Then, as he stepped to the base of the porch, she saw his face.
He looked better than when she had seen him last. His white-blond hair wasn't crazily messed up; it fell neatly over his forehead. He wasn't splattered with mud and his eyes weren't wild. They were dark and so endlessly sad that it was like a knife in the heart just to see him.
But it was unmistakably the boy from her hypnosis session.
"Oh, God," Hannah said. "Oh, God." Her knees were giving out.
It's real. It's real. He's real and that means... it's all true.
"Oh, God." She was trembling violently and she had to put pressure on her knees to keep standing. The world was changing around her, and it was the most disorienting thing she'd ever experienced. It was as if the fabric of her universe was actually moving-pulsing and shifting to accommodate the new truths.
Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
"Are you all right?" The stranger moved toward her and Hannah recoiled instinctively.
"Don't touch me!" she gasped, and at the same moment her legs gave out. She slid to the floor of the porch and stared at the boy whose face was now approximately level with hers.
"I'm sorry," he almost whispered. "I know what you're going through. You're just realizing now, aren't you?"
Hannah said, whispering to herself, "It's all true."
"Yes." The dark eyes were so sad.
"It's... I've had past lives."
"Yes." He squatted on the ground, looking down as if he couldn't keep staring at her face anymore. He picked up a pebble, examined it. Hannah noticed that his fingers were long and sensitive-looking.
"You're an Old Soul," he said quietly. "You've had lots of lives."
"I was Hana of the Three Rivers."
His fingers stopped rolling the pebble. "Yes."
"And you're Thierry. And you're a ..."
He didn't look up. "Go on. Say it."
Hannah couldn't. Her voice wouldn't form the word.
The stranger-Thierry-said it for her. "Vampires are real." A glance from those unfathomable eyes. "I'm sorry."
Hannah breathed and looked down at him. But the world had finished its reshaping. Her mind was beginning to work again.
At least I know I'm not crazy, she thought. That's some consolation. It's the universe that's insane, not me.
And now I have to deal with it-somehow.
She said quietly, "Are you going to kill me now?"
"God-no!" He stood up fast, uncoiling. Shock was naked on his face. "You don't understand. I would never hurt you. I ..." He broke off. "It's hard to know where to begin."
Hannah sat silently, while he looked around the porch for inspiration. She could feel her heart beating in her throat. She'd told Paul that this boy had killed her, kept killing her. But his look of shock had been so genuine-as if she'd hurt him terribly by even suggesting it.
"I suppose I should start by explaining exactly what I am," he said. "And what I've done. I made you
come outside tonight. I influenced you. I didn't want to do it, but I had to talk to you."
"Influenced me?"
It's a mental thing. I can also just communicate this way. It was his voice, but his lips weren't moving.
And it was the same voice she'd heard at the end of her hypnotic session, the voice that wasn't Paul's.
The one that had spoken in her head, saying, Hannah, come back. You don't have to relive this.
"You were the one who woke me up," Hannah whispered. "I wouldn't have come back except for you."
"I couldn't stand to see you hurting like that."
Can somebody with his eyes be evil?
He was obviously a different sort of creature than she was, and every move he made showed the grace of a predator. It reminded her of how the wolves had moved-they had rippled. He did, too, his muscles moving so lightly under his skin. He was unnatural- but beautiful.
Something struck her. "The wolves. I picked up a silver picture frame to bash them with. Silver." She looked at him. "Werewolves are real." At the last moment her voice made it a statement instead of a question.
"So much is real that you don't know about. Or that you haven't remembered yet. You were starting to remember with that shrink. You said I was a Lord of the Night World."
The Night World. Just the mention of it sent prickles through Hannah. She could almost remember, but not quite.
And she knew it was crazy to be kneeling here having this conversation. She was talking to a vampire. a guy who drank blood for a living. A guy whose every gesture showed he was a hunter. And not only a vampire, but the person her subconscious had been warning her about for weeks. Telling her to be afraid, be very afraid.
So why wasn't she running? For one thing, she didn't think her legs would physically support her. And for another-well, somehow she couldn't stop looking at him.
"One of the werewolves was mine," he was saying quietly. "She was here to find you-and protect you.
But the other one... Hannah, you have to understand. I'm not the only one looking for you."
To protect me. So I was right, Hannah thought. The gray female was on my side. She said, "Who else is looking?"
"Another Night Person." He looked away. "Another vampire."
"Am I a Night Person?"
"No. You're a human." He said it the way he said everything, as if reminding her of terrible facts he wished he didn't have to bring up. "Old Souls are just humans who keep coming back."
"How many times have I come back?"
"I ... I'd have to think about it. Quite a few."