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Robert reddened and cleared his throat. “Well, yes, quite. I didn’t mean to… in any event, you weren’t inside?”

“No, I was coming to get--get a friend,” Christian said.

“Julian Harrow is inside?” Robert jumped to that conclusion.

It was Christian’s turn to redden. He tried to answer in the negative, but the reporters were all talking at once about Julian, Julian’s parents, the tragedies, Julian’s vow to expose Vampires.

I need to get control of this!

Christian reached out with his mind as Balthazar had taught him to do to try and calm the reporters. But the moment that he opened his mind, he was blasted with all of their thoughts. He nearly crumpled from the pure psychic blast of their excitement. But he dug his fingernails into his palms and fought to stay upright.

Shut down. Shut down. SHUT DOWN!Christian ordered himself, but it wasn’t until a cool hand landed lightly on his shoulder that the voices quieted.

He opened his eyes. He hadn’t known that he had shut them. He had, evidently, tightly shut them and turned his head to see who had saved him. It was Elgar. Relief flooded him before alarm followed just as quickly on its heels, because Elgar was wearing sweatpants, a hoodie, no shoes and, of course, he had his favorite accessory, Eyros’ skull tightly nestled against his chest.

Oh, no…

“Elgar, thanks, but you really need to not be here right now,” Christian told his Blood Brother.

Elgar shook his head. “You need me. It is all right.”

“No, no, these people are going to have questions about uhm… you and… you know.” Christian barely tipped his head to the skull. He didn’t want to alert any of the reporters who hadn’t seen the skull already.

“It is all right.”

Elgar smiled dreamily and he leaned towards Robert who was staring at him with the look of a man confronted with what he thought was a freak and couldn’t quite hide his reaction. Robert though leaned forward too and Elgar whispered into his ear. Christian didn’t hear what Elgar said, but when Robert straightened up, there was a blankness in his expression. He turned and whispered to his camera woman then to another person and another person. They were all whispering to one another. The pack of reporters then turned in unison and completely ignored them, or more like, acted like they weren’t there and had never been there.

Whisper. He’s got the power to Whisper. I remember being told that,Christian realized and he also realized what a powerful gift that was.

Elgar led Christian away from the scrum, saying in a happy tone, “Come, Christians, the zombies are this way!”