Chapter Twenty-Three

I left Sil and Liam manhandling office furniture into Zan’s chilly living room – well, Sil was handling and Liam was saying ‘up your end’ rather a worrying number of times – so that we could keep our office running whilst remaining under the eye of the vampires, or “safe” as Zan kept insisting on calling it. I had the feeling we would have been just as safe if we’d stayed in our own office, i.e., about as safe as we would have been inside a damp paper bag, but I’d lost the will to argue. I followed the old vampire up the huge oak staircase. We trekked along miles of portrait-hung corridor, past acres of ornate furniture and through swamps of deep-pile carpets, until Zan stopped outside a carved, gothic door. ‘This will be your room.’

‘What? I have to sleep here?’

Zan reached behind him and opened the door. ‘Sleep, play charades, whatever pleases you, Jessica.’ He stood aside and I walked past him into the room. It was the size of a small African country with a vast four-posted double bed in the middle, and windows looking out over an exquisitely landscaped garden. There was an en-suite bathroom with gaudily patterned gold taps, and a bowl of fruit on a small writing table just inside the door. Instead of paper, the walls were ornamented with embroidered hangings alternated with mahogany panelling; it was like a cross between a bridal suite and a porn set.

‘You do have electricity, don’t you? And the toilet flushes?’

Zan had followed me into the room. ‘Of course.’ He walked across to the window, pausing on his way to run a possessive hand over an enormously ugly chest-of-drawers and the spiral-carved bed supports. ‘Among the things that this century has to recommend it, the lavatorial facilities come fairly high up the list.’ He stood at the waist-level sill, gazing down over the gardens with his back to me.

‘It’s a bit Brideshead Revisited.’

Without turning around Zan said, ‘If you tell me that what this place needs is a woman’s touch, I am afraid I may have to tear your throat out.’

Whoa. I was going to treat that as a joke. ‘So. How long am I going to have to stay? I mean, is it worth bringing more of my clothes over or what?’

Now Zan turned. He said absolutely nothing, he didn’t need to. The look in his jade eyes was enough.

‘What? Oh, no, that’s stupid, Zan. We have to do something.’

‘And you suggest …?’

‘We can’t just wait for Malfaire to decide the next move! There are people’s lives at stake here … remember the Troubles?’ Intimations of mortality were beginning to creep into my head. I didn’t want to die, not like this, cowering in a vampire’s glorified flat-share. Actually, I didn’t want to die at all, apart from possibly in my own bed aged a hundred and three.

‘I agree. We must seize the initiative.’ Zan’s voice was low, business-like. And also he was speaking to me as an equal, as though I carried as much weight in this as he did, and that scared me almost more than anything. ‘And yes, Jessica. I remember the Troubles only too well. And I also remember that many of the deaths during that time were caused by actions without consideration. We must take time here to consider what may best be done.’

Just when I thought I’d sunk as low as my spirits could possibly go, there was a slow knock at the half-open door. Sil stood on the threshold, propping himself by one arm against the door frame. ‘Jessie – ’

Zan gave me a grin. The very tips of his fangs showed. ‘You will need to talk.’ His expression was amused but the teeth gave the lie to the smile. ‘I shall leave you. But Sil, when you are ready, one of us needs to go to Jessica’s flat and fetch what remains of her possessions.’

‘Hold on.’ The thought of Sil rummaging through my underwear and trying to find wearable clothes in my jumble-sale of a wardrobe did not fill me with pleasure. And Zan would only do it if he was allowed to wear those creepy latex gloves. ‘Can’t I go myself?’

‘Of course.’ Zan inclined his head towards me. ‘If you feel that having coordinating shoes and bags is worth dying for.’ Another supercilious smile and he wafted from the room, passing Sil with barely a nod of acknowledgement. I sat on the bed and stared.

‘Does he know? About us, about what we did?’

Sil waved a non-committal hand. ‘Zan knows pretty much everything,’ he said. ‘Now, you going to let me in there, or have you got some hunky young stud naked in that bathroom already, now that you’ve broken your four-year celibacy rule?’

‘Where would I get a hunky young stud from? There’s at least one person too many in this house already.’ I didn’t exactly let him in; I just walked over towards the window, and he followed. He kicked the door shut behind him and the slam echoed down the landing like a cough. ‘Very butch. You don’t have to prove you’re a man to me, Sil, remember?’

