She smiled, knowing it looked as bitter as it felt. “That’s him. He and his lovely wife, Elizabeth Raines, the actress who never quite broke into film the way she wanted. Strictly television, and oh man did it piss her off. It made great copy when they adopted me; that’s what they said. How fabulous that this insanely rich couple would give a poor parentless baby a home instead of having their own. I was a prop, and they used me. For a while, I had nannies, every toy I could wish for. I traveled all over the world. But I never really had them. Then there was an oops.”
“She got pregnant,” Ty said. “The daughter, I’ve seen her. Did some awful show as a teenager.”
Lily looked at him, incredulous. Ty just looked pleased with himself.
“You haven’t been a teenager for, like, three hundred years. And you’re not a girl. How do you know about Totally Galactic?” She still winced at the name of the show on which her sister had played an Earth girl who discovers she’s half alien and goes to a high school aboard an enormous starcruiser. It was ridiculous, but it had made her a star for a time.
“I’m up all night, remember?” Ty said, raising an eyebrow. “Sometimes the only thing going on is reruns on Nick at Nite. Anyway, I’ve seen it. She was cute enough. But nothing like you.”
Lily flushed with pleasure. It was stupid, to still have wounds festering after all this time. But it meant a great deal to have Ty say that.
“Yeah, well,” she said, “thank you. But Ellis and Elizabeth did not agree. By then, maybe it was inevitable that they wouldn’t.” She sighed. “They were never around, and I wanted them to be so badly. When they were around, they mostly passed me off to the nannies. And then they told me that Elizabeth—she never wanted me to call her ‘Mom,’ said it made her feel too old and traditional—was going to have a baby, and I knew. I just knew that it would be a girl, and it would take my place. All the love they never gave me would belong to this interloper. I still remember, I was five years old and playing in the nursery, and the two of them had just been in to tell me their big news. I was so angry. It got bigger and bigger in my mind, and they just sat there expecting me to be thrilled.”
“And I take it you showed them you weren’t.”
“I lost it,” Lily said, blanching. “Total supercharged freak-out of epic proportions. I guess you can probably imagine the scene.”
“Ruined toys, holes in the walls, things flying through the air, and one very furious little girl in the middle of it all?”
She heard the sympathy in his voice, and it was a balm to her soul.
“Yes. It was awful. A much milder version of tonight, because I wouldn’t have hurt anyone, though even then I could have, and I sensed it. But they didn’t know that. And to top it all off, I was yelling in another language, the same language that was coming out of me tonight. I knew I was cursing them, though they didn’t. They were… well, horrified is too kind a word. That was it for even the pretense of me being their daughter. I had shrinks galore. My parents were always trying to have me committed. Sadly, I am boring in every other way imaginable, so that didn’t work out for them. They got Rainey, my sister. And she became the center of the universe, with Daddy pulling strings to get her into the business and Mommy being a horrible influence because she was reliving her own youth through her daughter.”
“She’s a monster, then.”
Lily smiled again, and this time it didn’t pain her to. “Pretty much.”
“And she grew up to look like a very large Chihuahua.”
Lily burst into laughter, loud and raucous and perfectly genuine. She could see how startled he was, realized that he’d never heard her belly laugh before, and could only hope it didn’t freak him out, because she couldn’t have stopped it if she’d wanted to. Rainey the Giant Chihuahua. It was so perfect. And laughing made her feel good, so wonderfully alive. Normal, even, if only for a moment. She laughed until her stomach hurt and her eyes watered.
When her laughing fit finally subsided into giggles, Lily wiped at her eyes and saw Ty watching her with a bemused expression. And the look in his eyes, soft and warm, took her breath away. She doubted he knew how he looked right this moment. But she would never forget it.
It was the look of a man who could love her. Who might love her a bit already. And though she knew it was foolish and based in no sort of reality, Lily imprinted the picture of him onto her mind and onto her heart. This was how she wanted to remember him, come what may.
No one had ever loved her. Not really. But had things been different, Ty might have. And that would have to be her consolation prize.
“So you cut all ties and went your own way. Moved to the other side of the country and became a scholar instead of falling into the same trap as the rest of them. And I’m sure they don’t see at all how special that makes you.”
