mind the silence. In fact he never minded silence with Leslie. Her silences were thoughtful, safe, and soft. He never wanted her to leave. When she got on a plane in the morning and flew back to Tennessee, he was going to lose his mind.

Not literally, of course. He was steel. Being in love hadn’t changed that. But dear Hades, as Claire liked to say, living six hundred miles apart had to be the worst dating method in the history of dating. And they were stuck with this arrangement until…well, at least until he proposed to her. Which he couldn’t do yet. Because they’d been dating only two months.

Was two months long enough?

“Wow. You’re off on another planet somewhere.”

He glanced up from his phone, which had gone dark at least a full minute ago after a text from his mom that they’d bring dinner over within the hour. “Just thinking.”

“Of course.” Leslie sank down next to him on his gray leather sofa. “When are younotthinking?”

He shrugged. “I’m nevernot. But that’s true of most people, isn’t it?”

Her laugh chimed with its full vampire resonance. Her eyes were the same right now: opalescent cast over their usual light-indigo. She wasn’t muting herself, and seeing her so at ease in his home made his chest feel almost warm, despite the perpetual chill of his body.