duel. It was days like this that made me wonder how, even with his fighting ability, the guy had survived as long as he had. He was honest and honorable and ethical and generous, in a culture that was exactly none of those things. That didn’t even value those things, because “good” was a relative term and being a good vampire was to be like Marlowe: cunning, deceitful, ruthless, overwhelming. Or like Mircea: calm, patient, resourceful, relentless. “Kind” wasn’t in the job description; “compassionate” even less so. Damn it, the man needed a keeper. Yeah, sure he did. A dark-haired, dimpled, dhampir keeper, which wasn’t going to happen, so just shut up . Sometimes I didn’t think it mattered what Mircea did in my head, because I was already crazy anyway. said resentfully. “Quoi?” I sighed. “I’m fine ,” I said, just wanting to get this over with. “I see what you mean,” he told Claire drily, and she blinked at him in what looked like surprise. There was no point in stalling, so I walked over and sat down, really glad that I’d had that drink earlier. Even with Claire’s presence leeching the manic energy off my skin, like some kind of supernatural magnet, I was still crawling with it. Any other time, I’d have been crawling the walls, too—or, more likely, punching through them. As it was, I wanted this done