I had my back to him, trying to fix my attention on the garden and not on Sil’s reflection in the window.

‘Jessie. What happened last night … I don’t think you understand what it meant … what it means to me. But you know it’s not like I can stop being vampire.’

‘A demon is for several lifetimes, not just for Christmas?’

He smiled. ‘You’re special, Jessie. And I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘Fine by me.’ I turned around to face him. ‘So, you can see yourself out then.’

‘There’s something in you, something that pulls me, something that I want more of. I can feel you, when you think of me there’s this …’ He made a fist and punched it towards his ribcage. ‘I don’t understand it.’

‘You’re going to get to the sex in a minute, aren’t you?’

‘The sex? Oh yeah, well, goes without saying, doesn’t it? I mean, it was incredible. It was – ’

‘All right, so I’m a world-class shag.’ I had to be cruel, had to be hard. Otherwise I was going to go down underneath the longing that hid inside me.

‘There were layers, it was feeling and thinking and being, all wrapped up in you. Jesus, Jessie, you made me remember the past like I never do, like I never want to do. You bring it all back, the sadness and the pain.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.

‘No! No, don’t be sorry. It’s good. You don’t understand, do you, Jessica? You think you know us so well; you read the pamphlets and the officially sanctioned books and you think that genuinely gives you an insight into our natures?’

‘Oh, I know you, all right. You’re a bunch of arrogant, emotionless, neutered killers.’

He dipped his head and took a small step closer to me. ‘And you truly believe that is all we are?’ A cool hand touched my cheek. ‘Truly? In your heart?’

‘Jonathan,’ I said, very softly. Almost under my breath. Rolled with the feeling, let the whole thing take me under until I felt it in my lungs, drowned in it. ‘Not Sil. Not with me.’

‘But I have to experience, to feel, the blood and the white-heat of the lust and the danger, do you see?’

I took a deep breath. If this was all going to end in war and death – and I was not accepting that as a foregone conclusion, but you never knew – I was not leaving unfinished business. ‘And that’s the problem. How on earth can I let myself love you when I’d never know where you were, or who you were with? Vampires are like Jeremy Kyle’s secret weapon in the viewing figures war; you said it yourself, Sil. You feed and fuck and it doesn’t touch you. Nothing touches you.’

The vampire moved closer and I didn’t know who I was seeing, Sil with his white-eyed disdain, or Jonathan, shaking with pain he was trying to forget. ‘Love?’

‘Four years, Sil. And every time I see you with someone else it’s like broken glass behind my eyes.’

A slow shake of the head. ‘I never knew.’

‘No, of course you didn’t! Too busy shaking everybody else up. Why did you think I slapped you when you tried to kiss me?’

Sil sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I thought you were scared of me. I –’ He broke off and ran his hands through his hair. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. So, last night was – what?’

‘An aberration. I slipped, all right? You were there and …’ the tears began to leak out, ‘and I’m frightened, and I was cold and you … you.’

The vampire closed his eyes and threw himself back on the bed, lying sprawled. ‘So you refused to allow your feelings for me even when I kissed you? You really are the most utterly exasperating person I have ever known, and I have known quite a few lawyers, so that is really saying something.’

‘That’s not fair, Sil. I can’t control the way I feel, but I can control what happens to me, and I refuse to trail along behind you with my tongue hanging out, just waiting for that moment when you decide to turn around and notice me. When your bed is cold and you fancy a quick fuck to warm it up ready for the next victim – I won’t be that woman, Sil. I might love you but that doesn’t mean I’m going to lie down and let you walk all over me.’ I sniffed hard and tried to drag the tears back up my cheeks by the power of suction.

His eyes opened; a dark, slate colour now. ‘You still have no real understanding, do you? Of my kind, of how we have to live?’ He moved from prone to standing beside me in one slick, vampire-move. ‘Try. Just for one second step outside your oh-so-human mindset and imagine what it is to be one of us.’

I was crying properly now. ‘What do you mean? Jonathan?’ I looked into his face, felt his demon relishing the moment.

His hands went up, reached around to cup the back of my head, hold me steady. ‘As you keep reminding me, I have been vampire for nearly a hundred years.’

‘What do you want, a party?’ I dropped my eyes from his, stared at the garish pattern on the carpet, where swirls and broken colour blocks made it look as though someone had been violently ill several centuries ago and no-one had cleared up.

