He held up a hand, "Don't. Carrie, you wanted to hurt me. If you hadn't meant those things, they wouldn't have hurt so much. So don't apologize."

Tears spilled from my eyes and a sob welled in my chest, blocking my words. I couldn't have spoken if he'd wanted me to.

Nathan straightened in the doorway and put his hands in his pockets. "I'll see you after sunset."

He turned to go and I found my voice. "Don't you want to know what happened with Clarence?"

I saw the muscles beneath Nathan's T-shirt bunch. I knew he felt my hope and, admittedly, pride at how well things had gone at the mansion. In other words, he knew that I was about to tell him exactly how I would proceed to put myself into danger in phase two of my plan. "Fine. How did it go?"

"It was okay. He agreed to help us." I wished I had some details to give him, now that I'd brought it up.

"Help doing what?" There was a note of amusement in Nathan's voice now. An easy, friendly tone that warmed me from the inside.

"Don't know. I have to go back tonight."

He took a deep breath, to stem the tide of warnings that would come flowing from his mouth if he let them. "We'll talk about it tonight."

I watched as he turned to the corner toward his bedroom. "I'm going, you know," I called after him.

He echoed back, "We'll talk about it tonight."

Chapter Fourteen
Clarence

In the end, Nathan agreed that it should be me meeting Clarence, because I'd made the arrangement and because the butler would likely try to kill Cyrus if he set foot on the grounds.

"Or you, for that matter," I'd tacked on. "Clarence doesn't like vampires."

Nathan had smiled at that. "Funny how his line of work always seems to lead him to them, huh?"

It had felt much too easy, his acceptance of my "I'm going and you're not" decree, and I'd wondered if he was actually still mad at me and hoping Dahlia would finish me off. Then I'd wondered if he was still mad at Cyrus, and what he would do to him when I left.

He'd felt my doubt and it had clearly hurt him. "You're my fledgling. Do you think I would cause you that sort of pain?"

Without waiting to think about it, I'd snapped, "You were going to this morning."

We'd parted on less than warm terms, with Nathan trying to act as though he wasn't angry with me and me pretending the whole exchange had never happened. Still, before I'd left, he'd reassured me again that he wouldn't harm Cyrus, and it was all I had to comfort me on the walk to the mansion.