Balthazar Read online

  Skye, still not sure she was able to speak, nodded. Bianca seemed to understand her shyness; at any rate, she didn’t press Skye for more, just turned back to Balthazar, who hadn’t stopped grinning at her. He said, “I’m glad you could make it. I didn’t really have a plan B.”

  “You usually come up with something,” she said, folding herself up on the window seat beside Balthazar. Bianca seemed more at ease in her pajamas than Skye was in hers—and more comfortable with Balthazar, too.

  Dim memories of Evernight Academy gossip floated back to her, stuff she hadn’t paid much attention to at the time. Skye had known that Balthazar was dating someone during her second year at Evernight. She was still in love with Craig at the time, so Balthazar was just a hot guy for her to get a thrill out of walking past in the hallways. It hadn’t mattered which girl he was with. But now, as she watched them together, Skye was pretty sure Balthazar had been with Bianca.

  As in Bianca, girlfriend of Lucas, the single best guy friend Skye had ever had.

  As in Bianca, the ghost Skye had saved at Evernight.

  How was it possible for her day to get even weirder?

  Skye asked the first question that came to mind: “Where’s Lucas?”

  Though Bianca had already been smiling, her expression took on a greater light, a greater tenderness, than before. Any doubts Skye had about Bianca’s loyalty toward Lucas faded in that instant. “He’s up in Maine with some friends. We’re lying low for a while. Taking some time to just be together. These past few months were hard.” A shadow seemed to dim Bianca’s unearthly translucence, but only for a moment. “Lucas says he doesn’t care about the cold or the snow or anything. He’s enjoying being alive. And I’m enjoying being with him.”

  “That’s good,” Skye said. Lucas had been so angry and wounded last year; it was a relief to hear that he’d found peace.

  “He says hi, by the way,” Bianca added. “And he’s sorry he couldn’t get here himself. I travel faster than most people.”

  “Yeah, looks like it.” Which was as close to a joke as Skye could manage. Growing up with a ghost in her house had been one thing; sitting around in her room calmly chatting with one was another. Plus there was a vampire on her window seat. Her whole definition of weird was changing fast.

  Bianca’s face shifted into delighted surprise, and she disappeared from Balthazar’s side—only to reappear across the room. “You have one of Raquel’s collages!”

  “Oh, yeah. Right! I saw her making this in one of the arts rooms at Evernight our first year there, and I raved about it so much she ended up giving it to me. Mostly to shut me up, I think.” Talking to a ghost was feeling more natural all the time. Skye joined Bianca by the collage, which showed several guys making dramatic gestures or big faces, with a ticked-off girl in the center. “Raquel titled this Save Your Drama for Your Girlfriend.”

  “I love her stuff,” Bianca said. More quietly—not hiding her words from Balthazar, but making it clear that she was speaking only to Skye now—she added, “Lucas told me about the visions you’ve been having.”

  “Do you know what it is? How to stop it?”

  Bianca shook her head. “You’re unique, so far as any of us know—which isn’t that far.”

  Skye hadn’t really expected any other reply, but the disappointment hit her harder than she would’ve thought. Maybe it was only that so many bizarre, frightening issues were piling up on her at once; she would have been so relieved to get an answer to any one of them.

  “You probably had some innate ability to begin with,” Bianca continued, “but when your mind was opened to the world of the dead for so long, when I possessed you—something profound changed inside you.”

  “Something profoundly awful,” Skye muttered.

  Gently, Bianca added, “What I do know is that this happened to you because you saved me at Evernight. I know that’s not a risk you meant to take. I just wanted to say… I don’t even know what to say. That I’m sorry, I guess. And that I’m more grateful than you can ever know.”

  “I knew it was a risk. I took my chances. We all got out of there, so it worked.” Somehow, putting it like this made Skye feel better. It was better to consider the death-sight as the natural result of something brave she’d done, instead of scary visions from out of nowhere. She decided to always try thinking of it that way from now on.

  “It’s getting late,” Balthazar said. His attention was fixed outside the window now. Had he seen something? “After midnight. Sometimes that’s when Redgrave likes to strike.”

