A WHISPER OF ETERNIT

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A movement outside caught her eye and she leaned forward to get a better look. At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at and then, when he moved out of the shadows, she realized that it was Dominic walking in the moonlight. His cloak billowed behind him, stirred by the same breeze that whispered through the trees.

He moved fluidly, lightly, as though his feet barely touched the ground. And when he passed under one of the lamps, she saw that he cast no shadow. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Everything in the yard cast a shadow on the ground, save Dominic.

After everything he had told her, after everything she had seen, it was that fact that convinced her of the truth once and for all.

He came to her the next night as soon as the sun was down. One minute she was alone and the next he was there, standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her dry the dishes.

She pressed a hand to her heart. "You startled me!"

"Forgive me."

She wiped the last dish and put it away; then, feeling slightly self-conscious for no reason that she could discern, she slipped past him and went into the living room. She sat down on the sofa, her heart skipping a beat when he sat beside her, close enough to touch.

"How did you spend your day?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I painted a little. I wandered around the yard. I finished readingWutheringHeights . She regarded him for a moment. "I wondered where you were… sleeping. Is it like sleeping? Do you dream?"

"It is like death," he replied quietly. "There are no dreams. And yet…" And now it was his turn to regard her through narrowed eyes. "Back in Nightingale House, I dreamed of you."

"I saw you last night. You were walking in the gardens."

"Indeed?"

She nodded. "You had no shadow." "Perhaps, like Peter Pan, I have merely lost it."

Tracystared at him,then burst out laughing. Peter Pan! Now that was funny! And yet, they were very much alike. Like Pan, Dominic never aged.

"It's true, isn't it?" she said. "You really are a vampire."
He nodded.

"What did you do all those years when I was between lives and you were waiting for me to be… to be