She reached for the shoes she’d dropped under the table, then stood. “You know, I blame you for all this, Giovanni Vecchio. I was happy only caring about three people in the world. Then you had to go and make a family.” Tenzin’s voice was bitter to her own ears. “It’s your fault.”
“I know.”
“But you’re not sorry, are you?”
His eyes were a little sad, but he smiled. “Not even a little bit.”
She walked out of the library, out the front door, and took off into the night.
11
Beatrice found him in his old room, staring at the pictures he’d tucked into the mirror above the dressing table. They were mostly from high school and college. Snapshots of him and Chloe at the prom. Fabia kissing his cheek as he grinned at the camera. A drunken night out with Ronan in Campo di Fiori when they’d both been human.
“Hey,” she said. “Do you need anything?”
Saba’s blood flowing over my hands.
The violence of the instinct shocked him out of silence. “No. I already fed tonight.”
Beatrice came and sat next to him on the bed. “I understand why you’re angry. You have every right to be angry that she didn’t tell you.”
What would it have benefited you to have an enemy you could do nothing about?
The audacity. The fucking audacity.
This was typical Tenzin. Going behind his back, keeping things to herself, pretending like she always knew better.
“I also know exactly why she didn’t tell you,” Beatrice said. “And I don’t know if I would have, if it had been up to me.”
Ben turned to his aunt. “What the fuck?”
“Put yourself in her shoes.” Beatrice closed her eyes and squeezed tight. “God knows I haven’t been very good at doing that the past few years.”
Ben was silent; he didn’t know where Beatrice was going with this.
“I wanted to be the one to change you.” Her voice was quiet. “Is that stupid? I’m young; nowhere near as powerful as your sire. You’d be a water vampire, and that doesn’t suit your personality at all, but I wanted to be the one. Gio adopted you, and I came along later. I know I’m not your mom, but—”
“The best thing my mother ever did for me was to surrender custody of me to a vampire, Beatrice.” He stared at the ground. “You were way better than my mom, okay?”
“Still, I was being selfish. You were grieving your human life, and I took it out on Tenzin.”
“She’s not a saint.”
“She’s not the enemy either.” Beatrice took a deep breath. “I was really angry with her, but I don’t know how much was really for you and how much was my own messed-up feelings.”
“Well…” Ben fell back on a simple truth that had been the only explanation he’d had for so many puzzles in his life. “Vampire families are really fucking complicated.”
Beatrice shook her head. “Isn’t that the truth?”
They sat in silence for a few more minutes.
“What are you going to do?” Beatrice asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I know you still have issues—every relationship has issues—but clearly the two of you have made peace with each other. I don’t want to interfere with that, because the bond the two of you have isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before.” She finally looked at him. “It was only ever her for you. I know you had your girlfriends and your flirtations, but in your heart, it was only ever her. And the love she has for you—”
“She’s never said it.” His smile hurt. “I don’t think she ever will.”
Beatrice took his hand and knit their fingers together, palms facing each other. “I love you so much. I love Tenzin, and she loves me. And she loves Giovanni and Sadia. She loves Chloe. What she feels for you… it’s so much more than that.” She squeezed his fingers hard. “Knowing Tenzin, the words we use to describe our feelings probably seem cheap to her. Do you know what I mean?”
* * *
English needs better words.
Then find another language to tell me how you feel. You find the right words to tell me, and I will learn the language.
Ben closed his eyes. “I know what you mean.”
“As for what happened with Saba? How many times have you hidden something from Chloe because the truth would only hurt her? How many times have you left out a part of a story so you didn’t provoke a fight among your friends? We all do that, Ben. It’s a way of protecting the people we love. She didn’t hide it from you to hurt you.”
“But she obviously thought that I’d go off, half-cocked, and try to hunt Saba down or something.”
“Would you have?”
“Maybe,” he muttered. “I was pretty stupid a couple of years ago, and I wasn’t very careful with personal safety.”
“Yeah. So she was probably right.”
Fuck.
Ben sighed. “Yeah. She probably was.”
“Remember when I told you last year that a five-thousand-year-old vampire wasn’t going to change?” Beatrice bumped his shoulder with hers. “I was wrong. She has changed. Not who she is, but how much she’s allowing herself to feel. There was a wall around her for as long as I’ve known her. As long as Giovanni has too.”
“She still has a lot of walls, B. Trust me on this.”
“Maybe, but she’s given you the key.” She stood and touched his chin, tilting his face up until he met her eyes. “She trusts you, Ben. And that changes everything.”
The fire came creeping into his sleep, slipping under the door of his old bedroom and teasing his nose with the smell of smoke and incense. He rolled over in his bed, his arm falling to the ground, and felt the heat teasing his fingertips.
His eyes flickered open, and he lifted his arm to see his right hand engulfed in flames, but his skin wasn’t blistered or black.
A man in black robes with fearsome tattoos marking his cheeks stood at the foot of his bed, smiling silently.
“You think to take what is mine?” The man reached toward the door and with a flick of his finger, it swung open, revealing a blazing inferno across the threshold where his childhood home had been engulfed in flames. “I will burn everything you hold dear.”
Screams rose as smoke choked the breath from Ben’s lungs and tears streamed down his face. But even as the fire choked him, he was not consumed.
Tenzin didn’t come back to the San Marino house the next night, but he found a note at her warehouse that simply read: Going home.
Since he’d be seeing Beatrice, Giovanni, and Sadia in a couple of weeks, he flew himself back to New York, following the path that Tenzin had taught him, which took a little over three nights. He flew over the desert, stopping at a refuge near Santa Fe. Then he headed northeast, stopping at a hideaway near a waterfall in the Ozarks. From there, he made the Chesapeake Bay just before sunrise, and from that it was only a short flight north to get home.
Ben was crossing high over the Brooklyn Bridge when he sensed her. The air over Manhattan was misty and humid, and the wind felt thick with a coming storm, but he sensed her anyway. When he landed on the rooftop, he saw her through misted glass panes, sitting in the greenhouse in their roof garden.