Page 51 (1/2)

"I can’t do it"

"Then what do you call this?"

I had no idea

"What’s going on?" Marco de to?"

I hadn’t realized that I’d closedfro out half the room

"Jules Can’t you hear him?"

"No" Marco didn’t look happy about that, and neither was I, because I’d learned the hard way that anything in ic I didn’t understand could and probably would coht now Only I still didn’t knohat I could--

And suddenly, it was all there, laid out in front of , varimoire-old, but a flashy paperback, like one from the thirties, with a lurid cover and boldface type I didn’t get a chance to read the title, because a wind ca The book opened

It was about Jules

Days like sentences,in the wind, going back, back, back through Jules’ whole life Like an autobiography written in flesh

"What--how are you--" Jules choked

"I’mnot sure" But when I put out a hand, and stopped a page, suddenly I wasn’t seeing the book any him

I saw a boy on a far sheets of sand swept over the landscape, burying the farmhouse up to the s I saw hi with half a dozen siblings like little stair steps, with the mother’s belly already rounded with the next I saw thehter future in a pro labor when they could get it, hunger, scorn, and constant motion

"But I had a talent," Jules said softly

"Your face"

I saw it change as he grew, a randoenetics that took his mother’s thin features and his father’s florid ones and crafted exquisite perfection Enough to ed little boy with the angelic features And suddenly, they all wanted to help

Money, a place to spend the night, work for the father, new clothesThe faht they were being charitable, but ere really just charreatest talent It took him far--

"A little too far," Jules said quietly

He wasn’t exaggerating Hollywood, parties, drinking binges, the pages flipped, and Jules changed His father’s floridity started to show up around the edges as the big roles, the meaty ones, the ones that would make his name and fortune, went elsewhere Until the day he ended up on a ledge, looking down And wondering how to fall to ensure that his perfect face survived the ju along the ledge, looking exactly the same except for a twenties-era suit with too short lapels He was as sure-footed as if he were strolling down a street, despite the fact that they were twelve stories up

"Not exactly," Jules confessed "I was too drunk to see reason, and he tired of talking to a potential asset that seemed deterhed, a bright sound that seee in the circumstances "He threw me off"

And he had The next instant, I saw him pick Jules up by the shirtfront and casually drop him over the side, all with a faint smirk on his face And then use varound

Just

"He’d heard that a lot of the people who coret it halfway down," Jules told me, with a catch in his voice "He wanted to find out if it was true"

"Was it?"

Jules choked on a laugh "I wet myself And then I sobered up, and asked him how he did that And he offered me a new sort of contract An immortal one"

"But you don’t sound happy" And he didn’t Bitter, with a side of world-weary and ood measure But definitely not happy

"So, stronger "Some days, I wish Mircea had missed"

"What? Why?"

"Think about it, Cassie!" he said fiercely "Eternity when you’re a screwup is a very long tiood at this, learn to be the suave, überconfident vampire, start to feel comfortable--but it never happened I just learned neays to be a failure Mircea’s vampires are either diplomats or soldiers, and I’m neither"

I didn’t bother to point out that there were other jobs Jules wasn’t the type to be happy doing the laundry He was talking about prestige positions, and yeah, that about summed it up

"You could always ask for a transfer," I said instead "Go to a different house--"