  “Who is Redgrave, exactly?” Bianca asked.

  “A vampire I know. Not someone you ever want to meet.”

  So—Balthazar clearly cared about Bianca, but he hadn’t told her everything about himself. Not even the few snippets of his past that Skye had learned the last couple of days. That was interesting… Wait. Had he said Redgrave was about to strike?

  Skye said, “Are they coming right now?”

  “They’ll be more likely to come after they think you’ve gone to bed.” Balthazar went to her lamp and snapped it off. Instantly, her room went from cheerily bright to shadows, illuminated only by Bianca’s faint aquamarine glow.

  “Hold on—we’re trying to get them to come in? Is that really a good plan?”

  “They’re going to come,” Balthazar said. “Better now, when we’re expecting it, than later when we aren’t.”

  Which was logical, if terrifying. Skye slowly nodded. “We ought to get it over with now, before … before my parents get home. I don’t want them in the middle of this.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bianca said. She was fading into transparency, her glow hardly more than a shimmer now. “Balthazar’s here if I fail.”

  Bianca was their first line of defense? What exactly were they planning?

  The last of the blue-green glow faded. Though Skye knew Bianca must still be there, she was now invisible and silent. Moonlight off the snow provided enough light at the window for her to see Balthazar’s outline, a broad, reassuring shadow. She stepped toward him, seeking both safety and comfort. He remained utterly motionless.

  Her entire house had never seemed so quiet. Though Skye knew two others were in the room with her, neither of them was breathing. No wind was blowing, so even the usual rushing sound of the breeze through the trees was absent. The silence surrounding her was complete—

  —so much that, from one floor up, Skye was able to hear a faint scratching, then a pop of metal on metal. And, as her heartbeat sped up and her breathing became shallow, she even heard the soft creak of the back door being opened.

  The Time Between: Interlude One

  December 29, 1776

  Trenton, New Jersey

  IN ALL HIS MANY YEARS IN NEW ENGLAND, Balthazar had never known a winter as bleak as this. The snow lay on the frozen ground, nearly two feet thick, soft even weeks after falling because the sun had not provided enough warmth to melt any of it, however briefly, and create ice. It muffled sound and made the terrain unfamiliar. Roads and towns he had known for over a century were strangers to him now.

  Redgrave disliked the snow. Bloodstains showed too easily, as did their tracks.

  “And yet there’s nothing like a war for business,” Redgrave said for the thousandth time that winter. He lounged in front of the fire in the small inn where they’d taken up residence. Between the foul weather and the nearby hostilities, Redgrave and his tribe were the only guests—and thank God. “You’ll never eat your fill as often with less trouble than you will during wartime, I promise you that, my little darling.”

  Redgrave’s long fingers stroked through Charity’s fair curls as though she were his pet cat. Balthazar’s gut churned; watching Redgrave touch his younger sister in that way had never ceased to disgust him, though at least—after nearly a century and a half—Charity no longer flinched.

  “We should head south,” Constantia said, leaning her head back against Balthazar’s chest. He resisted the urge to push
her away—that never worked, not for long, and defiance created more trouble than it was worth. Her gown was the height of fashion—broad-skirted and bedecked with ruffles—and she’d even powdered her hair. In this modest inn, with its beaten wooden benches and plain stone hearth, she looked as out of place as an emerald amid riverbed stones. “Washington won’t move again so soon. I’m sure of it. We’ll have to travel farther afield if we want to keep feasting.”

  “Ready to see a bit more of the world?” Redgrave crooned to Charity, who nodded obediently. Her stare was unfocused, and the sleeve of her dress had fallen off her shoulder.

  Lorenzo’s feral grin widened as the barmaid came in, carrying a tankard of ale for them. The barmaid was young and pretty—coal-black curls and plump, rosy cheeks—but no slattern meant to service the male guests upstairs for a few coins exchanged quietly on the back stair. Perhaps she was the innkeeper’s niece, or the daughter of a friend, Balthazar thought: a girl here to earn a bit of extra money for her family during a hard winter, pretty enough to cheer guests who otherwise might grumble about the cold rooms or poor food.

