“What’s wrong?”

She opened her eyes and looked into his confused face. Sure, he’d told her he loved her, but that was in the heat of passion. It didn’t count. Men said a lot of things when their dick took over. Vampire surely weren’t any different from other men.

“Listen, Gabriel, I want you to know that it’s okay. You don’t have to get it removed on my account. I’m okay with it, really. It doesn’t bother me. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t do anything about it.”

A stunned look traveled over his features. “Maya,” he urged her. “Why would you not want this for me? I thought you and I had something here.”

She swallowed hard, but couldn’t stop her next words from passing over her lips. “Once you’re normal, you can have any woman you want. You could have a human woman, not an infertile vampire. So you can have children.”

Gabriel cursed. “God damn it! Who’s been planting those ideas in your head?”

Maya averted her eyes. She’d made him angry. “Yvette.”

“I wish Yvette would keep her big trap shut and not talk of things she knows nothing about.” He ran his hand through his long hair and sighed. “God, Maya, Yvette doesn’t know what I want. Do I want a child?  Of course, but … I mean, you …”  He shook his head.  “This is a talk that’ll take a lot longer than one minute. There’s so much I have to explain to you. But I have to go now. I promise you, as soon as I’m back, we’ll talk about this. About you and me. About us.  Will you give me the time I need to see the witch before we talk?”

“Okay,” she said quickly.  “Go.”  She wanted to believe that he loved and wanted her, but he’d said he wanted a child.  A child she could never give him.

He pressed a hard kiss on her lips before he pulled away. “I’ll have Yvette come to protect you while I’m gone. Carl is here. He’ll take care of you while you’re waiting for Yvette. You can trust her, despite the things she says.” Then he dressed faster than she’d ever seen any man dress and was gone just as quickly.

***

Thomas’ fingers flew over the keyboard as he entered commands into the computer. Hacking into any company’s systems was second nature to him. He and Eddie had gotten interrupted earlier by the search for Maya, but now he was back at the computer, finally hacking into the telephone company’s systems. The delay had cost them.

“Can you teach me that?” Eddie asked from behind him, standing entirely too close. Over the last few weeks, Eddie’s habit of sticking close to him had started to rattle his nerves.

Thomas was sure Eddie wasn’t even aware of it, for all Eddie seemed to do was look up to him. After Eddie had been turned only a short few months ago, Thomas had been assigned to become his mentor. Out of practicality, he’d allowed the kid to move in with him.

“I’ll give you a crash course later, but I think Gabriel wants this data quickly.”

A list popped up on the screen. “That’s Maya’s phone records. Gabriel thinks that the rogue might have called her, or that she called him.”

Eddie’s arm reached over his shoulder and pointed at the screen. His scent drifted into Thomas’ nose. “But that’s just phone numbers. How are we going to find out who these people are?”

“I’m cross-referencing the list with phone books and listings by the cell phone companies.” Thomas typed in a command and hit the enter button. The screen flashed in response and split into two halves. Names started running along on the right side of the screen, too fast to read. “Whenever it finds a match, it’ll slot the name into the list.”

“Wow, that’s cool. But how are we gonna find who’s the guy? Looks like she got a hell lot of calls.”

Thomas turned back toward Eddie. “We’re not. Maya is. As soon as the search is done in about half an hour, we’ll fax it over to her. She’ll flag any name that’s not familiar. Since he wiped her memory she won’t have any recollection of his name. He’ll be among the people Maya doesn’t recognize. Then, we’ll do our work and check them out.”

Eddie smiled and patted Thomas’ shoulder. “Excellent plan.”

Thomas gave a weary smile back. His other friends often did the same: pat him on the back, squeeze his shoulder in a show of friendship, but when Eddie did it, Thomas felt something he shouldn’t allow himself to feel. Because Eddie was straight, and nothing would come of it.