"It's hard to believe you lived past the age of ten!" Nathan stood and stalked away, then turned and paced back to the couch. "For someone smart enough to be a doctor, you have remarkably little common sense!"

"Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!" Why did those words always follow an abysmally stupid action? "Besides, it bought us some information!"

"That might be false!" Nathan paused in his agitated pacing and sat at the end of the couch, elbows braced on his spread knees. "When you drank our blood, you saw what you did because we'd both been blood tied to you. We couldn't lie to you because we didn't have the capacity to control what you saw. But Dahlia has no tie to you. She could have shown you anything she wanted."

I cast a sidelong glance at Cyrus, remembering his face as he loomed over Dahlia in his bed. "She was drugged. How could she have planted things in my head if she was unconscious?"

"She might not have made them up," Nathan conceded. "But she may have left out crucial details that would have changed the order or meaning of what you saw."

"She's crazy, don't forget. Some of what you witnessed might not ever have happened, even if she believes it did." Cyrus interjected his comment in an offhand way. He was still absorbed in the book, probably wondering what exactly his ex-girlfriend had tried on him.

"There's that, too." Nathan seemed loath to admit Cyrus had said something helpful. "The point is we stilll don't know anything. We just have this book, and her convoluted memories. It wasn't worth the risk you took."

Underneath ids anger, I felt his love. He worried about me. I reached for his hand, and he took mine willingly, giving a gentle squeeze.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. I was just so consumed with wanting to find something, any sort of break to help us." I shook my head. "It was so easy before."

Nathan sighed. "You didn't fail. You got us this book. That's something."

He leaned down to kiss me, and jealousy surged through me from Cyrus's direction. I heard him push back his chair, then his footsteps as he came into the living room.

"Really, the only thing we need to know is where my father is going next. He won't stay in one place too long. It isn't his way." Cyrus sat on the floor beside the couch, and I couldn't help but lay my hand on his head. He leaned back, into my touch, and Nathan looked away.

I couldn't take much more of this. Being the object two men competed for wasn't as glamorous as it sounded in the movies. The two men who both wanted one hundred percent of my time weren't dashing, international playboys. They were undead and surprisingly immature, considering the youngest was just over a hundred years old.