  But that meant she was pretty enough to tempt the cruel. Balthazar had seen that wild light in Lorenzo’s eyes before. It meant pain, and death, and the crumpled bodies of women thrown to the floor like rags.

  “Will you be wanting dinner?” the barmaid asked, acting more nervous than she ought to have been. She understood something was wrong about this group; she was more perceptive than most, Balthazar thought. This stirred in him nothing more than pity. It would have been better if she hadn’t known what was coming. The girl continued, “We’ve a fine stew tonight. Right filling.”

  Lorenzo ran one finger along her forearm as she poured him more ale. She jerked back, sloshing suds onto the floor and making the other vampires laugh. “We’ll eat our fill soon enough,” Lorenzo said, to even louder laughter. “You, my dear—I wish to write a poem about you.”

  Oh, God. The subjects of all his vile poems were his worst murders. Balthazar wished he hadn’t seen the vulnerability or innocence in the young barmaid’s face. Then he would not have pitied her. He tried to deaden himself to pity—it would make this bitter existence of his slightly less cruel—but he hadn’t succeeded, not yet.

  “What is your name?” Lorenzo asked. “I must know your name, you see. I must learn what rhymes.”

  The poor barmaid, obviously longing to escape but unable to, replied, “I’m called Martha, sir.”

  “Martha?” Lorenzo started cackling. “What in the world rhymes with Martha?” His Spanish accent hardened the th sound into a t.

  “Thank you, sir. Good evening.” The barmaid dropped a quick curtsy and hurried out. No doubt she lived in a room on the premises. No doubt Lorenzo would find her.

  You could find her. You could warn her.

  Balthazar closed his eyes tightly, trying to silence the voice of compassion in his own heart.

  For the past 136 years, he’d drifted along in Redgrave’s wake. He’d never stooped to Redgrave’s level—murdering and drinking from innocent humans for sheer pleasure—but little remained of the proud Puritan boy he’d been in life. When he found humans worth the killing, whether they were brigands or mercenaries or rapists, Balthazar killed with all the righteous vengeance he could muster; he knew, however, that the pleasure he felt when he drank their blood was not righteous. It was purely carnal. During wartime, when they found the mortally wounded, he dispatched them quickly to the afterlife for what he tried to think of as their mutual benefit. When he could find no one wicked or dying, he ate animals, hunting deer in the forest just as Redgrave had taught him. This was as much virtue as he could claim—because he lived among murderers and did not move to stop them.

  He’d had his reasons, at first. Exposing Redgrave meant exposing himself, and Charity, which was worse. Charity murdered indiscriminately, as if she had no idea left of what was right or wrong—Redgrave’s countless brutalities had wrenched the very concept of evil from her mind. Balthazar had rationalized that he had to keep his silence lest he destroy Charity even more completely than he already had.

  But for the last several decades, he’d found it harder and harder to care.

  “Come with me,” Constantia whispered, her hand tracing down the length of his chest. “The hour is late.”

  When she took his hand, Balthazar didn’t resist. He let her lead him upstairs to their room, to their bed.

  How he hated her, but he couldn’t resist her. The first woman—the only woman—he’d ever lain with, with no love or tenderness between them. Her kisses tasted like poison, and he kissed her more deeply for that, hoping that one day the poison might finally finish this life that wasn’t life and let him truly die. Every time she took him to bed, he felt another shard of his human soul crumble into dust.

  Balthazar only wanted it to be over.

  A few hours later, as Constantia slept by his side, Balthazar lay awake, tormented by thoughts of the barmaid.

  Let it go. It’s no different from the other times. You aren’t the one killing her. So that means it’s not your concern.

  I know it’s going to happen. If I know and I don’t stop it, that’s as bad as if I drank her blood myself.

  Finally, unable to bear it any longer, Balthazar slipped from beneath the bedcovers. He set each foot on the floorboards carefully, wary of awakening Constantia—but she was a sound sleeper, and tonight was no exception. For a moment he stared down at her, with her lustrous hair splayed across the pillow and her exquisite body outlined by the sheets that had covered them both, and wondered how a form so beautiful could hide a person so monstrous.

