Blood Stain: Book Three of the Blood Type Series (complete)

In Which the Truth Changes Everything

Lost in troubled thoughts, I was unaware of anyone following until I heard the crunch of frozen earth underfoot. I whirled at the sound, my nose coming within inches of Josiah's chest. "What are you doing here?" I demanded, irritated that I'd been so easily taken off guard.

He looked down at me, his eyes filtered grey in the muted tones of early-morning light. "I could ask the same of you."

Turning on my heel, I continued down the path, confident my sire would follow as he always did, but half hoping he wouldn't. "I wanted to be alone. I assumed no one would find me here."

"You are not difficult to track," he said.

"Maybe not for someone who's obsessed."

Josiah grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop. I tensed, though I did not turn to face him. "I will not deny my feelings for you," he said. "Not any longer."

Closing my eyes, I breathed in the crisp December air, so deep my lungs felt like they would burst. I forced myself to relax under Josiah's firm grip, and he finally let go.

"What is on your mind," he said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle.

I glanced at him over my shoulder, supposing there was no harm in telling him. "My parents' party."

He nodded. "I felt your unease."

"Then you'll understand I don't want to talk about it."

Margaret had made me compel my friends, family, and guests, further testing my loyalty to the Abernathy family. By the end of the evening, I was begging to stop. Needless to say, John and I had not continued where we left off earlier that evening by the pool.

"There is something else on your mind," Josiah said when I continued to stand there.

"Not that you care," I replied, "but John is worried about Ian. A part of him thinks Ian abandoned him again."

Josiah raised his chin. "John does not need to wonder. I sent him away."

I gaped in surprise. "You sent him away?"

"I am a Watcher. It is within my right."

"But . . . why? Do you have any idea what his absence has done to John, not knowing where Ian is or why he left?"

"John has been without his sire before. He will survive."

"Ian was working for Mr. Abernathy and yet you sent him away. Margaret compelled my ex-boyfriend in an attempt to get me to confess where he had gone. Do you realize she could have seriously hurt him, just like she did Olivia?"

Josiah's jaw tightened but he said nothing.

Stepping off the path, I leaned against the trunk of a soaring pine and stared out across the expanse of Beebe Lake, which had begun to ice over with the official start of winter. Land and sky were mostly barren as warm-blooded creatures took refuge from the icy fingers of the north wind. Many of the resident students had gone home for the holidays, leaving the whole of Cornell's campus feeling lonely and deprived, with only the roaring water of the falls to break the otherwise silent morning.

A solitary jogger approached from down the path, his controlled breaths coming out in small exhalations of white. Josiah raised a hand in hushed greeting, and the man nodded as he passed, his retreating footsteps pounding out a rhythmic one-two, one-two as he continued on his way. The trees seemed to swallow him whole, and soon he disappeared altogether.

"Given John's tendency toward melodrama," Josiah said, not a little critically, "I had hoped some reassurance from his maker would put his mind at ease."