“Yes,” she said, but shivered.
He put an arm around her and said, “Let’s go inside.” He started to steer her toward her room, then stopped. “I have a question to ask of you, Amanda, and I hope you know you can answer honestly. I have no doubt that if I take you back to your room tonight, Colby will…will get past my security again, and…visit you.” His face showed a kind of grim determination as he said, “If you would prefer to wait for him…”
“No.”
He visibly relaxed. “Then I have a suggestion to make, and I hope you will understand that my reason for making it is your protection. You know that I don’t need sleep?”
“Yes-except with the fevers, right?”
“Yes, but this has nothing to do with the fevers. If you would allow it, I would watch over you tonight.”
“Watch over me?”
“What I’m asking is-would you please sleep in my room tonight? I’ll be near you, but I promise I won’t-I won’t impose on you.”
Telling him that it would hardly be an imposition didn’t seem like such a great idea. Obviously, he didn’t exactly have the hots for her, since he was able to suggest that she sleep in his bed-alone. And when she thought about it, why should someone with a couple hundred years of experience want anything to do with her? He probably thought of her as a child. This offer of watching over her was one indication of how likely it was that that was indeed how he viewed her.
Her pride nearly made her refuse the offer. Then she thought of returning to her room, and the ghosts, and Colby’s threat.
She’d be near Tyler. He wouldn’t let her come to harm. And maybe, if they were able to talk a little, she’d understand him better.
“All right,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said, and she could hear his relief.
If there was a little awkwardness in the moments when she got into the bed, that became secondary to a moment of sweet pleasure when he sat next to her and combed his fingers through her hair.
“Good night, Amanda,” he said, and lightly kissed her temple before turning off the bedside lamp.
“Good night, Tyler,” she said as he stood. She inhaled the scent of him from the pillow and smiled ruefully to herself in the darkness. You are pathetic, she told herself, but inhaled again.
By the moonlight, she could see him standing near the doors leading to the deck. She could just make out his features.
“How long do you think you will live here?”
“I don’t usually stay anywhere more than half a dozen years. Ten years at most.”
“This is L.A., Tyler. No one ages.”
“I will admit that it is a little easier to have my…differences…go unnoticed in a big city, or any place where people live out their lives without paying much attention to their neighbors, but eventually I’ll have to pull up stakes.”
“People in Southern California move often, too,” she said. “Ron’s grandfather was the only one of our neighbors who lived here for more than five or six years.”
“That may be so, but over time-well, the bureaucracy catches on. I can’t, for example, look as if I’m twenty-four on all my DMV records or passports.”
“Oh. What do you do?”
“Let’s just say I’ve become as good a forger as Adrian ever was, and if you’d like to visit some of the cemeteries where I’m supposedly buried as my own ancestor, it will be quite a tour. I differ from Adrian in that I did not murder anyone to fill a coffin.” He paused. “I will admit that this age of computer records has made it a little more difficult, but I have managed.”
“You do know that Ron’s an excellent hacker, don’t you?”
He smiled. “Yes. We’ve found it an area of mutual interest. And-I am fortunate because some of the people I’ve helped have been willing to help me without asking a lot of questions.”
“Or come to work for you, like Alex and Ben?”
“Although I pay them, I do regard them more as loyal friends than employees.” He paused. “I say that knowing that in another five or ten years, I’ll have to abandon them. Keep this in mind, Amanda-sooner rather than later, I’ll have to pull up roots.”
He couldn’t deliver the message any plainer than that, could he?
She felt a kind of despair, then told herself to grow a spine. He had already told her more about himself than he had told anyone else. If he didn’t care about her, he wouldn’t have brought her into his bed-even if he wasn’t in it with her. Yet.
32
Tyler asked himself if he had lost his mind.
He wanted nothing more than to crawl in next to her and make love to her all night.
He could think of nothing that would be more disastrous.
He was-to understate the case-an old man. She might see him as young, might even feel as drawn to him as he was to her. But he was constantly aware that his youthfulness was a charade.
And if he ignored that, what could he suppose would happen in the very near future? She would age, and he would not. That might not bother her at first, but eventually it could not help but affect her-and would most likely subject her to ridicule.
She would die, and he would not-thinking of it was nearly unbearable.
Suppose they decided to seize whatever moments they could find? She had lived all her life here. Being with him would require her to live with constant upheaval.
He thought of all of these objections, and more, and still wanted her, was tempted to be with her, consequences be damned.
Suddenly, Shade came racing into the room, and Amanda gave a little scream. Shade halted near the bed and started barking-while staring at the far wall.
“Shade!”
He stopped barking but continued to growl ferociously at the wall.
Tyler turned the light on but couldn’t see what was bothering the dog.
Tyler turned back to Amanda, who had leaped from the bed and was cringing in the far corner of the room, her face paper white.
“It’s not you,” he said quickly, and took her into his arms. He held her and tried again to get Shade’s attention. Had the dog lost his mind?
“Let him growl,” she said, peering over Tyler’s shoulder.
“I know you’re trying to get used to him,” Tyler said, “but really, this is too much to ask-I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He usually only does this in cemeteries, and then only rarely. He growled a couple of times during our walk tonight.”
“Ghosts,” she said.
“Well, I’ve never seen them myself, but that’s my theory, yes.”
“It’s not a theory,” she said, her voice a little stronger. In fact, she seemed to be over her initial shock. “Good dog, Shade! Keep them away!”
Shade gave a quick wag of his tail but kept growling.
“Them?” Tyler asked in dismay.
“My parents and my aunt and uncle,” she said angrily. “Who have no business being here right now!”
One part of his brain recognized that he was experiencing a rare emotion: fear. The rest was employing every ounce of his willpower to keep him standing there.
“Your parents?” he said faintly.
She looked at him. “You will not convince me you are scared of ghosts! You just went walking in a cemetery after midnight!”
“Shade protects me from them on those walks,” he said as Shade’s growl grew louder. And will protect me now. The thought calmed him. Shade was with him, no ghost would be able to harm him.
“Protects you? You can’t be killed, right?”
“There are worse things,” he said. “Ghosts present a particular hazard to my kind.”
“What hazard?”
“They see my kind as caught between their world and the world of the living. They would have me live an existence closer to theirs instead of this one.”
Amanda stared toward the wall, then said to those she saw there, “I would never forgive you for that! Never!”
The room grew colder, and he felt her shiver. He held on to Amanda, determined that just as Shade protected him, he would protect her.