‘Jessica. You judge me, you judge all vampires, by your human standards. You humans, you believe we can’t feel, that we are the ultimate in emotional detachment.’ His hand was insistent on my neck, not letting me turn my head away; all I could do was keep my eyes on that horrible carpet.

‘Well, you can’t, can you? You shag around and you party like it’s the end of the world and you don’t love or care for anyone except yourselves. I’ve seen you, Sil, don’t forget. I was at that club when you danced as though you and she were wearing the same knickers and then you …’ I swallowed. ‘Then you drank her blood.’ My gaze travelled back up, almost against my will. ‘Now tell me that’s the behaviour of a caring, compassionate member of society.’

There was a sudden draught at the back of my neck as his hands fell away. ‘All right,’ he said, and his voice was very quiet now. ‘All right. We party. We need the thrills and the highs … our demons need those. But tell me this, Jessica –’ His voice became so quiet that I had to lean in close to hear his words. Felt them breathed against my cheek. ‘If we have no feelings, if we care so little, why does the memory of my wife and children make me weep?’

He was only voicing something that I’d wondered myself, but I’d pushed the thought away, squirrelled it somewhere under my ribs, behind my heart. If he felt … if he could feel … could he feel for me? And, if he could, then what on earth was all the vampire cold-bloodedness about? ‘I don’t …’

‘Jessica. The reason vampires don’t feel? The reason we dare not?’ And there he was again, right in front of me, head slightly tilted and his eyes holding me, preventing me from looking away. ‘It is because we are cowards. If we allow ourselves to feel, then we have to live with our guilt.’ He turned, swift and lithe, and began pacing the carpet of the ornate room, like a wolf moving through Versailles. ‘A century, Jess. A hundred years, and most of those spent living on the edge. Killing, feeding, turning those we desired.’ His voice was matter-of-fact, but I could see the way his hands twisted around one another, fingers interlocking and releasing, as though he was trying to squeeze the pain from his words to keep his tone level. ‘I’ve done … we’ve all done things … And after a few years, we learn to stop feeling. To lock away every trace of emotion, because otherwise …’ He stopped. Put his hands on the window ledge and leaned to stare out over the gardens. ‘Because otherwise the guilt would kill us.’

‘Sil …’

‘The only way to live is to forget. But I carry that guilt. And uppermost is the guilt of the night they died. Joseph and Constance. I wasn’t there, Jess. I wasn’t there to hold them or protect them or …’ A sudden biting-off of the words and his head dropped. His shoulders moved, jerked twice and when he spoke again his voice was thin. ‘Christie was right to send me away. Because I would have turned them. If I’d been there, I would have turned my own children. Her, too. I might have condemned them to lives that needed lethal amounts of adrenaline to function, and back then there wasn’t the synth; we had to bite to live.’ I felt his demon give a shiver, felt it rise within him, called by whatever feelings he was working so hard to suppress, and watched him straighten as though it drove steel through his spine. ‘And that is why vampires are emotionless. Not because we cannot feel but because we dare not.’

He faced me again, eyes pale grey once more. There was no trace of the suffering on his face now.

‘So you don’t want to feel, because you don’t like feeling guilty? Damn it, Sil, that’s like cutting off your head because you don’t like your hairstyle! What about all the good stuff – do you deny yourselves that just so that you don’t have to suffer a few sleepless nights? Because that’s pretty crazy.’

A shake of his head. ‘You still do not understand, Jessica. Half-demon, and yet you still think like a human.’ He sighed and closed his eyes. ‘Imagine the worst thing you have ever done.’ A flicker of a smile moved across his lips, almost invisibly fast, ‘and no, breaking the tracker programme was not the worst thing. Worse than that.’

I frowned. ‘I’ve never …’ and then a huge flashback to the sight of Malfaire, hands raking at the air and blood seeping through his immaculate jacket. The terrible feeling that had settled over me before we hit the river; I’d taken a life, and nothing would ever be the same again. ‘Oh.’

