“Hope I didn’t snore,” Rue said, trying hard to be nonchalant about the fact that she’d physically intruded on her partner.

“You didn’t, but Karl did,” Thompson said, easing his way out of the van and stretching once he was on the sidewalk.

“I only breathe loudly,” Karl said, and Julie laughed.

“You gotta be the only vampire in the world who takes naps and snores,” she said, but to take any sting out of her words, she gave him a hug.

Rue’s eyes met Sean’s. His were quite unreadable. Though she’d had such a good time with him before they had danced at the Jaslows’, he was wearing his usual shuttered look.

“I’m sorry if you were uncomfortable the whole way back,” she said. “I didn’t realize I was so tired.”

“It was fine,” he said, and got out, holding out a hand to help her emerge. He unlocked the studio door; Karl and Thompson began unloading the sound system and the dancers set the costumes on a bench outside Sylvia’s office. Denny drove off in the empty van.

The small group split up, Megan and Julie getting in the cab they’d called, Karl and Thompson deciding to go to Bissonet’s, the bar where Hallie worked. “Why don’t you come, Sean?” Karl asked. “You could use some type O.”

“No, thanks,” Sean said.

“Showing your usual wordy, flowery turn of phrase.” Karl was smiling.

“I’ll see Rue home,” Sean said.

“Always the gentleman,” Thompson said, not too fondly. “Sean, sometimes you act like you’ve got a poker up your ass.”

Sean shrugged. He was clearly indifferent to Thompson’s opinion.

Thompson’s fangs ran halfway out.

Rue and Karl exchanged glances. In that moment, Rue could tell that Karl was worried about a quarrel between the other two vampires, and she took Sean’s arm. “I’m ready,” she said, and actually gave him a little tug as she started walking north. Sean’s good manners required that he set off with her. They took the first two blocks at a good pace, and then turned to stand at the bus stop.

“What frightened you?” he said so suddenly that she started.

She knew instantly what he was talking about: the seconds at the party when she’d thought she’d seen an all-too-familiar face. But she couldn’t believe he’d noticed her fear. She hadn’t missed a beat or a step. “How’d you know?” she whispered.

“I know you,” he said with a quiet intensity that centered her attention on him. “I can feel what you feel.”

She looked up at him. They were under a streetlight, and she could see him with a stark clarity. Rue struggled inside herself with what she could safely tell him. He was waiting for her to speak, to share her burden with him. Still, she hesitated. She was out of the habit of confiding; but she had to be honest about how safe she felt when she was with Sean, and she could not ignore how much she’d begun to look forward to spending time with him. The relief from fear, from worry, from her sense of being damaged, was like warm sun shining on her face.

He could feel her growing trust; she could see it in his rare smile. The corners of his thin mouth turned up; his eyes warmed.

“Tell me,” he said, in a voice less imperative and more coaxing.

What decided her against speaking out was fear for his safety. Sean was strong, and she was beginning to realize he was ruthless where she was concerned, but he was also vulnerable during the daylight hours. Rue followed another impulse; she put her arms around him. She spoke into his chest. “I can’t,” she said, and she could hear the sadness in her own voice.

His body stiffened under her hands. He was too proud to beg her, she knew, and the rest of the way to Rue’s apartment, he was silent.

Chapter 5

She thought he would stalk off, offended, when they reached her place, but, to her surprise, he stuck with her. He held her bag while she unlocked the front door, and he mounted the stairs behind her. While she sure couldn’t remember asking him up, Rue didn’t tell him to leave, either. She found herself hoping he enjoyed the view all the way up both flights. She tried to remember if she’d made her bed and put away her nightgown that morning.

“Please, come in,” Rue said. She knew the new etiquette as well as anyone. Vampires had to be invited into your personal dwelling the first time they visited.

Her cat came running to meet Rue, complaining that her dinner was overdue. The little black-and-white face turned up to Sean in surprise. Then the cat stropped his legs. Rue cast a surreptitious eye over the place. Yes, the bed was neat. She retrieved her green nightgown from the footboard and rolled it into a little bundle, depositing it in a drawer in an unobtrusive way.

“This is Martha,” Rue said brightly. “You like cats, I hope?”

“My mother had seven cats, and she named them all, to my father’s disgust. She told him they ate the rats in the barn, and so they did, but she’d slip them some milk or some scraps when we had them to spare.” He bent to pick up Martha, and the cat sniffed him. The smell of vampire didn’t seem to distress the animal. Sean scratched her head, and she began to purr.

The barn? Scraps to spare? That didn’t sound too aristocratic. But Rue had no right, she thought unhappily, to question her partner.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked.

Sean was surprised. “Rue, you know I drink...”

“Here,” she said, and handed him a bottle of synthetic blood.

She had prepared for his visit, counting on it happening sometime. She had spent some of the little money she had to make him feel welcome.

“Thank you,” he said briefly.

“It’s room temperature, is that all right? I can heat it in a jiffy.”

“It’s fine, thanks.” He took the bottle from her and opened it, took a sip.

“Where are my manners? Please take off your jacket and sit down.” She gestured at the only comfortable chair in the room, an orange velour armchair obviously rescued from a dump. When Sean had taken it (to refuse the chair would have offended her), she sat on a battered folding chair that had come from the same source.

Rue was trying to pick a conversational topic when Sean said, “You have some of the lipstick left on your lower lip.”

