Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes To Ashes. Jennifer Armintrout

to Dahlia.” I turned and met Nathan’s suddenly alert glance with a worried one of my own. “That’s comforting. What did you have to do to earn her help?”

      “Still jealous, are we?” Cyrus laughed. “Don’t worry. It was a trade—the mansion for one room with a kitchenette and a tiny bathroom with a stall shower and a door that doesn’t close all the way. Doesn’t seem like a fair trade, but life has been consistently unfair to me for a while now.”

      “Oh, how nice. I didn’t realize I’d been invited to the pity party,” I mused.

      He laughed again. “Carrie, I stock bricks of pasteurized, processed cheese for seven dollars an hour. Indulge me if I miss the comforts of my former life a bit.”

      “Have you been keeping an eye on your health?” I asked, changing the subject. “You’re not immortal anymore, you know.”

      “I’m painfully aware of that. I’m also painfully aware of the fact I have no insurance, and the world seems to turn on the revenue generated by insurance companies.” He waited a moment before asking, but I could feel the question coming. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind being my caregiver. Just until things are settled. I have the most insufferable allergies—”

      “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Historically, me and any expanse of unclothed Cyrus flesh were a potentially unstable combination. “But maybe we can go to the drugstore when I get back, take a look at some of the over-the-counter allergy meds. Some of them are just worthless, but—”

      “Ask him about the Soul Eater,” Nathan interrupted. I’d pushed his patience too far. He sighed heavily and tossed the book aside, clearly weary of his role as phone chaperone.

      I narrowed my eyes at him and clamped my hand over the receiver.

      Too late. “Is that Nolen I hear in the background?”

      Clearing my throat, I made an affirmative sound. “And it’s Nathan now.”

      “I know, I know.” I could practically hear Cyrus’s eye roll. “So, how is Nathan?”

      Agitated. He was still looking at me expectantly, his big arms folded across his chest. “He’s fine. He wants to know if you’ve heard from your father.”

      “Oh, yes. Of course I have.”

      Wow, that was easy. “Oh?” I asked cautiously.

      “Yes. We went fishing and then to a baseball game, and after that he took me to the toy store and bought me everything I wanted. And a pony.” If sarcasm were liquid, it would have dripped from Cyrus’s words.

      “You know I have to ask,” I snapped. “Something is going on, and so help me, if you have anything to do with it—”

      “How, Carrie?” He sounded tired, in the way only a human could. Physically tired beyond anything a vampire could feel, a mass of dying tissues and an inability to stand another second of bullshit. “How could I, in this failing, mortal body, be a part of anything my father has planned? Do you think I’ve been spending any amount of time in the company of vampires? Do you know any humans who do?”

      “Dahlia,” I answered, for both counts. “She hung around you.”

      “Like an anchor,” he agreed.

      “And you’ve been talking to her lately, if she got you the apartment.” I waited a moment, unsure if I would push him too far with the question. Then I decided to hell with it, I had to ask. “You’re not trying to become a vampire again, are you?”

      The silence was so long I wondered if he’d hung up. When he spoke again, his voice was thick. “Do you think I would want to be one of you again? After what happened to…her?”

      It stung that he wouldn’t say her name to me, as if I were unworthy of hearing it, or guilty by association for being part of the species that killed her.

      Not that I could blame him. When his father had raised him from the dead, Cyrus had come back human. Mouse had been his human caretaker and, as often happens in cases of desperation and captivity, they’d fallen into a warped kind of love.

      Then I’d completely misread the situation, kidnapped Cyrus—Mouse’s only protector against the vampires holding them—and left her to die. Not a day went by that I didn’t dream of her ruined body, lying in the bed where we’d found her. That I didn’t wake up sick with guilt at the thought I could have saved her if I’d just listened to Cyrus instead of rushing to chloroform him.

      But then, anyone who’d been alone with Cyrus for more than five minutes would have rushed to the chloroform.

      “I’m sorry.” I lowered my voice, but not for Nathan’s benefit. “But I’m not sorry for asking.”

      “Of course you’re not.” He snorted derisively. “You’re never responsible for anything where I’m concerned.”

      “Cyrus,” I began, while Nathan stood and crossed the room, as if he’d be able to defend me over the phone.