The touch is brief, over with as soon as Nox pulls my hand away from the vat and tucks his hand back into his pocket. It still sends sparks jolting through my fingertips.

“I doubt we can touch it safely.”

“But it doesn’t burn us like the sunlight does.”

Nox shakes his head. “I imagine that’s because it’s contained in liquid form. Like how you might approach liquid poison without being harmed, so long as you didn’t touch it, but you wouldn’t dare approach it in its powder form, in case a draft stirred it up and made it airborne.”

I nod, understanding now.

Still. It’s nice to bask in its warmth.

“I wasn’t a vampire over there, you know,” says Nox, and the ease at which he provides the information shocks me. Nox hasn’t been keen on talking to me throughout our journey. I try not to press, not wishing to annoy him. But it’s nice for him to offer something up of his own accord for a change.

Even if that something drives a dagger through my heart.

“I didn’t know that,” I say, fighting my fingers, which want nothing more than to interweave themselves with Nox’s. “Did it make it worse?”

Nox flicks his gaze over to me. “That’s not what a normal person would ask, you know.”

I shrug. “How would you know? How many normal people have you been around?”

Nox lets out a wry laugh, but his lips twist into something akin to a smile, and it’s like a drug from which I’ve been going through withdrawal. “I suppose that’s true. Still, I’m pretty sure most people would have asked if it was nice to feel the sun on my skin again.”

“You can answer that question if you’d rather.”

“No. You’re right to ask. It made it worse.”

“I thought it might. Getting a taste of something you’ve missed, only to have it ripped away from you again, always does.”

Nox swallows, but he doesn’t look at me this time.

“We should find Piper,” is all he says before he walks away, leaving me alone with the sunlight I don’t dare touch.

Before I follow, I grab a vial from the pouch I keep at my waist and dip it into the silky liquid moonlight.

Just in case.

There are several rooms in the warehouse containing the vats of liquid light, though the first one we stumbled upon was certainly the smallest.

It’s when we approach the entrance to the largest room yet that we hear voices.

We hear them long before they can hear us, of course—vampire senses and all—but Nox and I reach out to each other at the same time, hands brushing one another’s in a quiet command to tread silently.

Again, I treasure and replay that gentle touch more than I should.

It’s Abra’s voice that speaks the most often. It seems Nox, too, recognizes it by the way he tenses at its familiar cadence.

“I thought we were supposed to be traveling to Mystral. You know, so I could enchant your son, remember?” responds a bored-sounding woman, who must be Piper.

Abra responds with a dismissive, “That can wait.”

As we peek around the corner, still disguised by the shadows, I take stock of the room. It’s much like the other room in the warehouse, just three times the size, the ceiling stretching up considerably higher and supported by metal rafters.

Abra stands in the corner, staring out over a vat of liquid moonlight that intensifies her paleness.

Something stirs in me, an anxiety I can’t quite get my hands on. It slips through my control, threatening to wriggle its way into my lungs until I can’t breathe.

It’s not the sight of Abra that frightens me.

It’s knowing what dwells inside her.

The parasite.

The parasite who, should we kill Abra, would be released from her body, free to slink into mine.

No. No, that wouldn’t make sense, I reason to myself. I’m a vampire, bound by the confines of night. The parasite wouldn’t want someone like me, not when it’s gotten used to being free from the chains of the moon.

Though I suppose she’s already joined herself with Abra, and I can’t imagine Abra allowed that without striking some sort of limiting bargain.

Abra stares down into the vat as she speaks, though the answering voice comes from elsewhere.

“It’s taking more and more of you, isn’t it?” says the female I assume to be Piper. “A little more every day. That’s the deal you made with it?”

Abra doesn’t answer. She just keeps staring into the vat.

“That’s why one moment,” Piper continues, “you’re itching to get back to your son, then the next, we’re off on a detour.”

It takes me a moment to locate Piper, not because I can’t track the direction from which her voice is coming, but because at first it makes no sense.

I recognize Piper by the red curly hair from her description, though it’s rather matted from extensive travel, and the curls have turned into loose knots.

She’s beautiful. Absolutely stunning, which probably shouldn’t be the first thing I notice.

The first thing I should notice is that she’s tied to the rafters above.

Why Abra would go to such extremes to keep Piper contained, I have no idea. Unless Abra is just being dramatic, which I suppose I wouldn’t put past her.

Though apparently Abra hasn’t bothered to have Piper gagged.

Nox signals to me, tapping his finger against the back of my hand. It’s a signal to initiate the plan we came up with on the way here, but the touch still sets me aflame.

I douse those flames and nod back.

Then I watch him slip into the shadows.

He doesn’t check to see whether I do the same.

As many inconveniences come with being a vampire, I would be lying if I said it didn’t come with its benefits.