As her healer seemed on the verge of speech, she cut him off to address her twin’s shellan. “I shall handle this here. Please leave us.”
Jane nodded and backed out the door. But no doubt stayed close by.
Payne’s human rubbed his eyes as if he were hoping that doing so would change his perception . . . or perhaps this reality they were stuck in.
“What name would you want me to have?” she asked quietly.
He dropped his hands and considered her for a moment. “Screw the name thing. Can you just be honest with me?”
Verily, she doubted that was a promise she could give him. Although the technique of burying memories was easy enough, she was not overly familiar with the repercussions of doing it, and her concern was that the more he knew, the more there was to hide and the more damage that could be rendered upon him.
“What do you wish to know.”
“What are you.”
Her eyes returned to the closed curtains. As sheltered as she had been, she was aware of the myths that the human race had constructed around her species. Undead. Killers of the innocent. Soulless and without morals.
Hardly something to crow about. Or waste their last few precious moments on.
“I cannot be exposed to sunlight.” Her gaze shifted back to him. “I heal far, far faster than you. And I need to feed before I am moved—after I do, I shall be stable enough to travel.”
As he looked down at his hands, she wondered if he was wishing that he hadn’t operated on her.
And the silence that stretched out between them became as treacherous as a battlefield, and just as dangerous to cross. Yet she heard herself say, “There is a name for what I am.”
“Yeah. And I don’t want to say it out loud.”
A curious ache began in her chest, and with supreme effort, she dragged her forearm upward until her palm rested over the pain. Odd that her whole body was numb, but this she could feel. . . .
Abruptly, the sight of him became wavy.
Immediately, his expression gentled and he reached forward to brush her cheek. “Why are you crying?”
“Am I?”
He nodded and lifted his forefinger so she could see it. On the pad, a single crystal drop glistened. “Do you hurt?”
“Yes.” Blinking quickly, she sought and failed to have him come into focus. “These tears are rather irritating.”
The sound of his laughter and the sight of his white, even teeth lifted her, even as she stayed upon the bed. “Not one for crying, are you, then,” he murmured.
“Never.”
He leaned to the side and brought forth a square tissue that he used to blot what ran down her face. “Why the tears.”
It took her a while to say it. And then she had to: “Vampire.”
He eased back down into the chair beside her and took elaborate care folding up the square and then tossing it into a squat bin.
“I guess that’s why Jane disappeared a year ago, huh,” he said.
“You do not appear shocked.”
“I knew there was something big doing.” He shrugged. “I’ve seen your MRI. I’ve been inside of you.”
For some reason, that phraseology heated her up. “Yes. You have.”
“You’re just similar enough, though. Your spine was not so different that I didn’t know what I was doing. We were lucky.”