Syn focused on the floor in the center of the foyer, on the mosaic depiction of an apple tree in full bloom. When he tried to speak, he just ended up rubbing his nose. His brow. His jaw.

“Tell me,” Balthazar said, “that you didn’t kill her.”

“Kill who?” When his cousin gave him a level look, Syn cursed. “Are you fucking kidding me. She’s with Manny right now.”

“All right. Good.” Balthazar glanced around. “So do I need a shovel for another reason?”

Syn drew his palm down his face. “No.”

In the silence that followed, his eyes surfed over the other luxurious details of the mansion’s formal receiving area. Considering he had spent most of his life sleeping inside caves and tree trunks in the forests of the Old Country, he still could not fathom how he’d ended up in this royal castle of marble and malachite columns, and gold-leafed mirrors and sconces, and crystal chandeliers. It made him feel like an interloper.

Then again, he had often felt other-than, even among people he knew well.

“I love her,” he blurted roughly.

There was a pause. As if Balthazar couldn’t understand what had been spoken to him. “Jo? What are you—wait—”

“And for that reason, I am going to ask you to… to service her during her transition. You’re the only person I can trust with the female I love.”

As much as she wanted to use Syn himself, he couldn’t let that happen, especially not after he’d heard her talking about her conception. His violent nature was too close to that which she feared was true about her sire’s—and though she did not know this parallel, he most certainly did. He had never done to a female what her father might well have done to her mahmen, but as if killing females—even if they deserved it—was much better? He had taken lives in a perversion of justice, as a vigilante who accepted money he did not need nor use for his deeds—and oddly, it wasn’t until now that he felt the burdens of his crimes.

After everything he had done, Jo would not accept him if she knew his truths, and he could not bear to tell her them.

Therefore, he had to act as if she had full knowledge of him.

And get someone else for her.

It was only the decent thing to do for the one he loved.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Guess Syn wasn’t coming back, Jo thought as she put her phone away and paced around the break room. She had returned to this caloric enclave about an hour ago, after she and Manny had talked for a long time about their childhoods. Their households growing up. What they had studied in school. And on the subject of higher education, he had made a point to tell her that their mother would be proud of her for having gone to Williams and been accepted into that Yale program. Those comments, coming from him, had made Jo tear up all over again—though she had hid the reaction as best she could. No more Kleenex for her. At least not in front of him.

Not in front of anybody.

They had also spoken a lot about what it meant to be a vampire. What the war with the Lessening Society was. What the Brotherhood and the Band of Bastards were. How the religion worked and the way the civilians and the aristocrats lived.

Also the importance of the species being separate and staying separate from humans.

That reality was what stuck with her the most, although everything he had shared with her had seemed important. If she did go through the change, she was going to have a lot to adjust to, and she wanted to get a head start on all of it, if she could.

Refocusing, she went back over to the vending machine. There was no need to put any coins or bills in. It was a dispenser only, not about any kind of revenue stream—and the free food, in addition to the state-of-the-art nature of this facility, made her wonder where all the money came from. The answer to that was way down the list of her priorities, though. And hey, like she was about to argue with chocolate on the gimme?

Pressing one of the buttons, she watched the corkscrew spin… and then a Hershey bar dropped down with a clunk. Groaning, she bent over, pushed open the flap, and retrieved the candy bar. The wrapper came off easily and she tossed that in the trash. Then she took a bite and kept pacing.

As she chewed and swallowed, she thought about Manny. The female doctor who had taken the sample. Those fighters at that site…

… and Syn.

More than anything, she thought about Syn. Especially about the way he had killed those things back at the outlet mall. Thanks to Manny, she now understood why he’d been so vicious about it all. He had been protecting her and avenging his own species against an enemy that had murdered innocents for centuries.

It certainly put the violence in perspective. And made it much easier to accept.

Then again, when she had asked if he would help her during her transition, she had voted with her feet already, hadn’t she. But Syn had always made her safe. Always.

As she came up to the armchairs, she sat down with a total lack of grace, letting her butt land where it did. Looking up by the TV, she checked the time on a wall clock and frowned. It was past three thirty a.m. Five and a half hours had gone by? How was that even possible?

Then again, it also felt like five years since she had ridden here with that yellow-eyed man.

Male, rather—

The door swung open.

First, she merely looked up. But then, as she saw the hyper-composed faces of Manny and Doc Jane, she slowly rose to her feet. She didn’t know either of them well enough to extrapolate much, and she wasn’t sure whether that was bad or good.

“So what were the results?” she asked.

The female doctor—Jane—smiled, but it was in a professional way. “Why don’t you sit back down?”

“I’m going to die, right?” It was the only thing she could think of that was worse than finding out she wasn’t related to Manny. “I’m sick or I’m—”

“You’re my sister,” Manny said.

Jo sagged with relief and let her body take the advice of the doctor. As she landed back in the chair, she focused on her brother’s—her brother’s!—his face. “Is this bad, though?”

Stupid question. Really just was. The situation was complicated, and not in a fricking Facebook way.

“No, no.” Manny came forward and sat down next to her. “Not at all. I’m thrilled.”

“Then why don’t you look like it.”

Jane came over and sat on the sofa. “Let me explain a couple of things. So vampire blood is very different from that of humans. Much more complex. We can now, however, isolate specific properties of it—or maybe identifiers is a better word—and as I told you, we have a database of that kind of information. So when we compared your and Manny’s blood, we were able to see clearly the commonalities, the kind that indicate you are siblings.”

“Okay.” Jo looked back and forth between the two of them. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“We have the same father,” Manny said. “But not the same mother.”

Jo opened her mouth. Closed it.

Strange, how she could feel an instant grief for the loss of someone she had never known, and was actually not tied to. Still, it was a relief to think that poor woman hadn’t suffered something no one had wanted to contemplate.