Page 108 of My Vampire Plus-One

Watson, Grizelda (b: 1625, approximate): Little is known about Grizelda Watson’s life prior to the late eighteenth century. Watson (reportedly known asZeldato close friends), by all accounts one of the most powerful witches known to vampire-kind, first rose to prominence at that time due to her then-unrivaled flair for the dramatic and her penchant for outlandish practical jokes. Her infamy grew exponentially in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when she adopted the nicknameGrizelda the Terrible. She allegedly committed a series of crimes involving arson in what is now the American Pacific Northwest and in Chicago during the early twentieth century. “I like to watch things burn,” she was famously quoted as saying.

Watson was romantically linked with Reginald Cleaves (see: infra 2133–35) on more than one occasion, ostensibly because their public personas were similar. When asked about it, both parties consistently denied they were anything but close friends.

Watson made few public appearances in the final years of the twentieth century. In 2010, however, she was spotted in a Napa County farmers market. Subsequent sightings have confirmed that Watson now goes by the nameZelda Turret, has adopted veganism, and runs a popular hot yoga studio.

Before her disappearance from vampiric society, Watson was famously quoted as saying she “laughs hard, lives hard, and plays hard.” She briefly had groupies in the final decades of the twentieth century, many of whom adopted this quote as their mantra. T-shirts bearing this slogan can still be found on Etsy.

Amelia

After Frederick left to getsupplies for Cassie, Reggie and I paged throughThe Annalstogether to see if we could find anything useful about Grizelda. I could tell immediately that these books were way older than anything I’d ever seen when working in the University of Chicago Library. The lettering on the book’s cover was in some kind of calligraphy that was so stylized I could barely read it.

“I can’t believe Frederick has something this old just lying around,” I marveled. “He gave me some excerpts the other day in case they were helpful. But those entries were so old I barely understood them.”

Reggie snorted. “If you thinkthisis old, you should see the clothes he used to wear before Cassie got to him.”

Judging from Frederick’s speech mannerisms, I found the idea that his clothes used to be very old-fashioned easy to believe.

When we finally found Grizelda’s entry, we read through it together. My cheeks heated at the brief reference to Reggie being romantically linked to her, but Reggie didn’t seem to be reacting to it, so I told myself to let it go.

“I hadn’t realized Zelda had moved to the West Coast.” Reggie sounded amused. “Good for her.”

“Do you think she’d be up for helping us?”

Reggie shook his head. “If she went through all the trouble to vanish and adopt a new identity, it was probably to get away from her reputation.” He bit his lip, thinking. “I suspect she wouldn’t be enthusiastic about someone from her old life reaching out to ask her for help.”

“Okay,” I said, a bit relieved. Getting a notorious witch I didn’t know to help me had been more than a little intimidating, anyway. Especially one with an ambiguous history with Reggie. But if we weren’t going to ask Grizelda for help, that meant my tax expertise was the only chance we had of frightening The Collective. I was confident in my understanding of the Internal Revenue Code, but much less so in my ability to get vampires with a vendetta to back off.

But there’d be time to worry about that later. Right now, I was paging through what might have been the first history book that had ever legitimately interested me. I wanted to give it my full attention.

“I’m confused about something,” I said. I flipped to the front of the volume and pointed to the date. “The cover to this thinglooks ancient, and this title page says it was published in 1873. But Grizelda’s entry is only a few years old.”

Reggie nodded. “There’s a committee that handles updating this thing.” He shrugged. “They’re haphazard about it, though, so some of the stuff in here is hilariously out of date. I don’t think the television shows section has been updated sinceM*A*S*Hwent off the air, for example. But it’s better than nothing.”

“Fascinating,” I said, meaning it. Another thought occurred to me. “Are you in the Index of Notorious Witches and Vampires?”

His eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he recovered and schooled his features. He looked down at his hands. “No.”

“Are you telling me the truth?” I asked, teasing.

“Absolutely.” He cleared his throat. “You know, I think we’ve spent enough time reading. Do you want to doliterallyanything else?”

He moved to close the book. I stuck my hand in it so that he couldn’t. “If you’re not in the Index, I don’t see why I can’t just look through it on my own for a little while.”

He blinked at me. “Why would you want to?”

“It’s interesting,” I said, honestly. “And I’m curious about what a vampire needs to do to earn a place in there. If the lead suspect in that fire from the eighteen hundreds isn’t infamous enough to be written about in here, I can’t imagine what it would take to—”

“Fine,” Reggie interrupted. He let out a long sigh. “Yes. I’m in there. But I don’t want you to read it. It’s nothing you don’t already know, but somehow having my past memorialized in this…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “It makes me feel like I’ll always be defined by things I did centuries ago. I hate it.”

He looked pained. I closed the book. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I meant it when I said you already know everything about me that’s in there. Oh—except maybe for the part where I once had a fan club.” A corner of his mouth quirked up. “Have I told you about them?Thatwas pretty funny.”

I couldn’t tell if he was kidding about once having had a fan club or not, which itself was pretty funny. But I decided not to press it. “Okay,” I said again. I leaned in closer, until our lips were nearly touching. “So. What do you want to do instead of reading this book?”

His breath caught. “Wedohave the apartment to ourselves. I could take this opportunity to thank you for everything you’re doing to help me.” He tilted his head and pressed a lingering kiss, and then another, to the place on my neck where he’d bitten me the night before. His intent couldn’t have been clearer. The feel of his mouth on my skin sent a flash of heat straight to my core.

“Cassie’s here,” I pointed out. “We aren’t alone.” But I was already growing dizzy with want, the way he was trailing open-mouthed kisses up along the column of my throat. It had only been a few hours since we were last intimate, but the way he was mouthing at me made me want to take him back to bed with me all over again.

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