“A Catholic vampire. Well then.”
“So you understand why I must go, to tell them what happened. To learn whatever I can, to help them.”
“I don’t understand.” Except that I did. He’d had a glimpse of something he thought he’d lost. He wanted more. I shook my head. “I’m sorry about what happened. If I hadn’t set Cormac on the trail—”
“Blame doesn’t solve anything. Only forgiveness. You did what you thought was right. So did Cormac and Detective Hardin for that matter.”
“That woman—the demon—she would have killed us, if Cormac hadn’t stopped her. I’m pretty sure a few of her knives were silver.”
“Yes. Father Columban knew that the three of us were in danger,” he said. “She was after us, the vampires and lycanthropes.”
“Why?”
“Because of what we are. Is there another reason?”
I pondered that. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about. “Is she gone for good, or will she be back?”
“I don’t know. We have enemies, we already knew that. The details hardly matter.”
Unless the details told us how to kick their asses. I imagined Rick was taking the long view here, as usual.
“Do you remember when we first met?” I asked.
“I do,” he said, a smile playing on his lips. “I think you’d been a werewolf for all of six months. Everything terrified you.”
“Can you blame me?” I had almost forgotten those days myself. Repressed them. I had no idea what it must have looked like from the outside. But Rick would remember.
“Not at all,” he said. “Around all those hardened wolves you were so…”
“So what?”
“Unworn. Fresh. It’s an odd piece of fate that threw you among Carl’s folk. Trial by fire.”
“Wasn’t so bad,” I said, but the words felt false. I only said that because I knew now, after meeting dozens of other werewolves and seeing other packs, how much worse it could have been. Or I honestly didn’t remember how bad it had been. Just as well, probably. Darren was more right about me and how I started out than he knew. “But that wasn’t what I expected you to say. More like inexperienced. Naïve.”
“It’s a matter of perspective, I think. Others saw you as weak. I thought you had a lot of promise. You were a survivor.”
I looked at my hands twisted together, because my eyes had started stinging. I didn’t want to cry, not here. “The first time we met, you were the only one in that crowd, all the werewolves and vampires jockeying for status and position, who treated me like a person. You didn’t care if I was weak or strong, you didn’t expect me to behave a certain way. You asked how I was doing. And then you listened. I don’t even remember what I said, I think I rambled for a long time about nothing in particular.”
“You said you were doing all right, but you weren’t. You were sad and nervous and confused, but couldn’t say it so you talked around it.”
“And then you backed me up when I started doing the show. Everyone else wanted me to quit.”
“That was about the time you stopped being so confused.”
“I’m still confused.”
“But not about who you are. Not like you were then.”
“Is that because I’m more comfortable with the werewolf thing, or because I’ve gotten older?”
“Yes,” he said, his smile turning lopsided.
“I guess you would know about getting older.”
“I would.”
Rick had become one of my favorite people in the world. Bloodsucking vampire and all. How had that happened?