“And bring the bottle!” Althea shouted.

“Half a glass,” Percy yelled back. Then he tapped Giordano’s hand as he grasped the bottle. “I mean it. You pour.”

Giordano took it in hand, then said to Joe, “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you first.”

Joe, a little too shell-shocked to do much else, gave a small nod, so Percy filled in for him, spitting, “Yes, you fucking should have.”

His irritated eyes followed Giordano until they were alone, when Joe called his attention back, drawing him immediately into their former intimacy with quietly spoken words. “You made everything easy for the first time in my life. It’s never mattered to me once, all our most difficult moments, because it felt so right and so good to be with you. You said, let’s take this holiday, and it was like you were holding an escape route there in the palm of your hand. It was you. You stepped in and you saved me. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just wanted to run away. From all of it. I wanted to run away with you.”

Percy caressed Joe’s face, stroking softly. “I’m sorry. For everything you’ve been through.”

“Not me,” said Joe, looking back at his younger image. “Him. I did it for him. He deserved better. So I made it better.”

Percy took both his hands. “I want you to know I’m proud of you. Proud of you for doing what you did. Proud of you for being so loyal and kind. Proud of you for being so pure of heart, when you were dealing with that this whole time. You were so brave. You still are. Brave and beautiful and I love you.”

Joe dipped his forehead back to Percy’s with a teary laugh. “How many people do you think would say that to me? How many people in the whole world would sit there and say that to me right now and mean it?”

Percy gave a shrug and a comically disgusted glance about the place. “Fuck them.”

“One,” Joe replied. “One perfect man, and I found him. I don’t feel ashamed of what I did. I don’t think I owe a debt to society. I’ve never felt wrong. And I told you because you makeit easy. And because I knew you wouldn’t judge me. You always get it. I’m just sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. But I hope you can understand why.”

“I do. And believe me…” Percy’s words cut off abruptly with a spark of memory.

The ring.

That ring that weighed heavily against his skin now, that screamed,This is it. This is how you show him you still and will always love him.

Percy wanted to meld it to his finger—meld the two of them together for eternity and be Joe’s outer shell for as long as he’d let him.

He leaned closer, squeezing Joe’s hands between his own feverishly. “What I’m about to say has nothing to do with what you just told me. Or maybe it does, but only in a roundabout way. But I was going to say this anyway, but… Things keep happening and so… I haven’t been able to get it out. And I’m not doing this right.”

A flash of panic took Joe at the sudden change—a prelude to something else—something uncharted. “What? Is everything okay?”

A louder alarm sparked in Percy as he rushed to reassure him. “Very okay. Very. Very, very all right and okay and totally normal. Only… I want you to know I love you.”

Joe’s eyes searched his, keen, worried, but with a pleasant sparkle flickering when he heard those words. “I love you, too.”

“And so…” Percy reached into his pocket. Warm, thick gold. Cool cut sapphire. “Joe?—”

Just as the word left his lips, the lights were cut, and everything turned black.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

THE MOST GALLING INTERRUPTION YET

If one tenth of the anger in Percy’s eyes had been physical, the entire apartment would have crumbled to dust, but in the tick of a clock, that anger changed abruptly to trepidation with the nerve-shattering call on the wind from the open window. “Doctor Ashdown?”

That voice—that sing-song lilt in the night—was all too familiar.

Percy, at the window in a few fast steps, closed his fingers around the white linen curtain and pulled it back cautiously. He felt Joe steadfast by his shoulder. Moxie sprang up onto the windowsill with a silent pounce, and Leo, Althea, and Giordano soon surrounded them to take in the scene below.

The formerly busy street lay eerie beneath them. The centre of Parisian nightlife for more than a century had dropped into an uneasy slumber. The scene wasn’t bloody—not particularly—not the kind of bloody Percy and Joe had grown used to dealing with. There were cars stopped, doors open, drivers hanging halfway out or leaning on their steering wheels. There were tables laden with drinks and food, just as they so often were, but with no one to partake of the bounty, because up and down the road, strewn here and there, lay… corpses? The bodies of men, women, andchildren lying down in the street, utterly motionless, noiseless, harrowing, and in the centre of it all, there stood Molly Tulloch, wearing Cleo’s body. She took a few steps closer, a long and low-cut black dress hugging every magnificent curve all the way to the street, rising marvellously beneath the folds of luxurious black hair all about her shoulders when she lifted two arms and blew a kiss up to Percy.

Percy turned his head, and on a low breath, he whispered urgently, “See, Althea? Now that’s a dress.”

“Percy!” Joe snapped.

“Everything can be a learning opportunity for teenagers,” Percy declared. He slipped his fingers into his pocket and pulled out his apartment keys. “Leo, the place is yours.” He grabbed Leo’s hand and shoved the keys into his unwilling palm, curling his fingers closed over them. “The solicitor’s got my will. I’ve left most of it to you. Take Althea, get on a train, and don’t come back for at least three months, unless you hear from me first.”