“I know You’re hungry,” I said, trying to comfort him.

“You don’t know. You can’t know. There’s nothing like this.” Lucas’s grimace revealed his fangs. Just the sight of blood had brought them out again. When I had been alive, part vampire, I had experienced the desperate yearning for blood, but I suspected Lucas was right: The craving he felt now had intensified beyond anything I’d ever known.

We walked outside to see Balthazar, alone, leaning on his car in the otherwise empty parking lot. His shadow stretched out, long and broad, in the beam of the nearby streetlamp. Balthazar spoke to me first. “Vic was hanging around out front. The only way Ranulf could get him to leave was to go along.”

“Okay,” I said as we reached him. “Let’s just get out of here. I never want to see this place again.”

Balthazar didn’t move; he and Lucas just stared at each other. For years, they’d loathed one another; only in the aftermath of my death had they been able to work together. Now, though, what I saw between them was total understanding.

“I’m sorry.” Lucas’s voice was rough. “Some of the stuff I said to you — about choices, being a vampire, and everything like that — Jesus. I get it now.”

“I wish you didn’t. I wish you’d never had to understand.” Balthazar closed his eyes for a second, maybe remembering his own transformation centuries ago. “Come on. We’ll get you something to drink.”

With a pang, I realized that Lucas and Balthazar understood each other now on a level that I would never fully grasp. For some reason, it felt like a loss. Or maybe in that moment, with Lucas seemingly so far from me in spirit, everything felt like a loss.