Page 53 of Blood & Ash

Luca sat on the edge of his bed with his elbows on his knees and his eyes on the floor. The lamp on the side table threw a yellow square across the boards. His room was spare: narrow bed, one chair, a wardrobe he rarely opened. He hadn’t moved since coming upstairs. His jaw still hurt from clenching it.

The door was open. Marcus found it that way. He stood in the doorway and leaned against the frame. His hazel eyes took in the room in one sweep: the bed, the chair, Luca sitting with his head down. Marcus didn’t sit in the chair. He stayed in the doorway with his weight on one hip and his arms loose at his sides.

“How long?” Marcus asked.

“Three nights. Maybe four.” Luca didn’t look up. “Comes back before dawn. Coat still on. Boots by the door. Won’t say where he’s been. Won’t say what he’s doing.”

“Destination?”

“Nothing offered.”

Marcus listened. His face gave nothing. He had the country doctor’s habit of letting silence do its work. Luca had seen it a hundred times across an exam table: Marcus asking one question, then holding still until the answer arrived complete.

The lamp guttered. Luca reached over and adjusted the wick without looking at it. His fingers were steady. His chest wasn’t.

“He’s not going to tell us,” Marcus said.

His voice carried the flat certainty of someone stating something he had already worked out.

Luca looked up. “I know that.”

“I figured.”

Marcus pushed off the doorframe. He stood straight. His shoulders filled the doorway. He was built solid, a country doctor’s build, the kind that came from lifting patients, hauling supplies and doing the work himself because there was no one else to ask.

“Then we tell him it’s not acceptable,” Marcus said.

Luca’s expression changed. It was relief, heavier than that, the weight of a decision made by someone else that matched the one he had been carrying alone. His chest eased. His jaw loosened. He stood from the bed in one motion, and his boots hit the floorboards with a solid, decisive sound, the sound of a body done with sitting too long.

“Now?” Luca asked.

“Now.”

They moved through the nest together. The lamps along the wall still burned from the night. The wicks were low. The light they threw was amber and thin. It reached the floorboards, the walls and the closed doors of rooms that stood empty. The Sable attack had taken three vampires. The rooms hadn’t been reassigned. The doors stayed shut. The hollow sound of the place followed Luca and Marcus down the corridor like it always did, a quiet that lived in the spaces between footfalls.

Marcus walked on Luca’s left. His stride was even. His hands were at his sides. He didn’t speak. The decision was made and the path was clear. They were going to Sebastian’s room at the far end of the corridor, and they were going to say what needed saying and whatever happened after that would happen. Luca had lived two centuries. He knew the value of clean movement toward a fixed point.

The corridor turned. The lamps followed. One of them guttered and caught itself. Cold air pushed through the unlatched window at the end of the hall. Luca had still not closed it. The draft reached them as they passed. Marcus didn’t react to the cold. His jacket was thick. His tolerance for discomfort was higher than most men’s. Luca had seen him work through the night in a clinic that had no heat and never complain once.

Sebastian’s door was closed. The wood was dark oak, older than either of them. The handle was brass, worn smooth at the center from four centuries of the same hand opening the same door. Luca reached for it. His fingers closed on the metal. It was cold. He turned it. The latch gave. The door opened inward.

Light fell across the threshold. Sebastian’s room waited on the other side.

Sebastian sat at his writing desk. His coat hung on the chair behind him. A single sheet of paper lay in front of him, covered in his tight slanting handwriting. He turned it face-down when the door opened. He didn’t stand.

Luca stepped into the room. Marcus followed. Marcus closed the door behind them. The latch caught with a soft click, a final sound that said whatever happened next would stay in this room.

Sebastian’s gray eyes moved from Luca to Marcus and back. His hands rested on the desk. His fingers were long. The knuckles were prominent. His hands still carried the calluses of real work, from before he stopped needing to do it. He said nothing. He waited, the same waiting he always did: four centuries of patience sitting in a chair with his back straight and his face giving nothing.

Luca spoke first. He kept it direct, with no preamble, and the words came out exactly as he’d rehearsed them, walking down the corridor. “I’m not asking where you go. I’m saying it stops.”

Sebastian’s expression didn’t change. His eyes held Luca’s across the room. The lamp on the desk threw his shadow long against the wall. The silver at his temples caught the light.

“Is this a joint position?” Sebastian asked.

His voice was formal and declarative, the kind that asked questions that weren’t really questions.

“Yes,” Marcus said.