In spite of myself, I snort with amusement. “How do you know it was him?” I ask.
“He is the only one that makes you cry,” he says with a shrug.
“Not true,” I say with a sad smile. “But it was him. He is a heartless prick.”
“Not true,” he says quietly and curls my hair around my ear. “He just likes to pretend he is.”
“Well, he does a damn fine job of it on occasion,” I say and sniffle into my tissue.
“So?” Sebastian asks.
I sigh. “He happens to disagree with my decision to still be an active part in Devon’s life and he came here to sulk with some blonde whore named Clementine,” I say.
Sebastian’s eyes light up. “Clem is here?” he asks, ignoring everything else I have just said.
Fuck’s sake. Who is this woman that everyone seems to be drooling over all of a sudden?
“Unfortunately, yes,” I say with an intense dislike.
Sebastian chuckles at me and my jealousy. “You don’t like her?” he asks with a smirk.
“I don’t know her,” I say nonchalantly and turn my back on him.
“Ah, little one,” he says, wrapping his arms around me. “I can see you are jealous and I know why, but it’s not like that. She isn’t a Substitute.”
I growl at him and shrug him off me. I spin around to spit at him, “I know that. She is over a thousand years older than me. I am her Substitute!”
Sebastian steps back from the venom in my voice and then understanding passes over his face. “He said that?” he asks in utter disbelief. “That must have been some doozy of an argument you guys had.”
“Did he mean it?” I ask and wait a very, very long time for the answer.
Ponte, March 2014 – Sebastian
Sebastian stares at her, debating how to answer that. He could lie and say that yes, Constantine did mean what he said, and throw a massive wrench into their relationship, but that would hurt her more than he is prepared to do.
“No,” he says eventually. “He didn’t mean it.”
“Who is she then?” she asks and it hurts him to see the look of terror on her face. She is really scared that Clem has some claim on Constantine.
“And don’t say no one,” she adds just as he was about to.
He smiles at her and says, “I wasn’t going to. She was someone special to him a very, very long time ago. She is his second charge, the one he turned after me.”
He watches her reaction. She turns an unattractive shade of green, which he doesn’t know is from envy or sickness. Probably a bit of both, he thinks bitterly.
“Oh,” she eventually croaks out and turns from him again. “His first love?”
“I think he thought so at the time,” Sebastian answers carefully.
“How long were they together?” Aefre turns around to ask him and he can see she has steeled herself. She wants to know and he wants to tell her, to share his sire’s secrets with her because he knows that Constantine won’t tell her anything. He never does.
“A little over fifty years,” he says.
He is surprised to see relief flood her eyes. Apparently fifty years is nothing to her. He supposes compared to her relationship with him it is nothing, but she has to realize that to Constantine it is a very long time.
“Oh, good,” she says.
He can’t let her off that easily. “It was a big deal for him, Aefre. You must understand that.”