Eleisha's mind raced.

"But I've read… Edward, don't be angry with me, but I've been reading at the library. Some of the accounts suggest larger numbers of us across Europe."

His green eyes widened. "You've been…?" He leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. "I know those old stories, too. All myth and folklore. We each feed at least once a week. What if there were even twenty vampires living in Manhattan? Twenty deaths a week? We'd depopulate the area too quickly for secrecy."

He was right, of course, but the picture still didn't make sense. Those written accounts couldn't all be fictitious, could they? Mass hysteria?

"What if-"

"Enough!" he snapped, and then his expression softened. "Enough for one night." He looked down at her simple dress and bare feet in disapproval. "What are you wearing?"

"It's comfortable." She paused. "And I would like to buy a few more-just for evenings at home." Her jaw clenched. "I'll need some money."

"You only have to ask."

She looked over to note that William had not come out of his room.

Less than a year later, Edward came home to find her standing by the window again.

She was holding an envelope in her hand, the address written in a familiar black script of blocky letters and numbers.

"A love letter from Julian?" Edward asked flippantly. "What does the old boy have to say?"

Then he saw her face, and he stopped walking. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." She held up the envelope. "He's agreed to begin sending our stipend to me directly… in Oregon."

Edward blinked, as if she were speaking a foreign language.

"I'm taking William, and we're leaving," she said.

His mouth fell open in shock. He dropped into a chair, his dark eyes shifting back and forth.

"William's grown afraid of you," she rushed on. "Admit it, Edward, the sight of him makes you ill. I've arranged to buy a house in Portland, Oregon. We need to start over… someplace new."

"You can't be serious," he choked. "You're just doing this to frighten me, to make me treat the old nutter more kindly. If that's what you want, you could have just said so."

"I am serious. We leave next week. I've booked a private car on a westbound train."

Edward stood up stiffly, slowly, and walked past her, even closer to the window. He was composed now, unable to express himself, trapped by his own facade. They were both quiet for a moment, and then he said, "I'm keeping the painting."

In the early 1870s, he'd befriended a visiting French Impressionist named Gustave Caillebotte. They shared several weeks of intense conversation-typical of Edward-and in the process, Caillebotte made a portrait of Eleisha sitting on a green velvet couch. She found it vain. Edward adored it.

Moving up beside him, she wanted to comfort him, but didn't. Neither one spoke. They had nothing more to say.

This time I broke off first.

"Don't stop," Wade said, grabbing my hand.

"No more. When you're inside my head, I see his face like he's in the room."

Visions of Edward hurt far more than I'd imagined they would. He'd been so alive, so original.

But Wade's questions kept coming. "So, you went to Portland?"

"Yeah," I managed to answer. "Edward followed two years later. He stayed in different hotels until 1937, then bought a house. He'd just grown too used to company."

"You lived with him in New York for seventy-three years?"

"I'd almost forgotten. Seems like another lifetime."

I needed to stop talking about this, and I noticed Wade's eyelids flutter. How long had it been since he'd really slept? The previous night he'd been up playing Superman, and then he probably stood guard over me all day.

"Maybe you should rest."

I thought he might argue-still burning with curiosity-but he pointed to the door. "Not yet. There's another whole room out there."

"What… You rented a suite?"

"Seemed appropriate."

Walking out into the living room of a modern hotel suite surprised me, as if Wade had been kidding and I'd find myself in a hallway. The decor was sterile, predictable: a gray sleeper couch, dried blue flowers in a vase from Tiffany's, two assembly-line paintings of seascapes. But this probably cost six hundred dollars a night. Why would Wade spend that kind of money? To impress me? Maybe he just thought I was used to places like this? What a guy.

My mind needed a break. How long had it been since Edward jumped off his porch? Only six weeks. Couldn't be. The memories shook me more than I wanted to admit. That's why I pushed Wade out of my head. What if the three of us had simply stayed in New York? Would Edward still have lost it? He'd never liked Portland, but his attachment to me kept him from being happy alone in Manhattan. Was it love? Maybe. He could have cut and run that first night in Southampton, left us to die in ignorance, but he didn't. How much did we owe him? I didn't even have a photo, not even a photo.

And my William…

Stop it.

I wasn't ready to deal with his death. I wasn't prepared to mourn. Trying to mull over that loss and figure out my next move would only bring hysteria. What was my purpose now? Even if I did escape Julian and manage to live-which was doubtful-what was I supposed to do?

"We need to go out for a little while," Wade said from behind me.

"Aren't we supposed to be hiding out?"

"We're in Kirkland-miles from Seattle, and we'll go on foot. It'll be okay."

"I think you need some sleep. What's so important?"

"You'll see. First I want to go someplace and get a hamburger."

"Really? You always sort of struck me as the health-food type."

He smiled slightly. "Used to be. Back at the institute they served whole grain and greens three meals a day. Dominick got me hooked on beer, pizza, and burgers."

The mention of Dominick sent my mood into the shadows again. Wade turned away. "Sorry, I just don't have any other friends. Kind of sad, huh?"

"No, I don't have many friends either."

Getting out of the hotel turned out to be a good idea. The night was clear and cool. We walked in comfortable silence to a small diner called Ernie's and slid into a cushy booth where a matronly waitress who bore an astonishing resemblance to Alice on The Brady Bunch took our order.

"I feel like a kid on my first date," Wade said, holding his cheese-burger in one hand.

"Really? Maybe I should giggle a lot?"

He threw a French fry across the table. "Hey, is the room okay?"

"Room? The suite? Of course, it's fine." Why would he worry about something like that? "Listen, you should let me pay you back for all this. The hotel. The rental car. Everything."

"You don't need to. Anyway, where would you get that kind of money?"

"Me? Jesus, Wade, I thought you'd have figured that out by now. I'm… pretty well off: three rotating CD accounts in Portland, an account in Zurich, stock in Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Hewlett-Packard… Boeing."

He stopped eating. "How did you manage all that?"

"Accountants and stockbrokers. Money is the only thing that matters here. Julian has joint control of my Portland accounts, though. He doesn't care how much I spend, but if I'd pulled out four hundred thousand to buy a new house, he'd want to know why."

"Your accountants work with you at night?"

"Sure. If you're poor and strange, people call you mad. If you're rich and strange, they call you eccentric."

He finished his dinner without another word and paid the check. Somehow, our exchange seemed to have upset him. We walked down the street awhile in silence. "You think you've got us all figured out, don't you?" he said finally.