Christian shook his head. “Don’t be daft. I’ll not stand here and watch you slip off the edge.”
I swung my legs over, deciding there was no sense arguing. Christian shook out of his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. I slid my arms in the armholes, noting how remarkably warm the inside lining was. I’d always imagined Vampires as cold creatures, like walking pieces of marble.
He lifted the champagne bottle and a glass from the ledge and set it on the ground before he took a seat. I came off the ledge and sat facing him, my back against the low wall.
Christian filled the glass halfway and then draped his arm over his bent knee. “I was never a fan of the bubbly. It’s a pretentious drink masquerading as something it’s not.”
“Let’s play a game. Truth or drink.”
He raked his fingers through his unkempt hair. “Why do I get the feeling I’m going to lose this game?”
“I ask a question, and you can either answer the truth or take a drink. It’s up to you how much you want to tell me.”
He tilted his head to the side, eyes fixed on the low clouds overhead. “Aye, I’ll play your game as long as the same rules apply to you.”
“Fair enough. What color eyes did you have before you were a Vampire?”
His expression softened. “Always full of surprises. I expected you to be asking about my sexual liaisons.”
I winked. “I’m working up to that.”
“They were blue. Not as light as your blue eye, but like the Celtic Sea on a sunny day. Some of the older ladies thought them fetching.”
“And the younger ones?”
A smile touched his lips. “That’s two questions. My turn. Tell me about your maker.”
I reached for the glass and downed it, letting out a small belch. “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” I poured a little more champagne in the glass. “What’s your biggest regret in your human life?”
He jerked his head back. “You astonish me with such an intimate question. Am I going to be pouring out my heart on a silver platter, or will there be any reciprocation on your end?”
“I promise to answer any question as long as it’s not about my origin.”
He scratched his whiskers and frowned. “That’s a long way back to remember. There weren’t many choices I made that changed my life, except for the obvious one, but I suppose I regret leaving my sister behind in Ireland. We were poor, and there were all these rumors of opportunities and land in America.”
“Was it home you missed?”
“At first I was homesick, but my brothers were with me. I’d never seen such a filthy place as New York. You don’t know a thing about squalor until you’ve seen overcrowded slums where disease and desperation prevails. Sometimes I’d lie in bed and shut my eyes, remembering the green smell and rolling hills near my home. You never saw such a lush shade of green—as if God himself had rolled his carpet beneath our feet. Cassie was too young to be traveling around the world, and there was no one left to care for her except for my da. I used to wonder what happened to her after he died. Now it doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t know?”
“We didn’t exactly have instant messenger back then, and my father was illiterate.”
“Your sister could have read the letters.”
He gave me a peevish glance. “She was blind. That would have been a blessed miracle.”
I lowered my eyes. “Sorry. It must have been hard having to say good-bye.”
I thought about leaving my own father behind, but unlike Christian, I never had the chance to say good-bye. I simply left. I wondered what happened to his sister after his father died. Who would have married a blind woman in those days? Did they have institutions back then? Would she have been cast into the streets to become a beggar? I could imagine how those questions would have haunted him all these years, the same way I wondered if my own disappearance had turned my father back to the bottle.
“I’m sure Cassie was happy knowing her brother was living a good life, even if she didn’t know the truth.”
He looked down at his hands and wrung them. “I couldn’t have cared for her anyhow. She would have been used up on the streets, and I would have had to cut ties once I became a Vampire. Better she didn’t see her brother grow up to become a thief and a murderer.”
“I thought you were also a bodyguard?”
His dark eyes rose to meet mine, and there was absence in them. “Aye, but I’ve taken more lives than I’ve saved.”
