“You keep us safe.”
“Lisette, I’ve left you more vulnerable than anyone. Zach is toying with you. I don’t know why, and I don’t know what his endgame is or even how he escaped the Others, but . . . surely you realize now that, having betrayed us once before, he must be the one who has raised this new army. He’s burying their memories so we can’t identify him.”
“It can’t be Zach, Seth,” she said, determined to convince him. “This army didn’t spring up overnight. Someone has been raising and training it for months. If you read my memories, then you know that Zach was imprisoned and tortured by the Others and didn’t escape until the night before Ethan and I encountered the two new vamps.”
“I also know,” he responded, “that Zach communicated with you through dreams while he was imprisoned. He could have done the same with the vampires.”
“Communicated? Possibly. Turned them and trained them? I don’t think so.”
“Zach is more powerful than you know.”
“Is he that powerful?”
His brow furrowed. “If not Zach, then who?”
There must be some other explanation. “Could you have . . .” She trailed off. “Could you have missed another gifted one’s transformation? Like you did with Bastien?”
He didn’t flinch. Nor did hurt cross his features as she had feared it might. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to believe you had betrayed me. And I thought Zach well in hand. So I assumed it must be another Bastien. David gave Chris the names of every gifted one ever born, and Chris put his research team on it. Every gifted one has been accounted for. Bastien was the only one I missed.”
“If you missed the transformation of a gifted one, could you not have also missed the birth of one? Could there be one not on your list? One who has transformed?”
“No. Of that, I’m certain.”
Then there seemed to be no explanation.
“Exactly,” he said.
“It wasn’t Zach.”
“You would have me believe Immortal Guardians are rising up against their own kind?”
“Immortal Guardians plural?”
“A teleporter would have to carry the betrayer in and out of the area for the telepath’s movements to remain undetected.”
“Honestly, the idea that at least two of our own may have betrayed us is as unpalatable to me as your belief that Zach has,” she said.
“Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate,” he uttered.
“Occam’s razor?”
He nodded. “The simplest explanation is usually the better one. Zach can teleport, bury memories, and has been closely surveilling Immortal Guardians for some time now.”
“The same could be said of the Others.”
He stared at her for a moment. “What has Zach told you about the Others?”
“That they’re hunting him, intent on recapturing him and punishing him.”
“Because he interfered in mortal affairs?”
“Is that why he was being punished?” she asked. Zach had never told her.
Seth swore, as if he had said too much and regretted it. “You didn’t know?”
She shook her head.
He sighed and seemed to weigh his speech carefully. “The Others don’t interact with humans, Lisette. They observe humans. They sure as hell wouldn’t transform humans and raise an army of insane vampires.”
“Well, I don’t know who is responsible, Seth, but Zach didn’t do it.” Reaching out, she touched his arm. “Couldn’t you just talk to him? And by talk I mean talk, not”—she motioned to the waterlogged landscape and overcast sky—“confront.”
He glanced around with a grimace. “This was not well done of me. I apologize for frightening you.”
Now that she no longer feared he would punish her, Lisette noticed the lines of fatigue that creased his face. Seth looked exhausted. She hadn’t even known an immortal could look exhausted and wondered just how much sleep one would have to miss for such to occur.
She squeezed his arm. “You’re forgiven. Just, please, don’t ask me to stop seeing Zach.”
“Lisette—”
“He makes me happy, Seth.”
Lifting a hand, Seth gently stroked her face with the backs of his fingers. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.” He lowered his hand with a sigh. “Why couldn’t it have been Ethan?”
She stopped breathing. “Why would you say that?”
He arched a brow.
“You knew about Ethan?”
“Of course I knew about Ethan.”
“You never said anything.”
He shrugged. “Neither did David.”