Vic’s face paled.

More gently, Balthazar added, “This is no place for the living. This belongs to the dead.”

Vic ran his hands through his shaggy hair, nodded once at Ranulf and walked out of the projection room. Probably he would head home, where he’d try to do something useful — clean house, maybe, or make food nobody else could eat. Human concerns seemed very distant at that moment.

Now that Vic had left, I could finally voice the thought that had been haunting me for hours. “Should we — ” My throat choked up, and I had to swallow hard. “Should we let this happen?”

“You mean that you believe we should destroy Lucas.” From anybody else, this would have sounded too harsh to bear; from Ranulf, it was simple, calm fact. “That we should prevent him from rising as a vampire, and accept this as his final death.”

“I don’t want to do that. I can’t begin to tell you how much I don’t want that,” I answered. Every word I spoke felt like blood being squeezed from my heart. “But I know it’s what Lucas would want.” Didn’t loving someone mean putting their wishes first, even with something as terrible as this?

Balthazar shook his head. “Don’t do it.”

“You sound very sure.” I tried to say it calmly. Still, I was so angry at Balthazar that I could hardly look at him; he’d brought Lucas into the battle against Charity, even though he knew Lucas was numb with grief and unable to fight at his best. It felt like Lucas’s death was as much his fault as Charity’s. “Are you just telling me what I want to hear?”

Balthazar frowned. “When have I ever done that? Bianca, listen to me. If you’d asked me the day before I became a vampire whether I’d want to rise as undead, I would have said no.”

“You would still say no, if you had the chance. If you could go back. Wouldn’t you?” I demanded.

That caught him off guard. “We aren’t only talking about me. Think about your parents. About Patrice, and Ranulf, the other vampires you know. Would they really be better off rotting in their graves?”