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He did now.

For the first time since his birth, tears rolled down his face and soaked his pillow.

They had started when a vision of Butch and Marissa on the couch in the Pit’s living room had come to him. Vivid…so vivid. V could not only hear their thoughts in his head, but he knew that Butch was picturing Marissa on their bed in a black bra and blue jeans. And Marissa was imagining him taking off her blue jeans and putting his head down between her thighs.

V knew that in six minutes Butch was going to take the orange juice Marissa had in her hand and put it on the coffee table. He was going to spill it, because the glass was going to land on the corner of a Sports Illustrated, and the juice was going to get on Marissa’s jeans. The cop was going to use this as an excuse to take her down the hall and get her good and naked.

Except on the way, they would stop by V’s door and lose their sexual impulses. With sad eyes, they would go to their mated bed and hold each other in silence.

V put an arm over his face. And wept uncontrollably.

His visions were back, his curse of the future returned to him.

The crossroads in his life was over.

Which meant this was his existence from now on: he was to be nothing but an empty shell that lay next to the ashes of his beloved.

And sure enough, in the midst of his crying he heard Butch and Marissa come down the hall, heard them pause in front of his bedroom, then heard them shut their door. No sounds of sex got muffled by the wall between the rooms, no headboard banged, no throaty cries sounded.

Just as he’d foreseen. In the silence that followed, V wiped his cheeks, then looked at his hands. The left one still throbbed a little from the damage he’d done to it. The right one glowed as it always did—and his tears were white against the backdrop of his inner illumination, white as the irises of his eyes.

He took a deep breath and looked at the clock.

The only thing that was keeping him breathing was nightfall. He absolutely would have killed himself by now—would have taken his Glock and put it in his mouth and blown the back of his head out—if it weren’t for nightfall.

He was making it a personal mission to eradicate the Lessening Society. It was going to take the rest of his life, but that was fucking fine, because there was nothing else out there for him. And he would have preferred to leave the Brotherhood to do it, but Butch would die without him, so he was going to have to stick around.

Abruptly, he frowned and looked toward the door.

After a moment he wiped his cheeks again and said, “I’m surprised you don’t just come in.”

The door opened without benefit of a hand. On the other side, the Scribe Virgin stood in the hallway, her black robes covering her head to foot.

“I was not sure of my welcome,” she said in a low voice as she floated into the room.

He didn’t lift his head from the pillow. Had no interest in honoring her in any way. “You know what your welcome is.”

“Indeed. So I will get down to the purpose of my visit. I have a gift for you.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Yes. You do.”

“Fuck you.” Beneath her robes, her head seemed to drop. Not that he gave a shit that her precious little feelings were hurt. “Leave.”

“You will want—”

He jerked upright. “You took what I wanted—”

A form entered the doorway, a ghostly form. “V…?”

“And I give it back to you,” the Scribe Virgin said. “In a certain manner.”

Vishous didn’t hear a word she said, because he couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at. It was Jane…kind of. It was Jane’s face and Jane’s body, but she was…a transparent apparition.

“Jane?”

The Scribe Virgin spoke as she dematerialized. “You need not thank me. Just know that your curse is the way you may touch her. Good-bye.”

Okay, as romantic reunions went, this one was bizarre and uncomfortable.

And not just because Jane supposed she could be classified as a ghost.

Vishous was looking as if he were going to pass out. Which hurt. It was entirely