Changes Read Free

night with you. Not for more than two years before that.”
    If she was lying, it didn’t show. I took that in for a moment and sipped some Coke. “It seems like something you should have told me.”
    I said it in a voice far calmer than I would have thought possible. I don’t know what my face looked like when I said it. But Susan’s darkly tanned skin became several shades lighter. “Harry,” she said quietly, “I know you must be angry.”
    “I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I’m angry,” I said. “I’m a couple of steps past that point right now.”
    “You have every right to be,” she said. “But I did what I thought was best for her. And for you.”
    The storm surged higher into my chest. But I made myself sit there without moving, breathing slowly and steadily. “I’m listening.”
    She nodded and took a moment to gather her thoughts. Then she said, “You don’t know what it’s like down there. Central America, all the way down to Brazil. There’s a reason so many of those nations limp along in a state of near-anarchy.”
    “The Red Court,” I said. “I know.”
    “You know in the abstract. But no one in the White Council has spent time there. Lived there. Seen what happens to the people the Reds rule.” She shivered and folded her arms over her stomach. “It’s a nightmare. And there’s no one but the Fellowship and a few underfunded operatives of the Church to stand up to them.”
    The Fellowship of St. Giles was a collection of the supernatural world’s outcasts and strays, many of them half vampires like Susan. They hated the Red Court with a holy passion, and did everything in their power to confound the vampires at every opportunity. They operated in cells, choosing targets, training recruits, planting bombs, and funding their operations through a hundred shady business activities. Terrorists, basically—smart, quick, and tough because they had to be.
    “It hasn’t been Disneyland in the rest of the world, either,” I said quietly. “I saw my fair share of nightmares during the war. And then some.”
    “I’m not trying to belittle anything that the Council has done,” she said. “I’m just trying to explain to you what I was facing at the time. Teams from the Fellowship rarely sleep in the same bed twice. We’re always on the move. Always planning something or running from something. There’s no place for a child in that.”
    “If only there had been someone with his own home and a regular income where she could have stayed,” I said.
    Susan’s eyes hardened. “How many people have gotten killed around you, Harry? How many hurt?” She raked her fingers through her hair. “For God’s sake. You said yourself that your apartment has been under attack. Would that have gone any better if you’d had a toddler to watch over?”
    “Guess we’ll never know,” I said.
    “I know,” she said, her voice suddenly seething with intensity. “God, do you think I didn’t want to be a part of her life? I cry myself to sleep at night—when I can sleep. But in the end, I couldn’t offer her anything but a life on the run. And you couldn’t offer her anything but a life under siege.”
    I stared at her.
    But I didn’t say anything.
    “So I did the only thing I could do,” she said. “I found a place for her. Far away from the fighting. Where she could have a stable life. A loving home.”
    “And never told me,” I said.
    “If the Red Court had ever learned about my child, they would have used her against me. Period. As a means of leverage, or simple revenge. The fewer people who knew about her, the safer she was going to be. I didn’t tell you, even though I knew it was wrong. Even though I knew that it would make you furious because of your own childhood.” She leaned forward, her eyes almost feverish from the heat in her words. “And I would do a thousand times worse than that, if it meant that she’d be better protected.”
    I sipped some