His eyes opened, dark now. Brewing-storm dark. ‘I have done terrible things, Jessica. Terrible, evil, wicked things. I have killed, men, women, children, just to satisfy my hunger. I took …’ Cool fingers touched my neck and I became aware of my pulse, leaping in my veins as if my corpuscles were taking part in a skipping contest; when I looked up at Sil’s face his fangs were down, touching his lower lip and making his mouth flex. ‘I could take you. Now, here, tear your throat out and walk away without even a moment’s remorse. Because that is what it truly means to be vampire. That is what sets us apart from the humans, not our desire for blood, but our ability to know that guilt exists, and to deny it.’

‘To save you from pain.’

‘Because we are spineless and weak.’

I looked up into a face that should have seemed cruel, predatory. But all I saw was the man behind the predator – the man who’d been willing to die for me, the man who had sat with me as I found out the truth about my parentage. The man who had held me and cried when he’d finally let himself feel. ‘No. You aren’t weak, Jonathan. You acknowledge what you’ve done, and a weak man could never do that.’

‘Thank you.’ Now his hands moved to tilt my chin, to cup my cheek as his mouth moved closer. ‘Thank you.’

This time his lips were cool on my mouth, but there was nothing different in the way our bodies reacted to one another. Mine liquefied and his leapt. The mystery was gone but was replaced by a sureness, a deftness. I knew now how much he liked my fingers touching, stroking, rewarded by a hardness that reflected the fact that he was, still, really only twenty-nine. He knew how to make me squirm against the pressure of his hand until I gasped his name, his real name, and dug my nails into the skin of his back while he held my weight and looked into my eyes. And then, on the complex woven covering to the intricately carved bed, we rode one another hard. The confusion and the repressed emotion we both carried drove us on to extremes, to wordless sounds and our names, whispered over and over, as our bodies hummed with a passion that was almost flamethrower-strong.

Whoever said that it was better to have loved and lost had clearly never spent any time in bed with a vampire.

And, of course, I woke up an hour or so later, alone.

‘Stupid, stupid,’ I berated myself, once I’d blearily opened my eyes and stopped patting the evidently smooth sheet on the other side of the bed. ‘What did you expect?’ And I climbed out of the bed, although, given the height, it was more like climbing off, and headed for the shower, still chastising myself for having even considered the possibility that Sil would have held me until I woke; would have stayed.

My mobile rang as I stood in the shower, my head lathered as I sang ‘Gonna wash that man right out of my hair’ under my breath. I shot out from under the water to pick it up, my still-active inner teenager hoping that it might be Sil, whilst my over-thirty outer self knew that he would have just knocked on the door.

At first there was no voice on the other end, and I feared that I’d suffered shampoo-eye for a sales call, until I heard the whispered words, sibilant through the tiny speaker. ‘I have your family.’ Malfaire.

Hysteria didn’t even come close. I ran from the shower, covering myself with my mobile phone and the hand towel, with my hair dripping soap down my back. I dialled the farm, got the ‘unavailable’ tone and dialled again, one-handed, as I mopped water from my eyes. Unavailable. Again. And again, until I’d covered the bedroom floor in wet footprints and stood at the door, screaming. Zan arrived first, actually managing to look reasonably human as he pounded up the stairs still clutching a glass of freshly poured blood. Sil was close behind and Liam puffed along last, carrying an unexplained screwdriver.

‘If this is a spider,’ Sil began, but I flung myself at Zan with blatant disregard for the tiny towel.

‘This is your fault, you said they were safe! You said he wouldn’t touch them and – oh God, I never thought – he might have Abbie as well; he said he was going to try to hurt me through other people and now he’s at the farm, the phones are dead, and they could be dying; I never thought, I should have thought … it’s my fault. Why didn’t I warn them? My family … I need to get up there.’ I slapped at Zan’s rock-hard chest, wanting, needing him to feel my anguish, to hurry, to do something.

Zan’s hand was so cold on my water-warmed flesh that I nearly dropped the towel. ‘Go and dress, Jessica.’ Over my head, he and Sil exchanged a look. ‘Sil, find transport. Take her.’

‘On it now.’ Ignoring me, Sil swung away back down the stairs. Liam dropped the screwdriver and I realised that my boobs were totally uncovered.

‘Go and dress,’ Zan repeated, seemingly unmoved by my chestal anatomy. ‘And finish washing your hair.’

I managed a world-record shower and hair-rinse and found my discarded jeans and knickers at the foot of the bed. My bra and top were nowhere to be seen, so I pulled Sil’s black shirt from where it had fallen and been forgotten, and put that on. When I opened the bedroom door again, Zan was still standing there. He looked me up and down with what might have been a sigh.

