“You’re not betraying him by moving on.” I spoke so vehemently the sound of my own voice startled me. Embarrassed, I cleared my throat and continued more softly. “What is it with you men, you think you have to hang on to everything.”

“What do you mean?” He took a swallow of blood, his eyes meeting mine in a silent question over the rim of the mug.

“You know exactly what I mean.” And if not all the details, well, it wasn’t my place to spill Nathan’s personal beans. “Nathan thinks he has to carry around a sack load of guilt over Marianne, and because of that, he can’t just get over it. You’re doing the same thing. Your guilt over the way your sire died is so precious to you, you refuse to give it up for even a second in case you might actually get over it and move on.”

“You should have been a head doctor,” Max said in a way that didn’t quite sound like a compliment.

We sat in silence, sipping our breakfast and doing our best to ignore the conversation we’d just had. Occasionally, Max would look up at some imagined sound from the living room, but when Bella didn’t appear he settled down in a disappointed funk.

I thought he was imagining things again when he swore and shot up from the table, nearly toppling it as he tore from the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

Despite the fact Bella still slept, he raced through the living room, turning on lights and lifting books, swearing repeatedly.

Bella sat up sleepily, a crease on the side of her face from the blankets she’d slept on. “What’s going on?”

“Where’s the book you were reading last night?” Max tossed aside an expensive-looking volume with gilt-edged pages.

Rubbing her eyes, Bella frowned. “Which one?”

“Max, what are you doing?” I saved a particularly prized text from knocking over a glass of water on the coffee table.

“You said Nathan is carrying around loads of guilt over killing Marianne. Who, besides you and me, know about that?” He grabbed the book Bella held out to him and began flipping through the pages with such force I worried he would rip them from the binding. A lock of golden hair fell across his forehead, accentuating the madness that seemed to have gripped him.

“Well, Cyrus knows. He was there. And so was the Soul Eater.”

“Max, you don’t think that has something to do with…” My stomach roiled. I had a feeling the blood I’d drunk would soon be wasted.

Strong hands closed over my shoulders, and I realized belatedly I no longer heard the water running in the shower.

“Has something to do with what?” Cyrus’s breath stirred the hair at the back of my neck.

Max coughed and I stepped out of Cyrus’s proprietary embrace.