“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Winter said tonelessly. He wasn’t talking to them, Tana could tell. Maybe he wasn’t talking to anybody.
Gavriel moved beside Tana. In the dark, she couldn’t see him very well. He just looked like a pretty boy, tall and lanky. She thought again of the crumpled paper in her purse and of him, caged beneath a cemetery. How long had he been there? How long had he looked just as he did now? A hundred years? Two hundred? Could he even remember the press of time? Maybe having stepped outside of it would drive anybody crazy.
“I must go,” Gavriel said, pushing back ash black hair and looking at her with the utter sincerity of the drunk or deranged. “You will take care, won’t you? This city is hungry.”
“You’re going now?” Tana asked him. She should have been relieved, knowing what he was and what he was capable of, but she didn’t want him to go. The thought of being alone with Aidan and Midnight and Winter filled her with a nameless anxiety. “It’s almost dawn. You don’t even know where you’re going.”
He smiled, a real smile, the kind real boys gave real girls. “It’s been a very long time since anyone worried for me.”
Ahead of them, Midnight was looking at her tablet. Its glow lit her face from beneath, as though she were going to tell a ghost story.
“They have a friend—” Tana began.
“I have a friend, too,” said Gavriel. “And I mean to kill him.”
“Oh.” Tana took a step back. He was on the run, the same as before, even if the reasons were different. She thought of the vampires at Lance’s sundown party, who were doubtless planning to drag him back to the Père-Lachaise Cemetery where they’d torture him until he got even crazier than he was now. Until his mind was so lost that he could no longer hold on to it even some of the time. He’d broken out once, but she doubted he could do it again. She made her voice as firm as possible. “Don’t let them catch you.”
He hesitated, clearly surprised by her words. Then he smiled again, inclining his head in a shallow bow, acknowledging everything she’d left unsaid. “Traveling with you was a delight worth any delay, but I can delay no longer.”
Midnight straightened up. “Okay, I figured out where we have to go. It’s not far.” She slung her garbage bag back over her shoulder and began to march down the alley. “Come on,” she said, looking back at Tana and Gavriel.
Aidan followed closely, with a worried look at the sky. “Is he going to be—”
“Tana,” Winter called. “We’re moving.”
“Remember what you told me in the car?” she said to Gavriel. “Death’s favorites don’t die.”
“I am no favorite.” As he said the words, his expression changed. His fingers closed on her shoulder. His eyes glittered like gems as he bent toward her. “But let me have one last thing I do not deserve.”
For a moment, she shrank back automatically, thinking he was going to bite her. Then, stunned, she realized that wasn’t what he intended to do at all. His lips brushed hers lightly, as though he was giving her the chance to push him away. She squeezed her eyes shut, to blot out the terrible thing she was about to do, and pulled him closer.
She wasn’t supposed to want this.
When he kissed her again, she gasped against his cold mouth—her breath held too long since he didn’t need to breathe at all—her tongue sliding against his, brushing against sharp teeth. He was careful, but she still felt the drag of their points against her lower lip. The cool press of his body made her skin feel fevered.
He pulled away from her and touched his mouth, his face full of a gentle amazement. “I didn’t remember it was like that.”
Tana’s heartbeat seemed to have moved into her whole body and thrilled it with a single speeding pulse. Everything was a little blurred at the edges and she wanted—she wanted him to feel like she did, like he’d done something forbidden, wanted to give him something he’d like and really wasn’t supposed to have, something that would feel wrong, something he wanted.
“Kiss me again,” she whispered, reaching up, her fingers sliding through his hair. She almost didn’t know herself as she moved against him.
He bent helplessly toward her.