“You mean putting him to sleep?” I said, not sure I’d heard him right. “Like a dog?”

Eric looked me straight in the eyes. “Ocella loves the boy, but he cannot be allowed to kill people or other vampires when these fits take him. Such incidents will get into the paper. What if he were caught? What if some Russian recognized him as a result of the notoriety? What would that do to our relationship with the Russian vampires? Most important, Ocella cannot keep track of him every moment. Two times, the boy has gotten out on his own. And two deaths resulted. In my area! He’ll subvert all we’re trying to do here in the United States. Not that my maker cares about my position in this country,” Eric added, a little bitterly.

I gave Eric a sort of heavy pat on the cheek. Not a slap. A heavy pat. “Yeah, let’s not forget the two dead men,” I said. “That Alexei murdered, in a painful and horrible way. I mean, I realize that this is all about him and your maker and your personal cred, but let’s spare a tip of the hat to those guys he killed.”

Eric shrugged. He was worried and he was at his wit’s end, and he didn’t care at all about the deaths of two humans. He was probably thankful that Alexei had picked victims who wouldn’t attract much sympathy and whose deaths were easily explained. Gang members killed one another all the time, after all. I gave up on making my point. At least partly because I’d had a thought—if Alexei was capable of turning against his own kind, maybe we could steer him onto Victor?

I shuddered. I was creeping myself out. “So your maker brought Alexei to you hoping that you’d have some bright ideas about keeping your half brother alive, teaching him some self-control?”

“Yes. That’s one of the reasons he’s here.”

“Appius Livius having sex with the kid can’t be helping Alexei’s mental health,” I said, since I simply couldn’t not say it.

“Please understand. In Ocella’s time, that was not a consideration,” Eric said. “Alexei would be old enough, in those times. And men of a certain station were free to indulge themselves with very little guilt or question. Ocella doesn’t think in the modern way about such things. As it happens, Alexei has become so . . . Well, they are not having sex now. Ocella is an honorable man.” Eric sounded very intent, very serious, as if he had to persuade me of his maker’s integrity. And all this concern was about the man who’d murdered him. But if Eric admired Ocella, respected him, didn’t I have to do the same?

And—it popped into my head that Eric wasn’t doing anything for his brother that I wouldn’t do for mine.