I didn’t want to find out. “Ereshki,” I said, as if reminding them of where I was going. “Where is she?”

“Ask any of my guards,” Ian replied. “They’ll show you.”

I looked at Cat, wishing I had an excuse to avoid her now. “Still coming?” Please say no . . .

“Right behind you,” she replied with a quick smile.

Shit.

Chapter 34

I intended to avoid conversation with Cat by quickly finding one of Ian’s guards to take me to Ereshki. However, we’d barely left the drawing room before Cat began tugging me across the formal hall to one of the many rooms beyond it.

“The library,” she exclaimed, as if she’d never seen one before. “The last time I was here, I almost killed Ian in this!”

She kept tugging on my arm to get me to follow her. I gave the glass-domed ceiling above the foyer a longing look. If I flung Cat through it, she’d get the hint that I didn’t appreciate being pulled along like a reluctant toddler, though that would be a bit extreme. And rude, I supposed.

Thus, I let her lead me into the library. It was an impressive, two-story room with thousands of old and new volumes lining the walls. Another section housed glass-encased scrolls. I could have browsed the books for hours, but Cat seemed more interested in the room’s only piece of artwork, a collection of bones formed into a mosaic of the Australian outback.

“I can’t believe Ian put this back together,” she marveled. “It crashed into pieces after I threw it at his head years ago.”

She clearly wanted me to ask about this fight, so I did. “Why did you throw it at him?”

“For distraction. He’d just chucked me into a wall, and I was determined to kill him even though I was surprised by how strong he was.” Then she gave me an arch look. “But Ian heard my heartbeat, and like all vampires, the sound lulled him into believing I was far more fragile than I appeared. Being underestimated in a fight gives you the best advantage ever.”

More conversation was only polite, I decided. Besides, she’d intrigued me. “Why were you so determined to kill him?”

“It was my job.” She cocked her head. “I was once on the Law Guardians’ watch list, so you must know that I used to work for the government, killing vampires who indiscriminately murdered humans. I thought Ian was one of those indiscriminate murderers because my boss sent me after him. I only found out later that my boss’s reasons were personal. Ian had turned my boss’s brother into a vampire, and shortly after that, the newly fanged motherfucker wiped out most of my boss’s family.”

Now I knew who she was talking about, and how literal of her to describe that vampire as a “motherfucker.”

“You’re speaking of your father, Max.” Making Cat’s former boss her paternal uncle. I hadn’t known that before now.

“Yep,” she said in a harder tone. “The other thing Max did right after getting his fangs was hook up with my mom, and he was so newly undead, he still had viable sperm. To make matters worse, right afterward, Max green-eyed my mom into believing he was a literal demon. Know what it’s like to grow up afraid of yourself because you were told that half of you is evil?”

I flinched, then cursed myself along with my far-too-perceptive companion. I thought Cat had dragged me in here only to brag about a long-ago fight, but her real goal had been to confront me about a struggle she shouldn’t know I was having.

“I saw your face when Ian told us what you were.” Her voice softened. “Don’t worry, the others didn’t catch it. They’d have to have lived it to do that, and they didn’t. But I did.”

If I’d suddenly been stripped naked, I would have felt less exposed. Ian had caused me to feel this way many times, but I trusted him, while I barely knew the woman across from me. Once again, I threw up my Law Guardian front as if it were a shield.

“I don’t know what you’re speaking of.” My voice sounded cool and composed, to my relief.

She snorted. “Bullshit. You’re barely holding it together, and I don’t blame you. I thought I had it rough, hiding what I was for a couple decades. You’ve been hiding for thousands of years while masquerading as a stick-up-your-ass vamp cop. Falling in love and then nearly losing Ian was the last straw, wasn’t it?” Another too-knowing look. “Twice, I thought Bones had died, and I lost my shit to epic degrees both times. No matter how tough we think we are, loss like that cuts too deep to handle, doesn’t it?”

Each word smashed through my defenses faster than I could rebuild them. Worse, she wasn’t done.

“I don’t know how you brought Ian back from the dead, but I bet it took all the power from the part of yourself you’ve been hiding to do it. There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle once it’s out, either. I remember that from when I was fighting against my vamp side. The scariest part was how much I loved giving in to that power when I finally did let go . . . and let everything in me out for all to see.”

“What are you, the half-breed whisperer?” I snapped, too rattled to continue hiding behind my stick-up-the-ass vamp cop persona, as Cat had described it.

Her dark-gray gaze glinted with green. “I’m not, but after all this time, you should be. The fact that you aren’t means someone told you that your other half was bad when you were young enough to believe them. I don’t know who that was—”

“Stop,” I ordered, horrified to feel tears start to well. How had she reduced me to this so quickly? Or had I done it to myself? Was I still as out of control as she’d insinuated?

“But you must have trusted that person, to believe them this long,” she went on, her tone turning flintlike despite the new sympathy in her eyes. “Must have loved them, too. Only someone you love could mess you up this bad, this long. My mom sure did a number on me, but she was wrong, just like whoever worked you over emotionally was wrong, too—”

“You know nothing!”

Now I was shouting, and my vision turned ominously dark. I would tolerate her filleting me, but I would rip her blood out and bathe in it before I allowed her to disrespect my sire.

“Tenoch was not wrong. He never would have changed over the world’s most ruthless warlord right before he died unless he knew that part of me was so dangerous, there had to be someone equally dangerous to stop me if I ever truly let that half of myself free!”

Wetness hit my cheeks. I thought it was my tears until I saw the drops flying from Cat’s eyes before feeling more tiny splashes on my skin. I hadn’t meant to yank her tears from her, but I had, and from the flush filling her skin, her blood was also rising to the surface faster than she could’ve directed it.

I spun around, squeezing my eyes shut while trying to force my other nature down before I did bathe in her blood. Go away, go away, go away! I chanted at it.

It wasn’t enough.

Desperately, I sent my senses out to the fountain in front of Ian’s house. Then I blasted my rage into the water it contained instead of the woman who’d cut through centuries of scabs to effortlessly stab me in my deepest wound. I felt the water boil before it iced over so fast, the extreme temperature change shattered the stones. The sound of the fountain exploding was so loud, it masked the crash the library door made when Bones flung it open.