Page 43 of Black Curtain

There was a silence.

Then Dexter looked up at me and Black.

He frowned through the tears in his dark eyes. I saw the depth of the grief there, and for the first time, the shame. My heart clenched looking at him. More than anything, I desperately wanted to give him a hug. Dex looked between us, like he wanted to believe Kiko’s words, but couldn’t quite make himself yet.

“Is that true?” he asked finally.

I nodded. So did Black.

“I wanted to tell you,” Black said. “When I got back today. I wasn’t sure when. It seemed like it might still be too soon. But yeah, Miri and I are just ordinary seers now. And Kiko told you the truth about Charles, too. Most of the seers are gone.”

“What does that mean? Most of them?”

“Maybe four thousand are left,” Dalejem said. “And Charles. But the humans have him. He’s in prison somewhere. There’s going to be a trial.”

Dex stared at all of them now, not hiding his bewilderment.

“How?”

Dexter was looking at me now.

Meeting his gaze, I could only exhale. I threw up a hand. “How much time you got?” I asked. “It involves Charles, unsurprisingly. A weirdo in California. We went out there to solve a case for Cal.” Remembering Cal, my expression faltered. “Cal’s dead. Charles and his asshole followers killed him. A whole lot of other shit went down, too. But the bottom line is, Kiko is right. Everything she and Jem said is true. There’ve been a lot of changes, just in the last two or three weeks… most of them are good. Cal dying is the worst of it. By far.”

Dex frowned. He looked back at Kiko.

Kiko shrugged, her eyes calm.

“I told you. Black’s normal again. So is the doc.”

“Normal.” Dex grunted, shaking his head. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, letting out another humorless laugh. “Jesus.”

Before Kiko could respond, Dex went on, still wiping his eyes.

“You keep saying that word, normal.” He grunted, quoting his and Kiko’s favorite movie. “I don’t think it means what you think it does, Kiks.” He gave Black a look, one that held the barest trace of humor in it, despite the anger that shone there, too. “I mean, Jesus. When’s that fucker ever beennormal?”

I couldn’t help but smile at that.

I tried to suppress it, pressing my lips together before I looked away.

I saw Dex notice and give me a long look.

Then he exhaled.

It occurred to me through all of that, he’d been avoiding looking at Nick.

I found myself wondering exactly what the two of them talked about before the rest of us walked in.

I looked at Nick.

Nick took another bite of cake while I watched, but he wasn’t looking at Dex now, either. It struck me suddenly that tears were running down his pale, ethereally handsome vampire face. He ignored them, staring off to the side as he chewed on the cake. He stared at the adobe fireplace, which wasn’t lit, and took another bite of the enormous piece of cake as I watched.

It struck me that he still held the entire thing in one chalk-white hand.

He’d eaten over half of it now.

Given that, I knew the emotions probably came at least partly from the cake, but it still caused me to stare.

When I looked over at Dex, he was just taking the first bite of his own cake.

---