“Yes, you will.”

He met her eyes again, saw what was in them. “You do it then. I trust you to see it through.”

With Cian at his feet, Hoyt on one side and both women on the other, Blair opened the bottle. She brushed his hair clear, exposed the raw bite.

“Under these circumstances, it’s not considered unmanly to scream. Brace yourself,” she warned him, and poured the blessed water on the wound.

He did scream. And his body arched up, bucked. The wound itself seemed to boil, and she let the viscous liquid that bubbled out run as she continued, ruthlessly, to douse it with water.

She flashed back to the night she’d had to go to her aunt, less than a week after her father had left her. And how her aunt’s tears had run down her face as she poured the water over the bite on Blair’s wrist.

How it had felt as if the flesh, the bones were being seared with a burning knife.

When the wound ran clear and he was gasping for breath, she used towels to wipe it clean, to dry it. “The balm would probably help now.”

White as a sheet, Glenna fumbled for the jar. Now her tears fell on him. “I’m sorry, Larkin. I’m so sorry. Can I help him sleep now? Even for an hour?”

Blair swiped the back of her hand over her mouth. “Sure, it’s done. He could use a little sleep.”

Again, she rushed upstairs. She dashed into her room, slamming the door behind her. Then she dropped down on the floor at the foot of her bed, wrapped her arms around her head and sobbed.

She cringed away when an arm came around her, but it only wrapped tighter. “You were so brave,” Moira crooned, like a mother lulling a child. “So strong and so brave. I try to be, and it’s so very hard. I want to believe I could have done what you did, for I love him so much.”

“I’m sick, I feel sick.”

“I know, so do I. Can we hold on to each other for a bit, do you think?”

“I can’t feel like this. It doesn’t help.”

“I think it does. To care, even to hurt. Cian fixed him juice and toasted bread. I couldn’t have imagined it. But he cares. It’s impossible not to care for Larkin. And if you love him—”

Blair lifted her head, brushed at tears. “I don’t want to go there again.”

“Well, if you were to love him, you’d have a happy and unusual life. Would you show me how to make the French toast? He’d be pleased to have it when he wakes up.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. I’ll just go splash some water on my face, and be right down.” They got up. “Moira? I can’t be good for him. I’m not good for anyone.”

Moira paused at the door. “That would be up to him, wouldn’t it, as much as you?”

H e was still pale when he woke, but his eyes were clear. He insisted on eating at the table, within easy reach, he said, of food.

He plowed through French toast, eggs, and bacon with a slow and studied pace. As he ate, he told them what he’d done and seen and heard.

“So many changes, Larkin. You know you shouldn’t—”

“Now, don’t scold me, Moira. It’s all come out all right, hasn’t it? Could I have more of the Coke?” He sent a sweet, charming smile with the request.

“It wasn’t a rescue mission.” Since she was closer, Blair yanked open the refrigerator, grabbed another bottle of Coke. “We specifically talked about that.”

“You’d have done the same. Oh, don’t shake your head and glower at me.” He snagged the bottle. “I had to try, and any of us would have done the same. You didn’t see, you didn’t hear. It couldn’t be walked away from, not without some attempt to help. And the truth of it is, I’ve been wanting to light a blaze in there for some time.”

He looked at Cian now. “Since King.”

“He’d have appreciated the gesture.”

“It nearly killed you,” Blair pointed out.

“War’s meant to kill, isn’t it? I should have left the boy be—what looked like a boy. But what it was doing…I lost the sense of it then, no denying that, and only wanted to end him. That was useless and stupid.” He reached around to touch his fingers to the bandage at the back of his neck. “And I won’t forget what it cost me.”

Then he shrugged, scooped up more eggs. “So…She wasn’t happy with this wizard, this Midir.”

“I know the name,” Hoyt put in. “He was infamous—before my time,” he added. “Black magicks, raising demons to do his bidding.”

Larkin guzzled Coke from the bottle. “He’s doing her bidding now.”

“It was said he was devoured by his own power. In a way, I suppose he was.”

“I think she intended to punish him, or to let the other one—Lora—have a go at him. But when he gave her the mirror, the magic one—she went all soft and dazzled. She and the other one, mesmerized they were by their own faces.”

“There’s considerable vanity there,” Cian told him. “It would be a great thrill to see their reflections after so long.”

“It wasn’t what I was expecting, their—well, human reaction, or so it seemed. And the, ah, affection between the women seemed genuine.”

“He’s being delicate,” Cian said. “Lilith and Lora are lovers. They both take others, of course, often at the same time, but they’re mates, and sincerely devoted to each other. The relationship isn’t without its dysfunction, but has held for four hundred years.”

“How do you know?” Blair asked him.

“Lora and I had—what should we call it? A fling? This would have been, hmm, in the early 1800s, in Prague, if memory serves. She and Lilith were having one of their spats. Lora and I enjoyed ourselves for a few nights. Then she tried to kill me, and I threw her out the window.”

“Tough breakup,” Blair murmured.

“Ah, well, she’s Lilith’s creature, whoever else she might play with from time to time. I knew it before she tried to stake me. As for the boy, I don’t know about him. A more recent addition to her cadre, I’d say.”

“Family,” Larkin corrected. “I know there’s something deviant between them, but in some way, she thinks of him as a son, and he of her as his mother.”

“That makes them weaknesses.” Hoyt nodded. “The boy and the French woman.”