“You idiot!” And then she hit me. Right across the chops. Knocked me spinning, too. Every time I saw that woman I wound up getting the crap punched out of me. Believe me, that’s not my idea of a perfect relationship.

“Ow! What the hell are you doing?” I said, pinching my nose shut to keep the blood off of my new clothes, but a moment later she was pressed against me and soon I was smearing my blood on both of us. Everything felt unreal. After so long . . . !

“Why are you always hitting me?” I murmured, my lips pressed so hard against hers that it probably sounded like Pig Latin.

“You shouldn’t have come! You shouldn’t!” She pulled her face back. Tears had started down her cheeks and frozen solid, little sparkling bits of white like irregular sequins. “You’ll get yourself killed, Bobby. You can’t do anything for me, so go home before he catches you.” But no matter what she might have been saying, she was holding on tightly. I already had her bodice open and had yanked it down so that I could reach her nipples, which stuck out like little pointing fingers. If I could have got both of them in my mouth at the same time I would have, but I had to take turns.

“No,” she moaned, but she was yanking up my shirt even as I suckled at her, grabbing the skin of my back as though she would somehow pull me into her, through her, like a doorway, and although she was still angry with me, still crying in frustration and fear, she never once pushed me away. Her hunger was as great as mine. As for me, seeing my strange, gray demon hands on her white skin suddenly made me feel as though I was staining her somehow, as though my foreign body was some kind of violation, an unfaithfulness, but Caz didn’t seem to care. After a few heartbeats I didn’t either. This was the body my soul was wearing, after all, and my soul didn’t care about anything except Casimira, Countess of Cold Hands. This was my real body now, and after the moment of strangeness had passed, it had never felt more that way.