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“Feeling bad for betraying Cian?” Samantha sat on the edge of her bed, setting her iPad on her lap.

The ghost flicked in and out of reality as he moved toward her. With a sigh, he sat next to her. “I should have killed Amaliya right away. Then you’d be married to Cian right now and none of this would be happening.”

Samantha was surprised by his words, and also a little unnerved. “Don’t say that.”

“I brought The Summoner down on all of us by not doing my duty to Cian. When I recognized Amaliya as a threat, I should have handled it. If I had, you and I wouldn’t be in this position right now.”

“A phasmagus and a ghost,” Samantha said.

“Exactly.”

“But you forget, I’d be married to Cian, who is a bit of a cheating bastard, you’d still hate my guts, The Summoner would take over the world, and we’d all die.” Samantha lifted her shoulders. “You may be worse off, but I’m better off. Jeff is a sweetie and I love him. Plus I’m a phasmagus and I will kick some serious butt. I’m scared, but happy here. Plus, bitch-face and I have a truce now. We’re even...kinda...sorta...friends. Honestly, Roberto, you fucked yourself over by betraying your friend. If you hadn’t been a jerkwad, you’d still be alive.”

The ghost whipped his head toward her, his features smearing together, his eyes holes of darkness, then his face returned to some semblance of normalcy. “Maybe Cian betrayed me! Just as he betrayed you!”

A year ago Samantha would have been terrified; now she was just slightly unnerved. She exhaled, her fingers fidgeting with the cover on her iPad. Even though she was the aggrieved party in their past drama, she had forgiven Cian and resolved a lot of her issues with Amaliya. She was also relieved that the romantic fantasy that she and Cian had created had fallen apart. There was no way Amaliya could have come between them so easily if they had truly been in love.

“I can tell by your expression that you know what I’m saying is true,” Roberto said after her silence had dragged on a little too long.

“I don’t think Cian betrayed you at all. Yeah, he didn’t listen to you about Amaliya, and he didn’t listen to me either, but that’s because he was lying to himself. I’m not saying he was right to ignore us. I’m saying that in the grand scheme of things, him being a bullheaded dick is a lot different from you going off and siding with The Summoner.” Samantha fastened a steady glare on the ghost.

“I was angry,” Roberto said with what could have been a slight pout.

“Yeah, so? I was furious. But I didn’t go siding with the enemy. I tried to save Cian from Amaliya. I didn’t betray him.”

“After so long together I could see that Cian was going to move on without me.”

“Oh, God. Were you two boning?”

Roberto bestowed her with a sardonic smile. “And if we were?”

Scrunching up her face, Samantha said, “Eh, whatever. I’m over Cian. I’m with Jeff. You’re dead and a ghost. Fuck the past.”

Visibly deflating over not being able to rile her up, Roberto sighed. “Though we have shared many women over the years, and endured much together, we were not ‘boning.’ We were like brothers, or so I thought. I knew Cian was unhappy when he started trying to be human again. You were bad enough. But Amaliya...when he wouldn’t send her away even when he knew The Summoner might descend on all of us, I knew my time with him was at an end.”

“So why didn’t you just go off and find your own life?”

“Without a vampire’s blood, I would grow old and die. I wanted neither of those things.”

“Well, at least you won’t grow old now.”

Roberto’s grimace deepened.

“I was trying to look at the bright side.” Samantha hesitated, then asked, “Why didn’t you just ask him to make you into a vampire?”

“I was angry, impatient, and wanted to hurt him for destroying the life we had built. I also knew he was opposed to making fledglings. Maybe Cian wouldn’t have completely abandoned me. I don’t know. But I also didn’t want to depend on him to make the choice for me.”

“So you betrayed him even though you had a super-long friendship.”

“There is only so long you can cling to the past.”

“And now you’re dead.”

“And I won’t grow old,” Roberto said with a sardonic smile.

The door opened. The light spilled in from the hallway to illuminate Jeff’s startled look.

“It’s not what you think,” Roberto said swiftly.