He didn’t ask. He just opened his arms, and I fell into them, sobbing my heart out as he stroked my hair.

“It’s okay,” he whispered to me.

But it wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SHANE

Michael had his arms around Eve, and that was going well for a change; Myrnin had already taken his goodies off to the lab, leaving the three of us behind. Hannah had ditched us, too, locked in her eerie calm. None of us had dared say anything to her.

Claire was looking at me with dull, tragic need, and I just couldn’t … I couldn’t give her what she needed. Not yet. I couldn’t feel it. But there was something I could feel, after all.

I said, “I need to tell Monica about her brother.”

I heard Claire suck in a deep breath, as if she hadn’t even thought that far ahead. “Oh,” she said in a choked voice. “Should I go—?”

“No. Better if I do it alone.” Because if I could feel anything real, it would be now, looking into Monica’s eyes. It was karma. She deserved to hear about her brother from me; while my sister died, caught in our burning house, Monica had stood there and smiled and flicked a lighter. Mocking me. Mocking how helpless I was.

I’d always believed she’d set the fire, from that moment on; Richard had always insisted she hadn’t, that she’d just been a troll and hadn’t even known Alyssa was trapped inside. I didn’t really believe him. Maybe he didn’t even believe it himself.

I found Monica in what I guessed was some kind of vampire entertainment room. There was a TV, tuned now silently to static, and a leather couch. She was lying on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, and she was asleep.

I didn’t think I’d ever seen Monica asleep, and the surprise was that when she wasn’t actively being herself, she seemed … normal. She looked tired, too; her hair was mussed, and she’d taken her makeup off. Without it, she looked her actual age, which was Michael’s—no, she was still human. She was older than Michael now.

All of a sudden, real or not, the pain I was about to inflict didn’t seem right—but she needed to know, and I’d volunteered.

Isn’t it perfect, how you get to tell her about her brother? More wish fulfillment, Shane. You really think all this is the truth?

That damn stupid voice in my head wouldn’t shut up. It was a constant, grinding monologue, a headache that wouldn’t go away. And the worst thing was, I wasn’t sure it was imagination. Wake up, Shane.

But I was awake. Wasn’t I?

I crossed the room toward the couch. The lights had been turned down low, but on the coffee table there was a remote to turn them up, so I pressed the button. As the artificial sun came up, Monica moaned a little, mumbled, and tried to bury her face in the pillow.