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anything. I was just worried about, you know, making sure you were safe.”
    “Thank you,” I said, catching the coat and slipping it on. It was reasonably dry, so he must have taken it off before diving in to save me. I can’t say it was still warm from his body, but it did smell very nice, like one of those oranges that someone has studded with cloves to make a sachet. It smelled like Christmas, familiar in a way that made me feel cozy and safe.
    Daniel came striding into the dungeon. He was no longer in his tux, but dressed impeccably in a dark suit that had obviously been custom tailored to fit him to perfection. His shoes made a judgmental snap, snap, snap as he walked across the stone floor.
    “Now you have both of them in there?” he growled. “What’s next? Are we going to be taking in stray cats?”
    If I had been a cat, I would have tried to claw his face.
    “Daniel,” Jessie said in a calm voice, “please try to remember a time when you actually felt compassion for another being.”
    His brother sniffed. “That was too long ago.”
    “Can you at least understand that I still feel the emotion?”
    “If you insist,” Daniel said, giving an affected sigh. “But what are you going to do with them?” he asked, jerking his chin in my direction.
    “I’ve got everything under control,” Jessie assured him. “You’ll have to trust me to do the right thing.”
    It was obvious from Daniel’s expression that he had very little faith in his brother’s ability to make good decisions. “She’s not your precious girl, you know.”
    “You keep saying that, and believe me, I know.”
    Daniel shook his head. “I will never understand what the Bishops see in you.”
    “Compassion?” Jessie suggested, but his brother ignored it.
    Scarcely sparing me a glance, Daniel departed, calling over his shoulder, “I expect this to be cleaned up by tomorrow night, or I’ll be forced to clean it up for you.”
     

Chapter 6
    “How long have you been a vampire?” I asked. We’d been sitting in silence since Daniel left, Jessie lost in his own thoughts. There was a small stool in the cell, and I moved it over near the bars with the excuse that I didn’t want to disturb Blossom. But the truth was it was because I wanted to be close to him.
    “Too long,” was the reply.
    I humphed, hating those kinds of answers but realizing he was evading the question.
    After a few more moments of silence, he said, “I was born in 1918.”
    That was hard to digest. He looked no older than me, but he was closer to my great grandmother’s age. “Have you killed many people?” It was a question that I should have been afraid to ask, but I needed to know.
    He shook his head. “Just one. And that was a long time ago.”
    I wanted to ask him how he stayed alive without drinking human blood, but a large part of me didn’t want to know, so I satisfied myself by asking, “Have you always been a vampire?”
    “No, vampires aren’t born; they are made. I was human for my first seventeen years,” he explained.
    “I just turned seventeen,” I told him. I couldn’t imagine being transformed into a creature that would never die, but had to feed off the living. Especially as a teenager.
    He stared at me again with his penetrating eyes. “That was how old Colette was when she...” he trailed off.
    “When she what?” I asked, laying my hand to my cheek.
    “When I was young, a very new vampire, I loved a girl. A human girl. You remind me so very much of her. The way you look, your mannerisms, even your feisty personality... I just find it so very hard to believe you’re not her. But how could you be?” He shook his head sadly. “You don’t even know me.”
    I wanted to tell him that I felt like I knew him. That a part of me felt like I was his, even though we had never met. But it sounded so crazy, and he looked so sad. I didn’t want to torture him with the false hope that I was somehow his lost love reborn.
    “What happened