‘We need to go now!’

Without speaking Zan turned and headed down the stairs. I followed fast and nearly cannoned into Liam who was waiting at the bottom.

‘It’ll be all right, Jessie. Don’t worry.’

‘Now say that again, to my face this time, Liam.’

He dragged his eyes upwards with an unashamed grin. ‘Sorry.’

The two vampires were muttering to one another in the hallway. Sil was juggling a set of car keys. ‘It’s outside. We can be gone in two minutes.’

‘And I shall hold things here.’

‘Yes. But be careful, this is probably …’

‘Can we just go!’

The vampires exchanged another look. ‘We cannot take the risk he is lying,’ Sil said. ‘We may have been wrong to assume that he would direct his anger at Jessica alone. He really may have her family. He did threaten to kill those close to her. First.’

‘Are you armed?’

‘What do you think this is, the High Chaparral? Let’s leave, now! Sil!’

Sil and Zan gave one another a curt nod, which looked oddly formal and then Sil grabbed my elbow, dragged me out of the door, and I shut up totally. He was tugging me towards the most beautiful car I had ever seen in my life.

‘Is this yours?’

He shrugged and slid into the driving seat. ‘Among others,’ he said, as though owning a Bugatti Veyron Pur Sang was meaningless. ‘Get in.’

I hardly dared touch the immaculate chrome of the door; this was less of a car and more of a machine for taking your fingerprints. Behind the wheel, Sil looked so coolly at home that my throat hurt; something about his slender sexiness was perfectly matched to the vehicle. ‘But this car …’

‘Built by vampires, for vampires.’ Sil barely waited for me to belt myself into place before we were squealing our way out of the centre of York. It was like being strapped inside a bullet.

I stared out of the dark-tinted window, willing the countryside past faster. ‘He’ll have those Shadows with him again, and maybe more wights. Can’t this thing go any quicker?’

‘Have you got a plan?’

I shook my head. ‘No. No plan. But it struck me earlier, Sil. Nothing is unkillable. If he was, I mean really, truly immortal, then why would he need to be able to breed? And anything that can produce offspring must die. Fundamental rule of the Universe.’

‘Earlier. You mean when we were …?’

He looked so affronted that, despite everything, I laughed. ‘No! Good grief, I hardly had time to draw breath, let alone think deep thoughts.’

‘Well. Good.’

‘Can’t this thing go any faster?’

‘You’re repeating yourself. No, it can’t.’

Capable hands spun the wheel and I imagined my mother facing down Malfaire in the cluttered kitchen, with only the old Labrador as defence. ‘Please make it go faster.’

Sil nudged a bit more speed out of the engine. ‘So, we are hurrying now, are we? Have you spoken to your parents since you found out about Malfaire? Or are we dashing to the rescue of some people you’re going to pretend are nothing to do with you when this is over?’

I stared at him. ‘Don’t you dare moralise to me.’

‘Someone has to, Jessie. Think of what they’ve been through. First they lost a child, then they took on the offspring of a demon without knowing who or what you may turn out to be. Your own natural mother was afraid of what you might be and yet they lied and dissembled in order to bring you up, to keep you safe; they even moved here, away from what they knew, so that your identity would be kept secret. You are their daughter and a simple fact of genetics doesn’t change that. Haven’t you ever thought of that? And that they must have worried themselves sick about what you might be – but they loved you all the same, brought you up with human values despite it all?’ He shook his head. ‘You need to start thinking about that, Jessie, not just yourself.’

‘Turn here.’

‘You’re avoiding the subject.’

‘We need to turn left here to get to the farm,’ I repeated. ‘And we’re doing nearly two hundred miles an hour.’ I kept my tone level and even. The car started to slow, and made the turn with the rear spoiler brake fully extended while he concentrated on the ridiculously complicated gear-change mechanism and the Sat Nav device which was currently telling us we were in the middle of Hampshire.

I made him park in the small paddock out of sight of the house. ‘If Malfaire is still there, if he’s holding them there, he’ll be waiting for us.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’

‘I spent my teenage years going to parties despite being grounded. I know at least seventeen ways of getting in and out of the house without being seen.’

Sil raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Show me.’

