“It’s a multipronged strategy. Different approaches, same goal. We’re trying to get her to be who she truly is. Serving us both will help.” Evan glanced at him. “Be who you’ve always been, Niall. That’s all that’s needed from your end of things.”

“Oh, well, aye. Your vague and cryptic responses always solve the universe’s problems, for certain.”

Evan didn’t use sarcasm, such that when Niall did, he felt a bit mean-spirited. At least if Evan would respond in kind, Niall could put his head through a wall. Then Evan could break a limb or two to teach him a lesson. It would relieve the frustration that came with conversations like this.

Evan sighed. “My practical Scot. You remember when we met that federal agent, the one with the dog that could sniff out explosives?”

The vampire cycled around a point like a fucking carousel. But it was the only way to get to it. “Aye. He looked appetizing to ye. The lad, not the dog.”

It didn’t happen often, but at times during their life together Evan had taken a blood meal from another throat, male or female. The agent looked fair interested in Evan, but Niall didn’t know if he buggered the poor bastard or not. Evan had cut Niall loose to enjoy the other offerings at the hotel.

It was just an overnight stay for the two of them, the agent and his dog part of some kind of law symposium at the hotel. Fortunately, there’d also been a wedding reception. Niall had crashed it, hooking up with a pretty bridesmaid. They’d danced, and he’d taken her back to her room for a quick tumble. He hadn’t even turned on the lights, her breath sweet and warm on his face as he took her against the wall, glad he was nowhere near the underground room and bed he would share later the same night with Evan.

He’d been a little rough about it, feeling somewhat out of sorts. Usually if sex was involved, Evan wanted to share his choice. Fortunately, the girl was one who liked it a bit rougher, more demanding, wanting her lover of the moment to hold all the reins.

“I enjoyed experiencing her through your mind. Her blood would have tasted better than the agent’s. The dog didn’t like me much.” Evan shrugged. “Anyhow, to the point.”

“Please God.”

Now it was Evan who gave him the narrow glance. “The dog was trained with food. He only ate when he sniffed out an explosive material. Hence, even on their days off, Rudolph had to divide the dog’s daily food portion into fifteen search exercises. Food is only associated with performance for the beast. If you threw a steak on the ground next to him, he wouldn’t eat it.”

Evan tossed the lens in the trash. “We have to figure out how to undo thirty years of training and help Alanna understand the benefit of her having a will other than ours.”

Ours. Evan didn’t use words casually. Rising, the vampire went to the wall where a half-finished painting was stretched on a large frame, as big as that side of the cellar. It was the moon, rising above a river. Its light made such a glowing, clear track through the water, the viewer felt beckoned into the picture. Within that light were hundreds of wee lanterns, an earthbound Milky Way. It was from a toro nagashi they’d attended in Japan, commemorating the dead on the last day of the Obon Festival. They’d sat on the bank together, shoulder to shoulder, watching all those lanterns head toward the moon, like gifts offered to the souls they remembered. Evan had explained the people believed that humans came from water, such that the lanterns represented their bodies returning to it.

“Humans are mostly made up of water, so the logic is sound. Vampires are creatures of blood, so I expect that’s why we turn to ash, returning to the earth.” Opening a jar, Evan used the pad of his index finger to dab out a bit of paint and add a swirl over one section of the water. Now it seemed the wind had touched that spot, or a fish had disturbed the surface. There were always details within details in Evan’s work, but none of his pieces ever seemed cluttered. It was like looking at a natural landscape, seeing something different each time the eye passed over it, but never being overwhelmed by it. Each feature was praised and distinct, unique and yet complementary to the whole.

Evan glanced back at him. “Thank you.”

Niall grunted. Shifted his feet. When Evan looked around for a cloth, Niall picked one up, stepping close enough to wrap it around the other man’s hand. As he massaged the paint off Evan’s finger, he realized he hadn’t been doing things like that lately. Never one given to lots of impulsive, affectionate gestures, he’d nevertheless done more of them in the past. For some reason, seeing Alanna, how she perceived things about vampires, he wanted to offer one now.

Evan met his gaze. A quick brush of his knuckles against Niall’s jaw suggested he was pleased, but then he took the cloth and his hand away, finishing the task himself. “You want more clarification.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but aye. I want to know where you’re heading with this.”