They’d put on a lot of makeup for the dance, and she thought she’d removed it all before they’d left the Jaslow estate. Rue thought of how silly she must look with a big crimson smudge on her mouth. “Excuse me for a second,” she said, and stepped into the tiny bathroom. While she was gone, Sean, moving like lightning, picked up her address book, which he’d spotted lying by the telephone.

He justified this bit of prying quite easily. She wouldn’t tell him anything, and he had to know more about her. He wasn’t behaving like any aristocrat, that was for sure, but he easily suppressed his guilt over his base behavior.

Flipping through the pages, Sean copied as many numbers as he could on a small piece of notebook paper from Rue’s pile of school materials. Several were in one town, Pineville, which had a Tennessee area code. He’d had a vampire friend in Memphis a few years before, and he recognized the number. He’d just replaced the address book when he heard the bathroom door open.

“You’re taking the history of my country,” Sean said, reading the spines of the textbooks piled on the tiny table that served as Rue’s desk.

“It’s the history of all the British Isles,” she said, trying not to grin. “But yes, I am. It’s an interesting course.”

“What year have you reached in your course of study?”

“We’re talking about Michael Collins.”

“I knew him.”

“What?” Her mouth fell open, and she knew she must look like an idiot. For the first time, she realized the weight of the years on Sean’s shoulders, the knowledge of history and people that filled his head. “You knew him?”

Sean nodded. “A fiery man, but not to my taste.”

“Could—would—you talk to my class about your recollections?”

Sean looked dismayed. “Oh, Rue, it was so long ago. And I’m not much of a crowd pleaser.”

“That’s not true,” she said, adding silently, You please me. “Think about it? My professor would be thrilled. She’s a nut about everything Irish.”

“Oh, and where’s she from?”

“Oklahoma.”

“A far way from Ireland.”

“You want another drink?”

“No.” He looked down at the bottle, seemed surprised he’d drained it. “I must be going, so you can get a little sleep. Do you have classes tomorrow?”

“No, it’s Saturday. I get to sleep in.”

“Me, too.”

Sean had actually made a little joke, and Rue laughed.

“So do you sleep in a regular bed?” she asked. “Or a coffin, or what?”

“In my own apartment I have a regular bed, since the room’s light-tight. I have a couple of places in the city where I can stay, if my apartment’s too far away when it gets close to dawn. Like hostels for vampires. There are coffins to sleep in at those places. More convenient.”

Rue and Sean stood. She took the empty bottle from him and leaned backward to put it by her sink. Suddenly the silence became significant, and her pulse speeded up.

“Now I’ll kiss you good-night,” Sean said deliberately. In one step he was directly in front of her, his hand behind her head, his spread fingers holding her in exactly the right position. Then his mouth was on Rue’s, and after a moment, during which Rue held very still, his tongue touched the seam of her lips. She parted them.

There was the oddity of Sean’s mouth being cool; and the oddity of kissing Sean, period. She was finally sure that Sean’s interest in her was that of a man for a woman. For a cool man, he gave a passionate kiss.

“Sean,” she whispered, pulling back a little.

“What?” His voice was equally as quiet.

“We shouldn’t...”

“Layla.”

His use of her real name intoxicated her, and when he kissed her again, she felt only excitement. She felt more comfortable with the vampire than she’d felt with any man. But the jolt she felt, low down, when his tongue touched hers, was not what she’d call comfortable. She slid her arms around his neck and abandoned herself to the kiss. When Rue felt his body pressing against her, she knew he found their contact equally exciting.

His mouth traveled down her neck. He licked the spot where he usually bit her. Her body flexed against his, involuntarily.

“Layla,” he said, against her ear, “who did you see that frightened you so much?”

It was like a bucket of cold water tossed in her face. Everything in her shut down. She shoved him away from her violently. “You did this to satisfy your curiosity? You thought if you softened me up, I’d answer all your questions?”

“Oh, of course,” he said, and his voice was cold with anger. “This is my interrogation technique.”

She lowered her face into her hands just to gain a second of privacy.

She was half inclined to take him literally. He was acting as if she was the unreasonable one, as if all the details of her short life should belong to him.

There was a knock on the door.

Their eyes met, hers wide with surprise, his questioning. She shook her head. She wasn’t expecting anyone.

Rue went to the door slowly and looked through the peephole. Sean was right behind her, moving as silently as only vampires could move, when she unlocked the door and swung it open.

Thompson stood there, and Hallie. Between the two, awkwardly, they supported Hallie’s partner, David. David was bleeding profusely from his left thigh. His khakis were soaked with blood. The vampire’s large dark eyes were open, but fluttering.

Thompson’s gaze was fixed on Rue; when he realized that Sean was standing behind her, he was visibly startled.

“Oh, come in, bring him in!” Rue exclaimed, shocked. “What happened?” She spared a second to be glad none of her neighbors seemed to be up. She shut the door before any of them roused.

Hallie was sobbing. Her tears had smeared her heavy eye makeup. “It was because of me,” she sobbed. “Thompson and Karl came in the bar. David was already there, he’d been having words with this jerk....” While she was trying to tell Rue, she was helping David over to Rue’s bed. Thompson was not being quite as much assistance as he should have been.

Sean whipped a towel from the rack in the bathroom and spread it on Rue’s bed before the two eased the wounded David down. Hallie knelt and swung David’s legs up, and David moaned.