Gabriel was well aware that Sara was staring at him like he had entirely lost his mind, but he didn’t have a choice. He was bound to New Orleans and couldn’t leave. There was no way around it. And he couldn’t give her his blood because she would discover he wasn’t Jonathon Thiroux’s descendent, but the same man.

But he didn’t like the way she reached for him, hooking her arm around his elbow, her chin resting on his shoulder. It made the ache in his heart all that much deeper.

“Gabriel,” she said, her voice coaxing, close to his ear. “I’d really like you to go with me.”

“No, I really can’t.” It felt terrible to say, and he knew he was hurting her, but he didn’t have any other options. The truth wasn’t possible and he didn’t want to spin a lie.

She made a sound of frustration and pulled back. “You just told me you think Rafe killed my mother.”

He turned, not sure where she was headed with that statement. “Yeah, and you said you don’t believe me.”

“But if you believe Rafe is capable of violence—murder— why would you let me go to Florida to meet with him alone? Aren’t you at all worried that he might hurt me?” She twisted her hair on the side of face and held the coil on her shoulder. “Not that he would, but you seem to think he could. So don’t you care about me at all?”

Her lip had started to quiver and he could see how that angered her. It was slicing him, the burning guilt and regret tearing through him, and he wanted to just pull her into his arms, to tell her that he loved her, that if he had his way, he would never let her leave him. But they were sitting in public, a dozen people around them, the lap of the water on the dock a reminder that this wasn’t the time or the place for revelations. In fact, there would never be an appropriate time to tell her that he was a demon, immortal, bound to the city of his shame for an indefinite period of time.

He didn’t want her to go to Florida because he didn’t want to be without her. But he wasn’t worried about her safety. Because Gabriel was 99 percent sure that Raphael, or Rafe as he called himself now, was back in New Orleans. He was the face in the window of the house on Dauphine that Sara had seen. He had dropped the bottle of absinthe off as a mocking gift.

“Of course I care about you, Sara. I care about you tremendously. But if you want to go to Florida, I can’t stop you.”