Evan lifted a shoulder. “When she sees me, she shuts down. Everything is ‘If it pleases my Master.’ You’re my agent, so she’ll obey you, as long as she sees it’s my will. That’s my part to handle. You’re a servant with a long history of serving me, but also a very different kind of servant from what she’s been. You keep her off-balance. Show her, help her. Touch her. Help her learn how to feel again.”

Niall considered that, turned toward the ladder.

“You don’t like the idea.”

He stopped, glanced back. “Nae much point in restraining my opinion if you’re reading it.”

“Not true. If you hold your tongue, I can decide which thoughts I want to deal with, and which to ignore. What’s bugging you so much about this, Niall?” Evan set the cloth aside, gave him a frown.

Niall blew out a breath. “Would it not be kinder tae let the girl just be what she is? She’s comfortable there. Another lass, being buggered by two total strangers would have terrified her. Instead, she’s hungry for touch, to serve. It’s all she knows.”

“While having our own female sex slave is lovely for us, I’ve more interest in what’s good for her.”

Niall bristled. “Or perhaps she’s a blank canvas, and ye want to see what kind of painting she could be. The fact that she’s not long for this life makes it more intriguing. She’s like a rainbow, or an eclipse. Too bloody ephemeral.”

Over near three centuries, he’d learned to either accept certain things about the vampire world, or go mad. But this . . . it made him exceptionally mad.

“Ephemeral? That well-educated mind you go to such effort to hide is showing.”

Niall made sure his next thought was a properly uneducated response. Evan’s lips thinned, telling Niall he was pushing it, but he returned his gaze to the canvas. Studied it. “Say you’ve always lived inside the walls of a prison, Niall, and you discover you only have one more day to live. Wouldn’t you want to step outside, see the sky, lie on the grass? Touch, taste, feel . . . everything.”

“She doesn’t know she’s in a prison.”

“Those tears earlier say her heart knows. We can be the key to open the door.”

“And if we do open it? What have we done to her, Evan? She’s not likely to survive this, and then she follows him into the afterlife, his slave for eternity.”

“I don’t believe that nonsense.”

“I didnae believe in vampires, either,” Niall fired back. “But how about this, then? Say by some miracle, they capture him alive and sever the link. She’ll be reassigned, because they only give InhServs to made vampires who are fancy overlords or ambitious bastards willing tae trample everything in their way.”

“I’m flattered you don’t put me in that category, even though I think you simply chose not to call me an aimless ne’er-do-well outright.”

“Since I’m using my big, impressive words, how do you feel about dilettante? It seems to fit.”

Okay, so maybe this conversation was starting to jab to life things best left undisturbed.

When Evan closed the distance between them, Niall held his ground, even as the vampire brought all that intensity up close and personal. There was a certain line he didn’t cross with Evan, not often. Unless pushed.

“If you have something poisonous in your gut, neshama, spit it out.” Evan’s gray eyes were locked on his like a hawk’s.

“You take a bird who’s always been in a cage and show her what it is to fly. Then ye put her back in the cage and say that’s the end o’ it. There’s nothing crueler than that. She’d be better off dead.”

“She likely is going to be dead, Niall. Very shortly.”

And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? She didn’t deserve that fate. One would think he was past railing about what was fair in this world. Yet something old and deep stirred in his gut, something he didn’t want to rouse. The scope and depth of what a man could accept were amazing, but the ability was dependent on him burying certain things deep.

“Ah, hell with it. You’re the vampire. You’ll do what ye bloody want.” He turned away. It’s all a prison, anyway, isn’t it?

Evan was so close, he felt the brush of the vampire’s hand when he turned. Niall tensed for an attack, or even something different, but then the hand was gone.

A glance over his shoulder showed Evan in front of the painting again, staring at it. His back to Niall.

Bloody, fucking hell. He hadn’t meant . . . Niall clenched his fist on the ladder. When it creaked in protest, he reined back his strength. He didn’t want to spend tomorrow rebuilding it. “I hate what’s been done to her. I hate how she was hurt. I hate how she thinks it’s her fault.”

You hate bloody vampires.

“No. Not all of them.” He paused, knowing he’d been dismissed, but still waiting for . . . he wasn’t sure what. Evan said nothing. After a muttered oath, Niall forced himself into motion, heading for the kitchen level.