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“You want me to kill Nicholas,” I murmured. “He must have pissed you off pretty badly to go to all this effort.”

Alistair smiled politely at my feeble attempt to make him angry. “You cannot possibly imagine what he has put me through. You are still so young. So…naïve.”

“I’ve read his diaries. I have a good idea of what he’s capable of.”

“So you know of his crimes, yes? All of them? The stalking and the manipulations; the elaborate games he has played over the years?” He leaned in, face emotionless. “I think not. I think if you had, your blood would boil as mine does at the thought of him. You would have killed him already.

“I thought you would, after the death of your friend. It was all coming together – I was meticulous. I cannot understand what happened…” He was talking more to himself than to me. “It seems the more you know, the more you go against your nature. You should have listened to Tomal. Perhaps he would be safe now if you had.”

I said nothing. I still didn’t know for certain if they had Tom, but I doubted it. And Nicholas was safe – the figure in the cupboard had been another of their tricks.

“What, no witty comeback?” Émilie asked, smirking.

“I’d be going against my nature if I killed someone who was working to redeem themselves,” I snapped. “He’s changed.”

“You lie. You do not know everything about him – there are truths even he could not admit to, in those pages he guards. I am a side note in that history: barely a mention. If he had written it as it happened, you would not trust him so.” Alistairleered at me. “He tells you of the insignificant moments, softens you to the notion he is worth saving.”

I didn’t respond. It was true Nicholas had never mentioned him, even when we’d discussed Paris. Isabel and Adam had never found anything about him in the diaries, as far as I knew, and I’d only begun to learn about Nicholas’s past… but I couldn’t let that change what I knew to be true.

“There’s nothing you can say or do that would make me kill him,” I answered eventually. “Not for you, or anybody. He’s better than you, I know that much. That’s all I need to know.”

With quick, deliberate movements, Alistair stood and unbuttoned his shirt.

“Better, you say? A man that would leave his friend tothisis a better man than I?”

Dropping his shirt from his shoulders to the dirty concrete, the full extent of his injuries was revealed in the candlelight. Almost every visible part of his thin, starved body was scarred and malformed. Stark white tissue stretched and contorted his chest, blistered and livid. Whatever had happened to him, his vampire abilities had been unable to heal the injuries. His face showed the least of the damage, but even there I could see thick scarring around his throat, jaw and hairline, stretching toward his eye socket.

As he turned, I noticed how different his movement was – stiff and awkward, nowhere close to the smoothness I’d come to expect from vampires. It was almost as if his skin was too taut for their usual effortless grace.

Though there was nothing but hatred in my heart for thekiller before me, I was unable to deny the sickness in my stomach at the sight of him and the suffering he had undoubtedly endured. I could barely look at him.

Alistair laughed shortly, with no real mirth. “You are not the first that cannot stand to see me as I am, alive only through the blood of the other undead. Even dear Émilie, though she claims to care… she cannot bear me, in truth. Thisthingthat Nicholas has made me. Do you still say he is better than I?”

“He wouldn’t—” I began, choking on the words I half believed.

Alistair knelt before me, his eyes flat and black. “But hedid. The man you love, Erin – he is nothing butun monstre.”

???

“The sun’s almost down. Shouldn’t they be up by now?” Tom paced the length of the library for what felt like the hundredth time. The sky had deepened to purple between the tall windows, and still, they had nothing to show for the endless day.

Adam didn’t look up from the laptop he had balanced on his knees, his pointed boots resting on the antique desk. “Nick is an early riser, he is mostly likely awake. Isabel… well, if you wish to be the one to go into her private chamber and tell her to hurry, go ahead. But I wouldn’t recommend it,” he drawled, smirking.

“Where do they sleep, anyway?” Tom paused mid-step, the question slipping out before he could stop himself.

Adam glanced up. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m not going to try to kill them if that’s what you’re worried about.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ve just always wondered.Coffins?” Tom grinned.

“I believe there is an enclosed, coffin-like aspect to it all,” Adam turned back to the screen. “But they sleep in beds, in bedrooms, like any other respectable person. Though Nick once told me Izzie went through a traditional casket phase in the 1890s.”

Tom snorted, about to reply, but at that moment Isabel strode into the room in tailored black trousers and a fitted shirt, annoyingly perfect as always – followed at a distance by a dishevelled Murray; far from his usual self. Tom couldn’t find the energy to be pleased about it.

“Almost always in our own beds, too,” Isabel said. Tom suddenly found the ancient carpet fascinating, the heat creeping up his neck as he caught her wink.

“Yet I’ve been unable to keep a proper housekeeper for decades, thanks to your nighttime antics,” Adam muttered.

“Enough,” Murray cut across them. “We’ve wasted enough time.”