"Twilight, still," he murmured. "Another ending, another beginning. No matter how perfect the day is, it still has to begin before it ends."
"Some things don't have to end," I muttered through my teeth, insanely tense.
He sighed.
"I brought you to the prom," he said slowly, finally coming to terms with what had happened, "because I don't want you to miss anything. I don't want my presence to take anything away from you, if I can help it. I want you to be human. I want your life to continue as it would have if I'd died in 1910, like I should have. I want you to do human things. I wanted you to do prom, and the only way I could get you to was to trick you."
I shuddered at his strange words, and then shook my head angrily. "In what strange parallel dimension would I ever have gone to prom of my own free will, without being manipulated by the combined efforts of your entire family? If you weren't a thousand times stronger than me, and able to physically overpower me whenever I didn't want to do something, you never would have gotten me out of that limo."
He smiled, briefly, but it didn't touch his eyes. "It wasn't so bad, you said so yourself."
"That's because I was with you. That's because you made me feel beautiful."
We were quiet for a minute; he stared at the moon and I stared at him: it was enough. I wished there was some way to explain how very uninterested I was in a normal human life. I wasn't normal; I was destined for something more.
"Why don't you tell me something?" he asked, glancing down at me with a slight smile that approached his eyes this time.
"Don't I always?"
"Just promise you'll tell me," he insisted, grinning now.
I knew I was going to regret this almost instantly. "Fine."
"You seemed honestly surprised when you figured out I was taking you here," he began.
"I was," I interjected.

496

Chapter 25

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