His tight trousers weren’t the best things for skulking along the ditch line in, but he never mentioned the mud or the brambles or anything. We hustled along the sunken trench, crept through the old dairy-house door and in the back of the walk-in larder, arriving in the kitchen in time to cause my mother to drop an entire tray of scones.

‘Oh, my dear Lord!’ The Labrador, sensing a unique opportunity, began gobbling down the oven-hot scones as my mother … Jenny … collapsed on to a chair. ‘Where did you come from?’

‘Over the fields. Where is he?’

‘Over in the barn, I think. Jessica, I’m so glad you came …’

‘Has he got Dad? Or Abbie?’

She stared harder. ‘Has who got your father? I told you that he’s in the barn, doing something to that dratted tractor. Abbie will still be at work.’

Sil and I looked at one another. The horrified conclusions that I was drawing were also beginning to drop into place across his features. ‘Oh shit,’ I whispered.

‘Distraction.’ Sil sounded resigned. ‘He’s tampered with the phones to get you to come here. He’ll be at the house.’

‘You knew?’

‘Suspected. But we couldn’t take the chance.’

My mother was staring at us. ‘Jessica, what have you got yourself involved in now?’ I noticed her trying not to look at Sil. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Look, Mum.’ I touched her hand and her eyes brightened. I hadn’t realised how faded she’d looked, how stooped and old, until she straightened and smiled at me. ‘I’ll explain everything some time soon. But please, just for now, don’t ask me anything. Get Dad in here and lock the door, don’t let anyone in except Abbie when she comes over.’

‘Is it Malfaire?’ Her voice was thin, papery. ‘Is it all going wrong, what we did?’

‘No.’ I patted her arm, felt Sil look at me. ‘No. It’s fine. Just a precaution. But we have to go now, Mum, I’m sorry.’

‘Just …’ and now she wasn’t looking at me but at Sil, ‘keep her safe. Please.’

He nodded once, solemnly. ‘I will,’ and then we were off again, racing down to the paddock, spinning the Veyron off the slick grass and out on to the road.

Jessica went quiet, chewing her fingernails and staring out of the window as though willpower could make the car go faster. Sil pushed his foot to the floor. One way or another this wasn’t going to end well and dying in a flaming sports car at least had a photogenic quality to it, rather than dying under torture at the hand of a jumped-up, semi-immortal poser like Malfaire.

Jessie gave a little whimper and he eased up. He’d promised her mother he’d keep her safe, and what the hell was that all about? When did I start kowtowing to their bloody mothers? I’m a vampire, silent killer, sexual predator, not a henpecked husband. But he let the car slow to a safer speed, despite riding the leading edge of a hormone surge that was trying to push him into mindless acceleration. Malfaire was in York, probably in his house right now; all right, Zan had a few tricks which might manage to fool him long enough to keep them out of trouble but … Jessie really cared about Liam. If anything had happened to him, then maybe she’d lose her last link with the humanity she so wanted to claim. Maybe she’ll go demon on Malfaire’s ass. Would that be so bad? She might not be able to kill him, but she might have some kind of demon power to take him down, weaken him, so that the vampires could banish him or something? The thought made his demon quicken and writhe and a flash of blood-longing made him close his eyes for a second. Jessie. You know me now, all of me. You’ve seen the emptiness where my heart once was, and made me feel whole again. He looked at her now, taking his eyes off the road for long enough to see her shiver. Is it enough? Would it ever be enough? You excite me in ways I never dreamed of. But is it enough? You say you love me. A human emotion, one of those I cut myself free from a long, long time ago, in that bleak graveyard, between two tiny humps of earth, and now I don’t even remember what they felt like. Because, however you try to justify it, Jess, we vampires are craven excuses for beings. The truth is that we are not supreme, we just wish to feel that way, and we do that by pretending …

‘Will Zan be all right?’ she surprised him by asking. ‘I suppose he’s got Liam but … God, Liam …’

‘Hey.’ Sil touched her, the car swinging alarmingly as he took his hand off the wheel. ‘They’ll be fine. Malfaire might just be winding you up, he might be nowhere near York by now. Might even have decided to let you be, since you can’t seem to do him any damage.’

He saw the hope flash momentarily through her tawny eyes and then fade. ‘He wants me dead,’ she said, and the awful finality of the words made him shudder. I’ll keep her safe. I promised.