Absently, Fatima's fingers continued to stroke the fur between the cat's ears, but her full, active attention was decidedly on the boy.

Pruned.

Pruned.

If that didn't sound like a Cainite term, nothing did. And it was only the fact that he wasn't pinging her radar that kept her from going for a stake.

You didn't talk about people like that. People. But she had to remember that he was from another world. Different rules. Different ideals. Just ones that she happened to...find repulsive.

"Well," she said, forcing herself to form conversational words, "that's still bigger than my family. Just me and my mother."