“Are you asking us to move in with you?” Thomas asks, tipping my head up so I look at them all.
“Yes.”
“Good,” Johnny kisses me on the cheek and breaks away to go to the refrigerator. “Because you know we were all going to be there too often, anyway.”
“You’ll have to move out for a little while during construction.” Joshua warns, placing his hand on my stomach. “Especially now.”
Nodding, I look around their house. “I figured. And I have no problem staying here when that happens. After all, there are new witches to train, and that will be easier if I’m nearby. And anyway, I don’t expect you to sell this place.”
Chase manages to tug me away from the others. “You’re giving us everything we want… Seriously. Best Christmas ever.”
“Knock knock?” Bethany says, easing open the door. “Is everybody descent?”
“Johnny’s never fit for company,” Thomas says, “but you’re welcome to come in.”
Bethany laughs as she steps over the threshold and closes the door behind her. “I’ve been told there are some werewolves who need the kind of vampire that onlytakesblood, doesn’t drink it.”
Joshua groans. “Let’s just get this over with.”
I point Bethany to the kit Anthony got for me. “Does that have everything you need?”
She looks it over while pulling out a pair of latex gloves. “Yep. It’ll be like forty-five minutes to an hour for each… I don’t have four full hours though, so I’m going to get Joshua going and at the ten-minute mark, I’m going to start on whoever’s next and so on…”
“I’ll go next,” Johnny says quickly.
“Cool.” Bethany starts setting up. “How much water have you all drank today?”
“Um…” Chase’s nose wrinkles. “Probably not enough.”
“Four big glasses. Now, please. One each. Don’t chug them. Take the next five minutes or so to get them down.”
I watch Chase go to the sink and start the tap, grumbling and I say, “If you’re good, you get cookies afterward.”
“We’re always good.” Thomas kisses my forehead and goes to get his glass of water.
Bethany sets to work on Joshua a few minutes later and as she works, they each sit down with a grimace, that disappears after she pokes them.
Keeping them distracted is easy as Bethany recounts her grandmother’s escapades at their family dinner—she’s still on the lookout for husbands for each of the sisters.
Joshua’s done twenty minutes later and I’m not the only one who looks at the clock. “Are you usually able to get the draw faster than other nurses?”
“Yeah, the instructor told me some people just have ‘the gift.’”
“And they didn’t even know you were a witch.”
She looks up at me a little confused. But now isn’t the right time to tell her what I’m thinking.
“Does it happen more often when you’re in a hurry?”
The confusion deepens. “Yeah. Weird.”
But the others finish up, distracting her, and when she’s done, she hands me the bags.
They go straight into the cooler.
“That was the easiest blood draw I’ve ever had.” The other three agree.
Shrugging, Bethany says, “I can be amazing at it, but no clinic is going to know that. There’s no audition process.”