I didn’t own a T-shirt like that. Why my subconscious thought I should be wearing something so Stefan-like, I didn’t know.
Stefan himself was wearing all black, like a stagehand in a play. His eyes were closed and his face was tilted toward where the bay doors would have been if they had made an appearance here, but instead it was only inky blackness—like when I met Adam’s monster. There was a distant rumble of sound, and I forced myself to quit thinking about the monster.
Instead, I knelt beside Stefan and put my hand on his shoulder. The result was explosive.
He went from still to full speed in the blink of an eye, rolling away from me and up and onto his feet in what was obviously some sort of martial and practiced maneuver. But once on his feet he stood swaying, his hands to his face, covering his eyes.
“Stefan?” I asked tentatively. Because I suddenly had the worrying thought that it might not be Stefan. The smoke weaver could take his shape.
But as soon as the worry found me, I knew that whatever shape he wore in the real world, here in my otherness, he would still be the smoke weaver. And unless I summoned him, the smoke weaver could not visit me here.
Stefan let his hands fall to his sides and gave me a wild look. “Go,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“No,” I told him patiently without rising to my feet. “It’s okay. This is my space. You can come here because you are invited.” I indicated the coffee-colored lace bond that was tied around my right ankle and stretched to his left ankle.
He dropped to the ground as if his knees just quit working. If he’d been human, in the real world, and had fallen like that onto my concrete floor, he’d have been in agony. But it hadn’t seemed to have hurt Stefan—maybe because I hadn’t wanted Stefan hurt.
We sat there for a moment, about four feet apart.
Finally, he said, in a voice filled with wonder, “It’s so quiet here.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
His fingers played with a small place on the floor where Adam’s claws had left a stuttering arc. “Sorry,” he said, seeming to gather himself together, a mask suitable for social interaction forming on his face. “It’s been a long time since it was quiet in my head.”
“I need you to listen to me,” I told him.
He looked up—and there was such … despair in his eyes. “I killed people, Mercy,” he told me. “Innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve done it before.” He opened his arms to remind me of what he was. “But I swore that I would never do so again. And until this, I kept my vow.”
I crawled over to him and put my hand on his jaw. “Hang on, Stefan. I promise you that there is help coming if you can just hang on.”
He said, sadly, “I am not a hero to be holding on for one minute longer.”
I recognized the reference, though I couldn’t remember the author—someone German, I thought.
“I disagree,” I told him. “Just hold on, Stefan. Help is coming.”
He shook his head. “Marsilia won’t let me die by his hand,” he told me. “But he will not let me feed. I weaken moment by moment until soon, there will be no more of me.”
I thought about that one. Then, wordlessly, I held out my arm to him.
Stefan bit my wrist—and I let him, just as I had let him before. The feeding wasn’t real except as dreams were real, or powerful except as dreams were powerful. He didn’t drink blood from my veins—he drank strength, conviction, and hope.
When he had finished, he kissed my wrist, then rubbed it with his thumbs until the small wounds disappeared. He looked up. “I don’t know whether to thank you or to curse you.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “As long as you hang on.”
Much as an actor in an artsy one-act play might have done, he lay down on the ground and faded into the darkness that now surrounded me.
I ran my finger over the same mark on the floor that Stefan had touched, feeling the roughness against my skin. I looked around and like the spotlight that lit where I sat, the bed was illuminated. I could see my mate lying asleep, his face turned away from me. Faintly, I could see the hulking monster curled around him like a lover.
I got up and walked through the darkness to the bed. When I finally reached it, I climbed in and wrapped my body around Adam as if I could protect him from himself.
“Hope,” I said out loud, because I didn’t have another pearl for him. “Hope, my love.” And then I closed my eyes and slept.
ADAM WAS STILL ASLEEP BESIDE ME WHEN I WOKE UP the next morning. He didn’t stir when I got up and hastily pulled on clothes as quietly as I could—I didn’t see my bathrobe anywhere.
I had made it all the way to the door when Adam said, with lazy satisfaction, “You should shower, Mercy. You smell like sex.”
“I was trying to let you sleep,” I told him, coming back to the bed.
He smiled without opening his eyes. “Go shower. I’ll sleep until you get out.” And as I walked to the bathroom he said, “Thank you.”
“No, sir,” I said. “Thank you.”
I TOOK BREAKFAST—EGGS AND BACON AND FRENCH toast—down to Ben, who was still in wolf form.
Luke, back on guard duty, shook his head as I walked by him. “He hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday morning.”
I frowned and approached the cage. I started to tell Ben that he needed to keep up his strength—and remembered Stefan, and what he’d said. I remembered how the last time I’d come down here, Ben had ignored me. But the time before that—when I knew it had been our Ben speaking—that time he hadn’t wanted me anywhere near him.
Ben would be telling me to leave.
Instead of addressing Ben, I said, conversationally, “It takes a long time to starve a werewolf to death. As they grow more desperate for food, their wolf takes over from the man. I wonder if you can hold the wild beast you will be letting loose.” I slid the plate through the long, narrow opening designed for that purpose and left Ben’s breakfast in front of him. “If you can, it will take a lot of magic. You couldn’t even hold me.”
Ben’s wolf gave me a baleful glare—but he got up and ate the food. He ate the second plate I brought down, too. And then he curled up with his back to the room and I couldn’t help but remember how Adam’s wolf had taken the same position when I fed him the amethyst. I hadn’t seen the wolf since.
“Hope,” I told Ben. I said it to myself, too.
I did some laundry—the sheets and bedding had gotten oil-stained. I didn’t flinch at the knowing looks that were sent my way by everyone from Kelly to Medea. The cat might have been my imagination, but she purred from her perch on top of the warm, clean bedding. She didn’t stop even when I lifted her off so I could fold them.
Adam worked from his office most of the morning, but he came up to the laundry room as I folded the last of the sheets.
“Have you been getting the looks, too?” I complained.
He laughed and took the folded sheets from me. “If you hadn’t issued your invitation so that the whole household overheard, you might have avoided some of this.”
I was pretty sure if I hadn’t issued the invitation in front of the whole house, he wouldn’t have taken me up on it. I grabbed the comforter, rolled it together until it made a manageable bundle, and said, “Sure I would have.”