“Bianca?” Lucas’s eyes went wide with fear.

The vampire seized the opportunity and pushed Lucas away, so that he fell. Horrified, I lurched toward them; if the vampire was about to attack Lucas again, I’d find the strength to pull him away no matter what. But the vampire was smarter than that; he ran, leaving us alone in the alley.

Lucas crawled to my side. I was on my hands and knees, down there in the garbage, and all of it stank so badly I thought I might vomit. My head felt too heavy for me to lift. The ends of my hair trailed into a puddle of some liquid I really didn’t want to identify. “I’m okay,” I said weakly.

“Like hell you are.” Lucas pulled me toward him, so that I could lean against his shoulder. We were on our knees beneath the streetlamp. My heart seemed to flutter in my chest, like a trapped bird, scrabbling to free itself. “Bianca, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” The harsh light of the streetlamp had turned everything into shades of gray, like we were in a black-and-white movie. “Do you think—do you think the vampire will leave the city?”

“Don’t worry about that right now. I’m going to take care of you.”

Lucas folded me against his chest. A cool spatter of rain on my cheek, then another on my calf, told me a summer storm had come. Neither of us moved as the rain quickened, wetting us both and plastering my hair to my head. It didn’t seem to matter to Lucas, and as for me—

I didn’t have the strength to move.

Chapter Sixteen

LUCAS FLUFFED THE PILLOWS BEHIND MY HEAD and drew the covers over me. “You sure you’re okay?” he said for about the eightieth time in the past two hours.

“I need to rest. That’s all.” I wanted him to stop worrying; he’d been half crazy with concern the whole way home, cradling me in his arms and stroking my hair as we took the bumpy bus ride back through the rain. Now the storm raged outside, rattling the wine bottles with thunder. “That vampire—he knows Charity. He’s going to tell her about us.”

“That’s why we’re never going on patrol in this city again.” He half turned as a lightning bolt crashed down nearby, and I could imagine him counting silently: one Mississippi. The storm was close.

I put one hand to my forehead; either it was warm or my hand was cold. My hair was still damp, which probably wouldn’t help.

“Did you not eat enough today?” He started rubbing my hands between his, trying to warm them up. It was like he couldn’t rest, couldn’t even think straight, until he’d fixed whatever was wrong. “Or—oh, my God.”

Lucas’s face went as pale as a sheet. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and it was so incredibly obvious that I had to laugh despite everything. “I’m not having a baby.”

“Are you positive?” When I nodded, he sighed in relief.

“Well, that’s something, anyway.”

I didn’t have the strength to admit to myself that this might be something serious, much less to admit it to Lucas. “I’ll be fine after I get some sleep. Wait and see.”

“Do you need blood?” He squeezed my hands, sort of happy, like he was talking about surprising me with a box of chocolates. We’d come a long way from the time when my being a vampire used to freak him out.

“I ate earlier.” I couldn’t even think about blood right now. The idea of eating anything, especially blood, was sickening.

Lucas paused, and I knew he remained worried. He wanted to ask me more questions, and I didn’t want him to ask. I wanted to pretend that none of it had ever happened. I needed to pretend that, for just a little while.

I was relieved when he said only, “Okay,” and leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. Closing my eyes, I made believe that I was well, that this wine cellar was a real house, and that we could stay here happily forever and ever.

Lucas didn’t keep worrying about my fainting spell the next day, but he insisted that I wait before filling out any more job applications. “You’re exhausted,” he said. Something in his voice suggested that he’d made up his mind what was going on, and I thought I’d try to believe in it, too. “After the fire at Evernight and Black Cross—you’ve hardly had a chance to catch your breath.”

“You haven’t either,” I pointed out, “and you work hard at the garage.”

“Your life changed more than mine, and we both know it.” Lucas shrugged. “Seriously, you need a break. Take a break. I’ll take care of us for a couple weeks.”

The money he brought in from the garage wasn’t that great; Lucas worked hard, and for lots of hours on the days they called him in, but it was under the table, which meant they could pay him less than minimum wage. So far it was enough to buy our food and pay our bus fares, with a teeny bit extra, but we’d barely begun scraping together the money to repay Balthazar and Vic. I’d started looking in the newspapers for places we might rent after Vic’s family returned from Tuscany, but I couldn’t believe how expensive even the smallest apartments seemed to be. Even if Vic let us have the stuff from the attic, we’d need to buy extra furniture and more clothes and maybe a car someday. I didn’t know how we would ever manage.

But I saw the determination on Lucas’s face. He was so committed to making this work, to looking after us, that I loved him even more.

“Just a week,” I said. That would be enough time to get well, surely.