100 Yellow Doors

9:00 p.m.

Julien had the aching sense that it wasn't a very good idea to be here.

    Iman had insisted. Everyone was waiting for him, she said; they all would want to know that he wasn't lost, that he was back from whatever dark abyss had momentarily claimed him. Maybe that was true. But Julien could not shake the fear that gripped him as he stood outside the door to Iman's apartment. He had been there many times before, but it felt different now, like it was a different place and he was a different person, and the connection was now mismatched.

    He knew he wasn't ready for whatever waited on the other side of that door, and he knew it with a frightful certainty.

    "You good?"

    Julien turned a grateful smile towards Iman, her brown face unusually wan in the flickering off-white light of the stairwell. "I'm just a bit worried."

    "About?"

    "That—"

    The door bust open, and amidst the shower of dust and the startled yelping from Iman's direction came Fritz, hurtling towards Julien and nearly sending them both tumbling down the landing.

    "Fritz," said Julien, trying in vain to pluck the other vampire off of him, but to no avail. "Fritz, Jesus Christ. Give me a second."

    But Fritz refused to let him go, his arms tight around Julien's ribs, chin tucked over Julien's shoulder. "She actually did it. Thank God, she actually did it."

    His ribs aching, Julien gave Fritz a final shove off of him, and then just stared at him in disbelief. "What are you talking about?"

    Fritz paused to dust off his clothes—once again, mostly leather—before shooting an apologetic glance at Iman, who was staring at her unhinged door with obvious distress. "I only told her where you were because I thought—well, I thought, if no one else could bring you back to your senses, Iman could. And now look at you. You're back. Willingly."

    "Well, I..." Julien sighed. Though Iman had given him a moment to shower and change clothes, his mind was still fresh with the memory of Sanguine's neon lights and dark corners, the feel of someone's flesh giving beneath his teeth. Sera would be expecting him back. He couldn't very well just disappear. "I still have to go back. I'm just—"

    "He's not allowed to vanish," Iman piped up, straightening from a crouch on the floor, a screw from the door hinge between her fingers. "He's not allowed to hurt people—at least not carelessly. He can work with Sera without working for her, basically."

    Fritz beamed, his smile wide as the Cheshire cat's. "This is a good friend you have here, Jules. You should listen to her more often."

    "So I'm learning," said Julien with a roll of his eyes, but he stepped forward to ruffle Iman's hair.

    Fritz, still beaming, hooked an arm around each of their shoulders and propelled them through the doorless entrance, the air laced with scents of plaster and old wood. He was telling Iman about how he'd found her delightful wine cabinet, who knew you had such great taste, Iman; come, Jules, let me show you, when a small voice punctured the merriment:

    "'Jules?'"

    Fritz's arms fell from around Julien's and Iman's shoulders. It was Beck, standing at the mouth of the kitchen, one hand braced against the wall. "Julien's here?"

    "Wait," said Iman, and Julien glanced at her in time to see an awful realization cross her face. "Beck—"

    "I thought I told you to stay away, Julien," said Beck. He stepped, somewhat awkwardly, into the full light of the kitchen, and it was then that Julien noticed the aimlessness of his eyes. They were the same as before—black-brown, a gentle mahogany hue in the overhead light—and yet they didn't ever seem to land on anything, as if perpetually fixed on some obscure object in the distance.