Lily snorted, amused through the sadness his comment provoked. “Hmm. Special. That would be the kindest way to put it.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have belonged there even if that hadn’t happened. Not much would be different, except maybe Elizabeth would have pushed me into a few crappy acting projects as a kid too.” She shrugged. “I moved on. I had to.” Then she grinned at him. “All those years of shrinks were good for something, after all. I’m surprisingly well adjusted for a Hollywood brat whose parents hate her.”
“I’m sure they don’t hate you.”
“No. They got over that a while ago. Now they’re just indifferent.”
“Lily.” The way he said her name made her heart ache for things that couldn’t be. He stroked her hair again, and this time there was nothing unsure in his action.
“They’re fools. I can honestly say I’ve never known anyone quite like you.”
“Well, I’ve never known anyone who drank blood and turned into a giant cat, so I guess we’re even.”
He smiled, and it softened his sharp features. Every time she saw that smile, Lily wound up wishing he did it more often.
“So what is it, Ty? When I said that I was having visions about the House of the Mother, you looked like you knew what I was talking about.”
The smile vanished as quickly as it had come, and Lily felt a touch of sadness. But she’d wanted it to end, too, because it seemed like all she did now was scramble up the slippery slopes of her desire, her affection, for Ty and try not to fall into the abyss.
“There are stories I’ve heard, that the original dynasty was begun by the Mother herself. Lilith. The originator of all vampires, by way of a demon.”
Her throat suddenly felt tight. Lilith. Lily.
“That’s… an interesting coincidence. What happened to this dynasty?”
“They say she went mad. Maybe it had something to do with the demon who gave her the dark gift. I don’t really know. No one talks about it. It’s supposed to be bad luck to say her name.”
Lily’s brows went up. “Vampires are that superstitious?”
Ty shrugged. “We’re an odd lot, if you haven’t noticed. Our whole existence is a sort of dark magic. So why wouldn’t we be superstitious?”
“Good point.”
“Anyway, what you described, it would make sense that you’re seeing the end of the Lilim, the very first vampire dynasty. But as I said, no one talks about them. I don’t know the circumstances, and I don’t know about this woman speaking to you. Lilith herself, maybe. Hard to believe, but… maybe. Out there, when you started speaking in another language, in another voice, I wasn’t sure what was going on. What set you off?”
“I… um… I think it was the blood. On your cheek,” Lily said, sensing that to tell him she’d freaked out because he’d been hurt, that she’d been ranting in some long-dead language about how no one would take what was hers again, would not make him hurl himself into her arms with joy and gratitude. Much of what had happened had come back to her now, though it was more like watching a movie in her head than remembering things she had done. She had watched events unfold from inside herself while someone else had held the wheel.
That, even more than the power itself, was terrifying.
And somehow, she knew that to tell everything would be to drive Ty away just as surely as the truth had driven her family away. She didn’t know if they had even had the capacity to love her, and she was old enough to be philosophical about it to an extent. But her destruction of the nursery as a child had made it so she would never know if they might, eventually, have been able to appreciate who she was.
The desire to run was sudden, and almost overwhelming. She quashed it, but her words were still impulsive.
“Why don’t we forget this?” Lily said, and saw in Ty’s narrowed eyes that he had taken her question the wrong way. “I mean, forget this part of the trip,” she qualified, and saw his eyes become less narrow. “Anura flaked out, and we’re going to get messed up if we stay in Chicago, so why don’t we just go to your queen and get this over with? Damien can’t get inside her court, I’m guessing. Everyone will find out one way or another who’s responsible for the Ptolemy massacres, provided someone can figure out how to direct me to see what I’m supposed to. Hopefully. And then I’ll head home.” She smiled at him, though it cost her. “Maybe we can catch a movie. Have dinner. I’m for dating after dark if you are—that is, if you want to see me again after all this.”
The yearning in his eyes, foreign and familiar all at once, took her breath away with its depth.
“Lily…” he began.
That one word was infused with as much longing and regret as any she’d ever heard. So much that she was fairly sure of what he would say. That they should enjoy the now, because it was all he would be allowed, all they could have. Silently, she cursed the highbloods for the way they’d structured their society, feudalism out of space and time. She wasn’t even a vampire, but she could see how a lowblood might resent them enough to rebel, to buck the system. There were small ways to do it, like running safe houses, and large ways, like becoming a subversive, violent, amoral Shade. But Lily understood.
