Page 44 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

I couldn’t help but find it sweet how seriously he was taking this, treating it like it was some important cultural ceremony that was an honor to be invited to. “I think I can live without the gossip,” I said. “Wait, you’re fine with the nail polish thing?”

He shrugged. “Social grooming is a pretty major part of vampire culture,” he said. “Personally, I don’t usually wear nail polish, but I’ve got very steady hands, and I’ve had a lot of practice doing other people’s nails.”

“Social grooming,” I echoed. “Like monkeys?”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Generally, vampires don’t have to spend as much time picking bugs off each other,” he said, utterly deadpan. “These days, we can use cameras to check our own appearances, but that’s an extremely recent development. Most of us still prefer to rely on each other for that sort of thing.”

I had a sudden vivid flashback to second grade, sitting on the floor with a bunch of the other girls in my class to make a braid train. There was absolutely no way I could let Gabriel know how cute the idea of a bunch of lethal vampires doing each other’s hair was.

“So, is it, like, a family thing, or…?” I trailed off, hoping he’d get the gist of the question without me actually having to spell it out for him.

“It can be,” Gabriel said. “Our family units often aren’t bound by blood, so the definitions aren’t quite the same. I live with several other vampires. Although none of us are from the same bloodline, I consider us to be family, and it’s common for us to take care of each other that way. It can also be romantic, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, feeling something prickle in my throat. “And is that, y’know, something you’ve done a lot?”

Gabriel looked up at me. The corner of his mouth twitched upward, then smoothed back down. “No,” he said finally. “Such things aren’t done as part of one-night stands.”

“What, you’ll trust someone with your junk but not your hair?” I asked. I wanted to ask if it was all one-night stands or if he ever tried to find a real partner—somebody he wouldn’t just sleep with but also wake up next to. Asking about his hair was a safer avenue.

My question surprised a laugh out of Gabriel. It was low, rich, and settled over me warmly. I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Pretty much,” he said. “I can’t trust just anyone with this.” He waved a hand at his hair, still smiling a little.

“Gotta protect your crowning glory,” I agreed, nodding seriously. “All right, if you wanna do girls’ night, let’s do girls’ night.”

I left Gabriel in charge of setting up the stuff we’d need—with Chanel’s help, and Pothos’s supervision. After using a quick charm to dry my hair, I ran down to the restaurant underneath my apartment and placed an order for dinner, then went down the corner to the good liquor store to buy wine and synth-blood.

When I got back with drinks in one hand and a fragrant, greasy bag of takeout in the other, the apartment had been transformed. Candles were clustered on the coffee table, throwing soft, flickering light through the room, and a massive fuzzy blanket I didn’t recognize was folded neatly over the back of the sofa. Gabriel had found wine glasses somewhere, and had managed to put together an honest-to-God charcuterie board with odds and ends he’d found in my fridge. My small collection of nail polish was neatly arranged on the end table, along with a couple sheet masks fanned out like magazines in a waiting room.

Gabriel was by the coffee table, trying to pick a scented candle. He took the lid off one, sniffed it, and flinched like Pothos did when he insisted on sniffing a clementine. He sneezed twice in quick succession and fumbled the lid back onto the candle quickly.

“Gesundheit. Super-strong vampire senses don’t play nice with Peppermint Eggnog Spice, huh?” I asked with a smile.

Gabriel looked up at me, and I was suddenly shocked I’d ever thought he was stoic. His mouth softened, and his eyes warmed, his body angled toward me. It was subtle but unmistakable. In the candlelight, his purple eyes were washed out to a gentle stormy gray.

“I think I’m more of a—” He lifted up a candle, checking its label. “Autumn Petrichor Romance man."

“Of course you are.” For a moment, I was uneasy with how comfortable I was. Coming home to find Gabriel puttering around the apartment and sliding into easy banter felt way too natural. I couldn’t let myself get used to it, especially not with someone who had just told me that he only ever made time for one-night flings.

Although, maybe there was something to that. Maybe something quick and casual would help me get him out of my system, then I could stop being distracted by things like the lines of his forearms, or how good his butt looked in his stupid fancy pants. With how dangerous things seemed to be getting with the investigation into the ascendancy array, I needed to keep myself focused. Getting over this silly crush would help.

“Your apartment suggested a few movies,” Gabriel said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Something about a mummy, and a retelling of Taming of the Shrew set in a high school, I believe.”

Chanel innocently slid out my copies of The Mummy and 10 Things I Hate About You from the DVD shelf beneath my TV, and I rolled my eyes. The idea of watching a movie about an adventurous librarian falling in love with an abrasive man with great hair while looking for an ancient treasure with Gabriel sitting next to me was an absolute no-go, and as much as I liked Heath Ledger, the rom-com was also out of the question.

“Down, girl,” I muttered at Chanel under my breath, kicking the toe of my boot against the baseboard. Chanel slid the movies back into place and somehow seemed surly about it. I grabbed a DVD at random and handed it over. “We can watch this,” I said.

“This is a documentary about historical poisonings,” Gabriel said.

Damn it. Not my dorkiest option but pretty close. At least it wasn’t the documentary about a font. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s pretty good.”

“I’ve seen this,” he told me. “It completely misrepresents Catherine de Medici.”

“I thought it seemed pretty accurate,” I said, oddly offended on the documentary’s behalf.

He shot me a look, raising one eyebrow microscopically. “Trust me,” he said. “She was a close friend of my mother’s. My mother was so offended by the film that she sent threatening letters to half the people involved in the production, and she had the director cursed.”

I blinked a couple times, trying to absorb that little tidbit of information. “You know what, maybe you should pick what we watch.”

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