"So," I began uneasily. "You're back in Grand Rapids for good then?"

He made an affirmative noise. "I found Mouse's sister. I can't say I made any real progress there. But she knows what happened. At least, she knows the sanitized version."

"How did she take it?" Cyrus had told me very little about the girl he'd named Mouse. When he'd left Grand Rapids to seek out her next of kin, I'd been under the impression he'd had little hope of finding anyone.

"She asked me for a hundred bucks and offered to, ah, compensate me for it." He sounded as though the subject made him tired. "She didn't even care."

"At least you cared." It was a stupid thing to say, but I'd never been good at condolences. "Where are you staying?"

"In a horrible apartment downtown, near the college. The absolute worst part of the city. Hippies as far as the eye can see." I heard the smile in his voice as he added, "Near your sire's place, actually."

"Uh-huh." Great. All notions of domestic bliss, or however close Nathan and I could come to it, shattered by geographical coincidence.

"It wasn't my idea, really," Cyrus rushed to add. "Dahlia set it up for me."

"Oh, so you've been talking to Dahlia." I turned and met Nathan's suddenly alert glance with a worried one of my own. "That's comforting. What did you have to do to earn her help?"

"Still jealous, are we?" Cyrus laughed. "Don't worry. It was a trade—the mansion for one room with a kitchenette and a tiny bathroom with a stall shower and a door that doesn't close all the way. Doesn't seem like a fair trade, but life has been consistently unfair to me for a while now."

"Oh, how nice. I didn't realize I'd been invited to the pity party," I mused.

He laughed again. "Carrie, I stock bricks of pasteurized, processed cheese for seven dollars an hour. Indulge me if I miss the comforts of my former life a bit."

"Have you been keeping an eye on your health?" I asked, changing the subject. "You're not immortal anymore, you know."

"I'm painfully aware of that. I'm also painfully aware of the fact I have no insurance, and the world seems to turn on the revenue generated by insurance companies." He waited a moment before asking, but I could feel the question coming. "Perhaps you wouldn't mind being my care-giver. Just until things are settled. I have the most insufferable allergies—"

"I don't think that's such a good idea." Historically, me and any expanse of unclothed Cyrus flesh were a potentially unstable combination. "But maybe we can go to the drugstore when I get back, take a look at some of the over-the-counter allergy meds. Some of them are just worthless, but—"