MERCER
What the heck was Mercer even doing?
He watched the light dance across the metal in his palm, a beam of its golden reflection flickering over his brown skin and across the grass. It seemed to spark into the carved lines of Leah’s gravestone.
He hadn’t said a word to her since he’d arrived—he wasn’t sure exactly what he hadtosay—but it had felt right to come. Or, it hadn’t felt right not to. Or something. He wasn’t sure anymore.
Mercer wasn’t sure ofanything, except that he’d done what he could with the metal in his hands, and now he had to decide what to do with the vampire who’d helped him make it.
“I’m not replacing you.” Mercer’s voice caught as he whispered it, and the lump in his throat seemed only to grow from there. “I know you know that.”
Leah's grave didn’t answer, but he felt what might have been the ghost of her laughter, or just the memory of every time she’d playfully made fun of him. Of course she would laugh now—that’s what she’d always been: joy and passion and life. Right up until the night she wasn’t any of those things.
Mercer closed his eyes and twisted the unholy gold again, feeling the power that flowed through it now, as forceful as any holy silver, but no longer deadly. Hopefully. He had more than just this hope riding on tonight though.
He forced himself to tuck the metal away, pulling out his phone instead and flipping to the thread with Rahil’s texts—nothing new in the last twenty-four hours.
One way or another, they had to finish this. So Mercer started typing.
25
RAHIL
It was nearly finished.
Rahil stared at Mercer’s newest text and couldn’t help the knife-twist in his chest. Their relationship—their friendship—had already dissolved from that one ruinous word—or at least, Mercer had given no indication otherwise—and now their partnership was coming to a close, too. He glanced at the mostly assembled pieces of Leah’s project. It would work—she had been brilliant with its design, and he had no doubts that if she had lived long enough to see it through, it would have been perfect. Rahil was only finalizing her wishes, wrapping up her construction, protecting her daughter.
It was the least he could do.
Even if, perhaps, her death had not been entirely his fault, it had still been hisdoing. His agreement to assist her final wish. His fangs in her neck. His belief that he could give her what he hadn’t been able to give to Shefali. And in the end, he’d taken her away from the people who’d become so dear to him now.
He still didn’t know what he was going to do with that information. But he only had a little time left to figure that out.
Rahil checked the text thread again, like something on it might have changed.
Metal Daddy
I’ve finished it
I need a vampire who isn’t you to test it on
Do you know anyone
Did he know any vampires? Of course, Rahil knew vampires.
He knew them from bars, from brushes in the night, from flashes across his dating app screen, but he didn’t reallyknowthem. There were no vampires he could just call up and ask a favor of. No vampires, except possibly…
The thought made him feel just a little queasy. Did he really want to show a substitute for holy silver to a person who’d once used that very metal to hunt down other members of his community? Even if she did have fangs now, she had been the exact kind of person he worried might get their hands on a metal like this.
But Natwasa vampire.
Confused and conflicted but still a vampire. Maybe this was just what she needed: to feel like part of something again, only this time something that helped instead of hurt. And thiswouldhelp, Rahil told himself. He’d gotten the project this far—and not just because he’d wanted to see more of Mercer’s biceps, feel the touch of him through the pressure of his holy silver, breathe in his scent for one more day. This metalwasgoing to do good, as Mercer had said.
Rahil could prove that to himself now.
He slid his phone into his pocket, and headed down the hall, calling as he went. “Hey, Nat? I have something you could help with…”
As they approached Mercer’s yard, Nat wrapped her arms tighter against her sides, but Rahil could see the outline of her fists clenched at the ready. The twilight had nearly turned to a full expanse of summer stars, the night air a perfect gentle warmth. Insects quieted their songs as Rahil and Nat passed. Kat bayed at them with so much gusto that it triggered barking from the dog three doors down. The sound relaxed a small, perpetual fear that had been hiding in Rahil’s gut since he’d found her seizing in Mercer’s arms.
