It seemed like the words were just out of his mouth before Mercer was sliding closed his house’s back door and scooping up his dog for kisses behind the glass, leaving Rahil with only the midday sun and his own thoughts as his companions.
Mercerhadasked if he would be okay—might have even let Rahil hide out inside the barn—but the knots in Rahil’s gut were too tight and numerous for him to consider invading the man’s privacy any further. It was clear both of them had their own internal battles to fight. Rahil jogged home through the heat, almost wishing the shakes and pain would come sooner so he’d have something else to think about but the past and the future. The future, at least, he could change, if he had the guts. Hecouldjust stay away from Merc after this; hope that William Douglas would never follow through on his threats and Mercer would finish his project without a holy silver immune vampire’s help.
Could, was the opportune word there.
He could have done many things in the past, could have lived a life that wouldn’t fill him with so much guilt and grief now. Yet here he was, mourning a woman from his past who he’d barely known, all because Mercer—a man Rahil also, technically, barely knew—had lost his wife to similar circumstances. Not thesamecircumstances, thankfully. A different victim, a different vampire, but both had ended in death.
Rahil’s tragic woman had been so distressed when she’d come to him, her eyes red and her ponytail lopsided. “Are you a vampire?”
It was so different from the way Violet had demanded to know last week, this woman’s voice small despite its strength and her apology after an awkward mess. When she’d asked Rahil to turn her, he’d known she’d needed this, even before she’d explained why, a folder of scans and doctors’ notes at the ready.
“You know that even if this ends the way you want it to, you’ll be undergoing a tremendous amount of pain for a life filled with difficulty.”
“I want to live,” she said, hard in ways her initial request hadn’t been, nearly as fiercely as Rahil’s ex-wife had snapped the opposite the last time he’d seen her alive. “If I stay human, I will be dead in under two months, but if there’s a chance I can go on kissing my spouse and holding my kid, then give me that chance.”
He should have said no, should have sent her back for a few more weeks of kisses and a final goodbye. But her request, her desire to live, to love, regardless of the risk, was everything he’d wanted to hear months before, and all he could see in her place was his ex-wife, standing in his kitchen with the same packet, and asking for one last night, one last night that had turned into one last year, and then a death bed he couldn’t stand beside and a funeral he couldn’t bring himself to attend.
So instead, he’d told this woman—this partner, parent, lover—simply,not here. If this went wrong, he couldn’t have anyone banging down his door. He hadn’t truly believed it would go wrong, even then. He’d made it through his transformation—painfully, but still. If he’d managed to convince his dear Shefali to take that same risk, she’d have had a similar outcome—a life. And so would this woman.
When the blood had started dripping down the back of her throat and oozing around her teeth as they were pushed aside for spiny fangs, when her eyes shot edge to edge in black, it had finally set in that he’d made a mistake. He should have known better—deadly errors were his forte after all.
Every wrong decision had seemed right to him in the moment.
Which was just another reason not to return to Mercer Bloncourt’s. Or was stayingawaythe mistake? He’d left Matt alone, and Rahil’s abandonment hadn’t saved his youngest son any more than his meddling had saved his eldest decades before.
The shakes and aches that hit Rahil by the time he reached home didn’t help distract him from his emotions after all. Neither did the fruitless exhaustion that succeeded them, cruel enough to make his mind and body both absolutely useless while still denying him the deep sleep he desperately needed. He wallowed around the house for the rest of the day, too worn out even to fiddle with his pile of electronics, and avoided Sheanna and Tal when they appeared in the afternoon to crash for a few hours before heading out again—Tal to a night shift and Sheanna to check in on her great-aunt. There was food in the cupboards, at least, even if most of it was from the discount outlet. Rahil slipped a few fives in the communal grocery fund and cooked himself some noodles, drowning them with enough nearly expired butter to kill a weaker man.
For once, Violet didn’t come. Rahil hoped his talk of support systems had truly scared her off, though the later the evening got the more he missed her snarky banter. Without her or Mercer to talk to, he found himself despondently in his family’s group chat, scrolling back through the last week of muted messages, complete with pictures of his nieces’ pets, his sister and auntie’s champagne brunch, and his only nephew’s kids, all five teenagers wrangled together for a mix of goofy faces and disinterested scowls, with sweet little Naddy—now suddenly no longer an adorable eight year old—still smiling just as brightly as she had every time she’d asked Rahil if he wanted to help her make tea.
Fuck, did he miss them.
But he’d already taken up enough of their love—and far too much of their time and money, especially since Shefali passed away. Every time he saw them, there was another round of“Are you sure you’re okay?”s and“What can we do?”s and offers of everything from meals and their “extra” supplies, to loans they all knew he’d never repay, to a place to live for a few months or years or decades. Watching their self-imposed responsibility for him move from his parents to his siblings and now shift gradually toward the younger generation as his body aged slightly slower than the rest of his family was a misery he had made the deliberate choice not to let anyone bear.
Even if some of them hadn’t accepted that yet.
As the last of the light faded from the sky, Rahil sat on the front porch. He yawned sporadically, his brain somehow fuzzier after the day’s rest than it had been at the start. Every time he started to drift off, though, his mind would yank him back with intrusive thoughts of the woman his venom had killed, placing her face over the mysterious outline of Mercer’s wife, turning her choice into a violent lack thereof. He was about to go back inside for a cup of herbal tea despite the heat, when Violet came creeping up the front steps.
Rahil stared at her with one eye closed. “You’re here late.”
“Dad’s in a mood.” Her arms were wrapped tightly around her body, her usual outfit traded for a baggy t-shirt and pj shorts. She still wore a beanie. “He thinks I went to bed.”
Rahil glanced at his phone. It was past midnight somehow. “Youshouldbe in bed.”
Violet made a show of rolling her eyes. Then she flipped him the bird.
“Fair.” Rahil nodded. Stretching his arms over his head, he stood. His body almost gave out on him, sleep threatening to come for just a moment before it veered sharply back into ruthless fatigue. “You want some chamomile tea?”
“I thought it was the cold that vampires didn’t feel, not the heat.”
“I figure heat stroke probably makes a person fall asleep.”
Violet shrugged. “Count me in then.”
They made the tea in a communal silence, Violet picking the mug with a curse word on it despite the chip in the rim. It reminded Rahil of himself. And Matt. He didn’t want to think about his sons right then, though—he’d done plenty of that already for the day—so as they finished, he gave Violet a tap on the head. “Follow me.”
She didn’t even question him, which was probably a bad sign on her part, letting him lead the way up the stairs. He grabbed the pillow from his room and another from Avery’s—they were at their boyfriend’s in LA for the night—and headed up the second story spiral staircase.
“Watch the fourth step,” he instructed, even though he was fairly certain the wobbly wood could hold Violet’s weight.
