Page 94 of By the Pint

“Right, yep, okie-dokie.” Behind Dima, Killian did a zipping mouth gesture.

“Casey, I love you. I’m in love with you. Exactly as you are, and everything in this beautiful head of yours that makes you you. I will take whatever time you give me, and I will be grateful for it. Five days, ten years, fifty. I will look after you. I will take care of you. And I will never see you wanting for anything so long as we’re a team. Including immortality.”

Holy shit.

My insides felt as though I’d necked six double espressos and five pints of Mai Tai. Buzzing, nervous, heart palpitations, a little nauseated, a lot euphoric. Would I regret it? Would I get two years down the road and wonder why the hell I gave up being a semi-youthful vampire for all eternity for this man?

This amazing, beautiful, patient, compassionate, sexy as fuck man?

…

Surely, I had to find out. Surely, it was worth the gamble.

Dima said nothing. He watched me, his front teeth idly scraping over his bottom lip. Killian danced impatiently from one foot to the other.

“Okay,” I said, my voice so quiet that, if the two men in the room had been human, they wouldn’t have heard. “I choose you, Dima. Because … I’m pretty sure I love you too, and I—”

Dima’s face slammed into mine. His mouth claiming mine. His fingers knitting themselves into my hair, holding on tightly as though I might change my mind at any second.

Killian cleared his throat. “Yeah, um … about that,” he said, and we reluctantly pulled apart. “So, here’s the thing …” He scratched at a spot between his eyebrows. “Right, well, the thing is …” He puffed out his cheeks, looked up to the ceiling. “So, okay, this is the thing …”

“What’s the fucking thing?!” Dima yelled, spinning on his heel to face his blood-brother, arch nemesis, onetime ride-or-die.

Killian dug his hand into the other pocket of his coat and pulled out another piece of paper. “Uh … Casey’s dying.” He looked at me. “You’re dying, bestie.”

30.

Dima

“I’m sorry, what?” Casey whipped around to face Killian. Even the sight of my willowy ex-friend made my blood boil.

Killian shot me a look. It was a look I’d seen a thousand times before. My insides roller-coaster swooped. The look said,we have a lot to talk about, but this thing right now is more important.A married couple might think of it as thewe’ll talk when we get homelook.

I took this to mean whatever Killian wanted to say to me about himself, or me, or us, or what happened in the past, could wait until what needed to be said about Casey was said.

“Funny story.” Killian’s voice was bright with a nervous squeak. “Remember that time when we had to go to the turning clinic and have your bloods taken? And afterwards they sent us a letter to say you needed an MRI too, and you were all‘Why couldn’t they do this in the turning facility?’, ‘Why do we have to go to Bordalis for this?’and‘This seems awfully excessive’?”

“Mmmhmm,” Casey replied, while my mind was already whirring with ways to fix it. The most expensive doctors, surgery, cutting-edge treatments, whatever it took. Whatever the problem was, we’d find a way to fix him. We had to.

“Weeeeellllllll,” Killian continued, dragging out the word. “That letter wasn’t from the Assembly of the Undead, it was from a clinic in Bordalis. I may have accidentally on purpose sent a vial of your blood off. For, erm, testing.”

“Riggghhhht,” Casey said. Apparently, we were all dragging our words now.

“I saw an ad on BatBox. It went something likeHow well do you know your familiars?And I thought: pretty well, considering I can see inside his mind, but then it started talking about ancestry, and legacy and whatnot and I got curious. I began wondering how it was possible you, an ordinary human, could read minds. Were we somehow linked, or related? Because if we were, that put my other plan to waste.”

“What’s your other plan?” I asked because he would breeze past that little nugget if left unchallenged. Four hundred years, and I still spoke fluent Killian.

“HemoSite,” he continued, in the cheerful corporate marketing voice, answering my question only with that sameWe’ll talk laterexpression, “Will provide you with a full familial history breakdown.” Killian scrabbled about in the pockets of his overcoat. “Aha, oh, hang on. Here it is.” He produced another piece of paper and held it aloft.

Casey made no attempt to take it, so Killian shoved it into his hand.

I saw the page through Casey’s mind. An illustration of a tree, like an oak, or a horse-chestnut sat in the centre, with small rectangles. Names filled the boxes, but aside from his immediate family members and grandparents, Casey hadn’t heard of any of them. Neither had I. He unfolded the paper, andthe tree continued to grow. Back six, seven-hundred years. Still no recognisable names.

“What does this mean? Do you know any of these people?” Casey asked, thrusting the family tree back toward Killian.

“Not a one!” he said, stretching out his arms like a magician on stage after disappearing his sparkling, bikini-clad assistant.

“So, what does that tree thing matter?” Casey spat.

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