Mac raised his eyebrows and blinked at me.

You’ve got to know the guy. He was practically screaming.

But he poured me a drink of something light gold in a little glass, and I drank it. It burned. I wheezed a little, and then tapped a finger next to the glass.

Mac refilled it, frowning at me.

I drank the second glass more slowly. It still hurt going down. The pain gave me something to focus on. Thoughts started to coagulate around it, and then to crystallize into definite shape.

Susan had called me. She was on the way.

And we had a child.

And she had never told me.

Susan had been a reporter for a yellow rag that covered supernatural news. Most of the people who worked there thought they were publishing fiction, but Susan had clued in to the supernatural world on her own, and we’d crossed trails and verbal swords several times before we’d gotten together. We hadn’t been together a terribly long time—a little less than two years. We were both young and we made each other happy.

Maybe I should have known better. If you don’t stand on the sidelines and ignore the world around you, sooner or later you make enemies. One of mine, a vampire named Bianca, had abducted Susan and infected her with the blood thirst of the Red Court. Susan hadn’t gone all the way over—but if she ever lost control of herself, ever took another’s lifeblood, she would.

She left me, afraid that if she didn’t, I’d be the kill that turned her into a monster, and set out into the world to find some way to cope.

I told myself that she had good reason to do so, but reason and heart-break don’t speak the same language. I’d never really forgiven myself for what had happened to her. I guess reason and guilt don’t speak the same language, either.