by Claudia Gray
She glanced around her room, saw an equestrian trophy, and snapped a photo of it with her phone before tucking the phone into her coat pocket. At least that way she could still look at it.
Then she stood at her bedroom window, knowing that the light would silhouette her to anyone watching from the darkness.
To Balthazar.
Skye turned off the lights and waited. Within a few moments, she heard scraping on the bark of the tree outside, which made her breath come a little faster just in case it wasn’t—but it was. Balthazar appeared outside her window, clinging to the tree branch with unearthly grace, and she slid the pane upward to allow him to climb in.
He whispered, “Downstairs, the lights are still on.”
“They’re probably talking with their cronies at the state house, finding out how the vote is going.” Skye didn’t bother to whisper. Even if they could hear, they weren’t listening. “Balthazar, you were right. I have to leave Darby Glen.”
He studied her for a moment, no doubt weighing how serious she was about this. She knew that he understood her; he would see right away that she meant it. But he asked, “Your parents didn’t believe you?”
“I never got as far as telling them the truth. The minute I started speaking about Dakota, they just … shut down, same as always.” Disappointment welled up inside her, but she fought back the urge to cry. She’d been through too much tonight to give in to it now. “If I’m ever going to find the courage to learn how to deal with this gift I have, and be able to find Dakota again—I’m going to have to do it on my own. I can’t do it while I’m with them. They won’t let me.”
Balthazar’s hand brushed against the side of her face, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. “Are you sure, Skye? I think you’re right, but—it’s not about what I think. If you aren’t absolutely positive, you’ll come to regret this.”
Skye nodded. “I’m positive. I mean, I’ll let them know that I’m out there and I’m okay. But somehow, I doubt worrying too much is going to be one of their problems.”
“I’m sorry,” Balthazar said, and she could hear in his voice how deeply he meant it.
“Me too,” she confessed, but then she turned her thoughts to the matter at hand. “So. For my sake, and the town’s sake, I need to get out of Darby Glen as soon as possible. That means tonight. I packed what I need in a saddlebag. We can ride over to the Findleys’ place, pick up whatever you need there. And I bet we can make it to Reardon Falls by sunrise. There’s campgrounds there. A lodge. It’ll work in the short term.”
Balthazar looked at her in surprise. “You want the two of us to ride out of here?”
“Well, I’m not leaving Eb behind.” That was all there was to it. The vampires might have taken her home away from her, but she’d be damned if they’d get her horse, too. “There’s plenty of places we can go with two horses—you’ll have to be on Peppermint, of course. We’ll be able to rent a trailer to take us where we need to go, eventually. Out west, maybe. Someplace with a lot of open sky, and nobody to be too nosy about us—and end up revealing where we are to people who shouldn’t know.”
“It’s good thinking, but—” His voice trailed off, and she knew what weighed on his mind. Throughout all of this, he’d expected their relationship to have an expiration date; he’d wanted to get her someplace safe, but in Balthazar’s mind, “safe” meant “far from him.”
Which was crap, and it was high time she said so.
“Listen to me.” Skye wrapped her hands around the edges of his coat, drawing them closer together. Balthazar’s face was only inches from her own. “Don’t start with me about how I need a ‘normal life.’ After this, I don’t get to be normal. Not ever. I’m always going to have these powers. I’m always going to have vampires after me.” Unless and until she herself was changed into one of them—but she couldn’t begin thinking of that now. “If you walk away from me, you’re not saving me from anything. Do you understand? If you walk away from me, it’s because you want to. If you stay with me, it’s because you need to.” Her voice trembled slightly as she said the last: “I hope you need to.”
Balthazar’s only answer was to pull her against him in the longest, deepest kiss they’d ever shared. As she opened her mouth beneath his, Skye allowed herself to get lost in the feel and the taste of him, to rest against his broad chest and imagine that nothing in the world could ever touch them.
Maybe it couldn’t, as long as they stood together.
When their lips parted, Balthazar roughly whispered, “I need you. I love you. The only way I could ever have walked away from you was for your own good—because of how much I loved you, not how little. Do you understand that?”
Skye nodded. She’d always known that, deep down. “But you want this?” The path she was asking him to walk down wasn’t any easier for him than it was for her: always on the run, always at risk, with predators from his past forever on their trail. “It’s not much of a life.”
“Don’t you see? It’s the first life I’ve had in four hundred years.” Balthazar cupped her cheek in his hand. “With you—in the only way that matters—I’m alive again.”
About the Author
CLAUDIA GRAY is the pseudonym of New Orleans–based writer Amy Vincent, the author of the New York Times bestselling Evernight series. She has worked as a lawyer, a journalist, a disc jockey, and an extremely poor waitress. Her lifelong interests in old houses, classic movies, vintage style, and history all play a part in creating the world of Evernight.
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Other Works
Also by Claudia Gray
Evernight
Stargazer
Hourglass
Afterlife
Fateful
Credits
Cover photo © 2012 by Filip Liguzinski
Cover design by Tom Forget
Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Balthazar
Copyright © 2012 by Amy Vincent
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gray, Claudia.
Balthazar / Claudia Gray.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-196118-2 (tr. bdg.)
EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN 9780062099150
[1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Psychic ability—Fiction. 3. Love—Fiction. 4. Horror stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.G77625Bal 2012
2011024243
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
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12 13 14 15 16 LP/BV 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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