  Enough. He had work to do.

  Balthazar slipped into his trousers, shirt, and boots; the rest of his clothes were unnecessary. In the hallway of the inn, far from the modest fires in the rooms, the air was almost colder than it would have been out of doors. No candles lit his way, but one of the few undeniable advantages of being a vampire was the ability to see in the dark. Sure and swift, he found his way down the stairs. His sharp hearing caught the sounds immediately—he’d come just in time.

  “Sir—you should return to your room, sir.”

  “But I wish to be here.”

  He navigated the passageways of the old inn as well as he could, making his way to the very back. There, just in front of a doorway that must have led to the alley, was the barmaid’s room. She stood there, wrapper around her as she shivered, while Lorenzo held a candle too close to her face.

  “I have written my poem,” Lorenzo whispered to the trembling girl. “Do you not wish to hear it?”

  “Nobody wants to hear your poems,” Balthazar said, stepping into the dim hemisphere of light the candle allowed. “They’re abysmal. Go to bed and leave Martha alone.”

  Martha brightened; Lorenzo scowled as he said, “This is none of your concern.”

  “And none of yours, either. Leave her. I won’t go until you do.” Balthazar folded his arms in front of his chest.

  Lorenzo remained still a moment, as if unable to believe that anyone so depressed and passive as Balthazar would take a stand—much less here and now, for the sake of a young woman none of them had seen before a few hours ago. Balthazar could feel the anger within Lorenzo, the frustration of a denied kill, and the certainty that he would pay for this defiance later.

  But not now. Now they needed shelter in the middle of town, and fighting in the middle of the night would awaken too many humans. Drinking from the girl would no longer be a clandestine, unknown act. It had become too dangerous to risk.

  With a scowl, Lorenzo swept past Balthazar. He stomped his entire way up the stairs, like a spoiled, thwarted child. Martha slumped against her doorjamb in relief. “Thank you, sir. He was most insistent, sir.”

  “I know they tell you to be kind to the guests,” Balthazar said. “But you don’t have to put up with that. You shouldn’t. It’s not safe. You must take care of yourself. If anyone ever makes you … frightened,
or unsure—then be wary. Take whatever precautions you must. Do you hear me?”

  Martha nodded. A curl of her dark hair fell across her rosy cheek, and for a moment Balthazar remembered what it had been like to feel desire—real desire, human need, not this shadow of lust that Constantia demanded of him time and again. Not that he would ever endanger another human through showing affection for her. Not after Jane.

  The girl was more innocent than he was, of course, suspecting nothing of him but noble motives. “Why do you travel with such people? They’re not—they’re not gentlefolk. Unlike you, sir.”

  “I have nowhere else to go.”

  “Anywhere else would be better, I should think.” As if afraid she’d overstepped her bounds, Martha flushed, stepped backward, and gave him a quick nod before shutting her door soundly.

  Anywhere else would be better.

  More than that—Martha had called him a gentleman. He had saved her from Lorenzo, and even if there would be consequences for his action, this girl would not be the one to bear them.

  Was it possible there was a place for him in this world? People who might accept him as something other than a monster?

  It seemed impossible—yet less impossible than it had always been before.

  Then he went back upstairs, returning to Constantia’s bed and the wreckage of his existence. He lay beside his lover, blankets pulled up around his shoulders, and shut his eyes tightly.

  But he did not sleep.

  By dawn, Balthazar knew what he had to do.

  He rose and dressed fully, stockings and breeches and coat and hat. Constantia still did not stir. For a moment he looked down at her beautiful face and tried to think how to bid her farewell—if he could ever divide himself from her entirely, which at that moment seemed impossible. She was poison, but poison that flowed within his veins. She would be a part of his vampire self forever.

  And yet it was easier than he would have thought to walk out of that room, hopefully never to see her again.

  Charity was awake. Balthazar had known she would be; even in life, she rose before anyone else, before the sun itself. She sat in the great room of the inn, huddled in her bedraggled clothing before the lingering embers of the fire. The glowing coals and the dim light of dawn from the one window provided the only light. Her eyes lifted to his, but she did not rise to greet him, nor speak.