Then she remembers.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Sometimes I get dots on my arm.”

“Dots?” he asks, but as soon as the word leaves his mouth, his eyes twitch toward her wrist.

“Yes. They kind of look like holes that bump up under my skin. Kind of like yours. Like your tattoo.”

“Ah, I see . . .”

“Where are they from?”

He stops scrubbing but doesn’t look up from the water. He takes a few moments before he answers. “They’re happy freckles, my sweet.” He continues to scrub.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that whenever we are happy, the dots appear.”

“Oh!” She glances over at his tattoo. “Well, if that’s the case, then . . .” She looks down at her bare wrist, the healed flesh staring back at her. “Shouldn’t there be more dots?”

She turns to him with a smile and he grins at her in return, his body covering hers in shadow.

“Yes, Vanilla. I suppose you’re right.”

CHAPTER VIII

Eight years later

He kneels next to the large porcelain bathtub, the top buttons of his dress shirt undone and humidity trickling down his chest. His hands are in the water, gliding a sponge across her sleek skin. When he is done, he presses his hands into his knees and uses the leverage to stand.

She stares up at him. A chunk of his petrified silver hair became unglued and has fallen over his painfully blue eyes. Eyes that are so unlike her own dark ones. But she can still see him clearly. His face is stone. Without a crack in his now settled expression, he holds his hand out to her, his long fingers unfurling toward her chest. She takes it, eyeing the smooth skin stretched across his ribcage beneath the buttons, and uses his anchoring strength to stand with him. He guides her out of the bathtub and watches her naked body balance over the ledge to reach him. Ice water drips down her bare skin and she shivers from the cool air touching her, freezing her into stiffness. He feels her body tremble and pulls her in close, concealing her within himself so that her nose presses into his chest. But still she trembles.

Because he is none the warmer.

(And she is only growing colder.)

He plucks the towel from the sink and wraps it across her shoulders. She grabs the edges and tightens the towel around herself, her legs still shaking because the towel no longer reaches down to her feet.

Gradually, her body stops shivering.

“Are you still cold?”

“No.”

“Good.”

He rips the towel off her and wraps it around her head. His hands press and rub into her skull, soaking up excess water and wringing droplets from her hair.

The aggressive motion warms her scalp and she purrs.

He removes the towel from her head and lets it fall to the floor like a used-up carcass. His eyes travel up her body, calculating, until they make contact with hers. A film of greenish-yellow light coats his face. But he still looks as pale as porcelain.