She sat beside Sophia. Her shoulder against his.
She said nothing.
Her hands found his jaw and turned his face toward her and she kissed him — not the desperate kiss of the cemetery, not the first-time anger of it.
Something else. Something that had processed the last twelve hours and arrived at a position.
She pulled back.
Looked at him.
"I'm going to need a full explanation of everything," she said.
"You'll get one."
"Not an abridged version. The actual explanation."
"Yes."
She held the look for another second. Deciding whether to believe that.
Then she leaned against him.
His hand found the nearest breast — Elena's, on his right — and held it. Just held. The warmth of it. The weight.
Veronica and Clara's mouths were doing what they were doing below.
He felt himself getting harder again despite the accumulated hours. The specific, relentless biology of what he was, refilling and renewing at a pace that was not human-scale.
He looked at the ceiling.
