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forgotten myself again.”
    “No kidding.”
    He reached out as if to touch me. I stepped back. If I had felt those fingers brush my hand I’d have lost it completely. His chin tipped. “You are angry.” I shrugged. “You know what happened before.” So tel me!
    He put his hand to his heart. “My life on it, this Seer is virtuous and ethical. She is part of a guild cal ed the Sisters of the Second Sight, which strictly forbids its members from sending vampires like me into homes like yours, expecting to find their reincarnated sons…”
    Aha! I said, “But they weren’t there, were they?” Even I knew the reunion was supposed to happen in America.
    “No. You and Berggia were. Mourning over your young men. It is stil a wonder to me that you did not burn me alive, considering how they had been kil ed.”
    The real Berggias’ boys were slain by vampires, then.
    Damn.
    I nodded. That must’ve been the expected response, because Vayl went on. “I always wondered… did it ease your mind that I found the Rogue who took their lives? That he is now little more than vapor and a few specks of dust?” I thought about how Vayl had kil ed Aidyn Strait. That moment of knowing that my fiancé’s murderer would never laugh again. “There was a need in me. I don’t exactly know what to cal it. I’m—it’s right that he’s gone. There’s a balance restored. But it’s bitter.”
    “Yes. Revenge.” He sent me a look ful of fire and blood.
    “I thought it would be satisfying enough to give me rest for eternity. And yet here I am, stil seeking what I have lost.” He stopped suddenly. Glanced at Cole. “You never speak of my search. I suppose you think it insane?”
    “It’s not my place to judge,” Cole said. A good valet’s response. But Vayl wasn’t satisfied. He turned on Cole so quickly that I reached back, touched the hair I’d woven into a knot before we left the riad. And not just because Vayl had bitched about my choice of dos. When I twisted it up, it looked natural holding the bright blue Japanese hairpins whose true use had been disguised by the CIA’s most creative artists. Each needle tip released a ful dose of vamp tranquilizer when properly, uh, shoved into place.
    I relaxed when Vayl’s only violent movement was to fling the cigar into the street. “How do you do it?” he demanded.
    Cole ran a hand through his hair, glancing past Vayl to show me what-the-hel eyes. I rol ed my hands. Just go with the flow.
    “How do I do what?” he asked.
    “I have been without my sons for twenty-six years now. It has been only five for you. How is it that you manage to function as though life stil has some meaning? As if you occasional y see beauty among al this horror?” Had he meant to gesture at the mottled wal s of the buildings that had closed in on us again as soon as we left Zitoun el Kattabi Street?
    Cole looked at the toes of his high-tops. I felt myself go tense. Tried to think of some way to deflect the smart-ass comment he was about to fling at Vayl, which would be fol owed quickly by a huge bubble and a suggestion to me that if the Seer was pretty, you know, since he and I were a temporary couple, maybe we could make it a threesome.
    But when he looked up I saw depths in his eyes that made me take a quick breath. As if I’d just met the real man behind the fun pal for the first time.
    He said, “People deal with pain in different ways. And I can promise you that sometimes what seems like coping to the rest of the world is real y just hanging on by your fingernails. You want to know how I survive?” He took Vayl by the arms and turned him until he was ful y facing me.
    “There she is. And here’s another promise. Someday you’l find somebody just like her. When you do, don’t fuck it up.
    Because you wil never find anyone like her again.” Vayl nodded. “You are a lucky man, Berggia. To find such a partner is rare. My wife was…” Vayl trailed off, and after a while we realized he