Page 28 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

With that, Magda squeezed her hand and made her way back to her chair by the fire.

Magda and her son Jamie and the kids left not long after that, followed by Buck and his family. Jory had eventually rejoined the circle of chairs around the fire, sitting at an angle to Callum rather than across from him. Music played quietly from a speaker on top of a cooler. She chatted with Nat and Niamh, with Esther occasionally jumping in. Callum and Hank were quiet, watching the fire and listening to the conversation around them. She could feel his gaze on the side of her face, but it was better than avoiding it directly.

Hank’s silence was easy, normal; he was always more of a listener than a talker. Rationally, she knew Callum’s silence was to be expected as well. But it felt deliberate, as if he were waiting for her to speak to him. He could keep waiting.

She had nothing to say to him. Although that wasn’t really true. She hadeverythingto say to him. She just had no idea how to say it without striking him or bursting into tears. Or both. Because she didn’t know how to articulate how she felt. She was angry, and that was certainly the most tangible emotion. But she would be lying to herself if she said that was all.

She hazarded a glance at him and found him looking at her, the firelight dancing across his eyes. She sucked in a quick breath before glaring down at her watch. It was just after midnight, late enough that she could excuse herself. She needed to leave.Now.

Jory pressed her palms against her thighs and stood.

“You’re leaving?” Esther said, sitting up.

“Don’t get up. It’s just past my bedtime,” Jory said with a smile for her friend. “Niamh, it was lovely to meet you. Nat,” she said, inclining her head. She went and leaned over to kiss Esther on the cheek.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Esther.” They had dozens of orders to box and ship.

“Magda and I will be there around ten, if that’s okay,” Esther replied.

She wasn’t ready to talk to Magda again. But she also wasn’t in any position to refuse willing help, and so she nodded, thanked Hank and Esther again for their hospitality, and stepped outside of the circle of light from the fire.

Jory picked her way through the circle of chairs and across the yard. She felt Callum at her back before she heard him. She didn’t want to talk tonight. She didn’t really want to talk to him at all. She was too raw, too in shock. And while her heart was broken and her anger fresh and bloody, she could also admit that the relief at him beingalivewas so tangible, so visceral, that she was just as likely to kiss him as she was to shout at him. Or something equally stupid.

She shivered, though not from the cold as she took a sharp turn to the right and into the shadows behind Hank’s shed. She spun around, and he was right there, so close that the nylon of her coat brushed against his. His big chest rose and fell with breathing, but no clouds of air puffed from his mouth. He wasn’t actually breathing. He wasimitatingbreathing. An affectation.

The truth knocked her back. She almost lost her feet.

“You’re dead,” she croaked.

He stood, watching her, his hands at his sides. His voice was soft when he answered, like he was comforting a scared animal. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose. In another, I’m verra much alive.”

“But you’re not,” she said, feeling strangled by her own tears, sudden and unwanted. “Not really.”

Because it was all too much for her brain. She’d known vampires before. Hell, she’d known Nat for years, and the facts of his existence had never sent her into a spiral. But to know that within Callum’s broad, strong chest beat… nothing—that was more than she could handle.

He was too close. Too familiar, and yet too foreign. And with that hollow, affective breath, she felt her own chest begin to rise and fall with rapid, necessary, actual breath.

“You owe me an explanation, Marjory,” he said quietly.

“You owe me the same,” she snapped.

“You first.”

“You’re dead,” she said again, her voice thick with threatening tears.

“But I’m here. I’m right here.”

A small sob escaped her, and she found herself instantly surrounded. Her face was pressed into the broad strength of his chest as his arms wrapped tightly around her. And because she was a masochist, she allowed him. She pressed her ear to his chest, remembering so many nights held against him, falling asleep to the steady beat of his heart. But while his body felt the same kind of strong as it always had before, there was silence beneath his coat.

“Oh, gods,” she said around another sob.

“Marjory,” he whispered against the top of her head. “Look at me.”

She couldn’t. She couldn’t take her ear away from his chest.

But he’d never let her hide from him before. Of course he wouldn’t let her hide now. He leaned away from her and tipped her chin up.

“I cannae believe you’re here, Marjory,” he whispered.