“Of course,” he said.

“Stop sizing him up for the kill, then.”

He blinked and looked very steadily at me with his dark eyes. “You are very observant.”

“Not as observant as you are.”

He gave a small self-deprecating smile. “I have had more practice at it.”

“Yeah, a few centuries more,” I said.

“By the grace of my vampire master, I have lived long past my expected time.”

“If we keep talking, we’re going to use up all our time,” Bobby Lee said. “Let’s get moving.”

It was unusually abrupt for him, but something about the way he gripped his AR and stood there in all his gear made me not argue with him. Whatever had happened on his last out-of-town assignment had been bad, because I’d never seen Bobby Lee like this when he got home.

“Let’s move,” I said.

Bobby Lee took point leading the way. Kaazim took rear guard. Damian, Nathaniel, and I stayed in the middle, where we belonged. I had my gun in my hand, but in that moment it didn’t matter. Armed or unarmed, I was their protectee, and that was that; with Bobby Lee this high-strung, my best move was to let him do his job. Besides, I only had one gun; he had several.

I could feel tension starting in Damian again. It telegraphed through his hand into mine.

“You okay?”

“If Cardinale is dead to the world in our bed, then we still have a chance, but if she’s not in there, then it’s over. I can’t live like this anymore.”

Nathaniel touched his head against the other man’s shoulder lightly as they moved. “I’m sorry, Damian.”

We were still holding hands, but somehow I felt like I needed to touch him more, so I put my arm around his waist. It took a second for all of us to adjust our walking together, but we managed. “I’m sorry, too, Damian.”

“So am I,” he said, and we followed Bobby Lee’s overly armored and armed back down the hallway. Bodyguards are great at saving your life, but they can’t help at all when someone is trying to break your heart.

9

DAMIAN HAD WANTED to know if he was a suddenly single vampire or if he still had a relationship. He felt like he needed to know, so we went to his room first. If Cardinale was in the bed we’d go back to Nathaniel’s and my room for showers. The five of us stood in Damian’s room. A bedside lamp shone beside a perfectly made-up bed. It had a flowered coverlet, and lace draped from the bed frame. There was a large rug on the floor that was covered in huge daisylike flowers. There were pictures on the walls of flowers in vases, flower-filled meadows, a small girl holding flowers. In all that flower-filled, overly feminine room, there was no sign of Cardinale. I knew her coffin was in one of the coffin rooms, so there was no hidden place for her here. She was either in the bed, under the bed, or sleeping in the bathtub. No vampire I knew willingly slept in a tub, so . . . “I’m sorry, Damian.” It seemed so inadequate, but it was all I could think to say.

Nathaniel hugged him and Damian hugged him back as if he wasn’t really seeing him.

Bobby Lee and Kaazim just stood there, taking up positions in the room so they could watch the door. They were as empty as they could make themselves, taking themselves away from the emotion of the moment. Normally, Bobby Lee was more helpful, but I think he was full up on his own emotional shit, no energy left for anyone else.

I expected Damian to break down, or scream, or go looking for her, but he didn’t do any of that. Instead he said, “I hate what she did to my room. I hate the bedspread.” He stalked into the room and dragged it off the bed and threw it on the floor. “I hate these paintings!” He grabbed the one that looked like a bad imitation of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and threw it across the room like a Frisbee. “I hate these rugs!” He picked the biggest one up and pulled it behind him like the train on some impossible formal gown. He opened the door, shoved it through, and brought the bedspread out to join it. The sheets underneath were pink, but I refrained from saying anything that might add to the emotion of the moment.

He slammed the door behind him and ranted, “I hated the colors she chose, the mess she made of my closet, and how her clothes were more important than mine.” He went for the closet in the far wall and slid the door open. I think he was going to throw her clothes out beside the rug and bedding, but when he got the door open, he froze in front of it.

“Oh God,” he said.

I came to his side, wondering if he’d found Cardinale “asleep” in the closet. Maybe she’d just hidden to see what he’d do; I’d known humans who did stuff like that, so why not vampires? But when I could look into the closet, there was no body in it, but there weren’t many clothes either. I realized her clothes were missing.

“She’s really gone,” he said, and the anger was replaced by sorrow, loss, remorse maybe, all those emotions that hit you after a breakup, especially right after a breakup. Though I guess this was in the middle of it.

“I’m sorry, Damian.”

Nathaniel echoed me. “We’re both sorry, Damian.”

“So am I, but I really do hate what she’s done to my room, my space. It’s like it’s all about her, and I didn’t matter.”

“You mattered to her, Damian.”

“Would either of you have let anyone turn your bedroom into some flowered nightmare?” He looked at me when he asked, and his expression let me know that lying wasn’t an option.