Page 26 of How a Vampire Falls

“I’ve been thinking about what your life must be like. In the city. Surrounded by our kind. You must know plenty of relics.”

“I worked with one on a case once. She was three-hundred-sixteen years old, and she loved to tell people, even humans. Quite the character and really good at her job. I learned a lot from her.”

Over three hundred. Wow. She shook her head. “The oldest vampire I’ve met is my dad’s great-grandfather at Snow family Christmas. I think he’s about a hundred and fifty. Shows up once a decade or so.”

“Typical relic, aloof and proud of it.”

“Any still in touch with your family?” This was fascinating, a conversation she’d never had before.

“Oldest relative I’ve met is a cousin somewhere on my mom’s side. He’s like…four hundred something? I was just a kid though, the last time he came around. My mom has a great-great-aunt who still keeps in touch—Aunt Donna, she’s a hundred and thirty-three. I see her a couple times a year.Outside my family, everybody in my social circle is a looker.” He darted another glance her way. “You know that term, right?”

Leslie shot him a side-eye.

He lifted his free hand. “Sorry. But I keep assuming youdoknow something about us, and then you don’t.”

Fair enough. Leslie cleared her throat in dramatic fashion, sounding very like a human, and recited. “Looker: colloquialism for a vampire whose true age matches their looks. Exhibit A: Leslie Snow.” She gestured to herself. “Exhibit B: Ryker Maddox. Or should I say Laurence Ryker Gould Maddox?”

Ryker’s laugh was louder than usual, and he threw his head back to indulge it. “You did look me up. You got out the old test results.”

Leslie couldn’t help grinning back. “I might have.”

“I’m taking the liberty of being encouraged by this.”

“Go ahead.” She shrugged. “Not going to lie, though, I’m a little disappointed you haven’t met dozens of centuries-old vampires.”

“Maybe I have. Martha—the woman I worked with—was an exception to every rule in the book. Most of them don’t advertise their age, and it’s terrible manners to ask.”

“So mysterious,” Leslie said.

“Maybe that’s why they do it. They get a kick out of the mystery. Or maybe it’s just too much life to explain unless you’re super trusted, in their inner circle. But when I’m three hundred years old with this face”—he pointed with a smirk—“I’ll probably be straightforward like Martha. The reactions could be fun.”

She laughed. Even at a thousand years old, she’d never want that kind of attention, but she could picture Ryker having fun with it. They kept talking, kept walking, for another half-hour—well past downtown, now along the blacktop that led to the highway, past a few red-dirt roads.

“I have to warn you,” Leslie said. “If we keep walking, eventually we’re going to pass Lunar Lane.”

“Lunar…? Oh—as in the moon, as in wolves. Got it. Do you want to turn back?”

“That’s up to you. I just didn’t want you to be startled by the odor of the pack.”

He gave her a side-eye not unlike the few she’d shot at him tonight. “Think I’ll play dead again, huh?”

“Oh—no, of course not.”

“I’m not fragile, Leslie.”

“I know that.” She shouldn’t have said anything.

He was quiet for a minute as they continued walking, but then he shook his head. “Sorry. You were showing care, and…and it’s kind of you.”

She ran her thumb across his knuckles. “But it’s hard to take kindness, sometimes.”

“Yeah. When it’s something you despise in yourself… Yeah.”

“This has nothing to do with your fear of falling. And I know you were fine meeting Ezra yesterday. But you’d never met a wolf before this week, and I’m telling you, the collective scent of a whole pack is a lot.”

“For you too?”

“We all get along fine in town, on neutral ground; but passing their land on foot puts me on edge. I kind of want to run, because I know I’m outnumbered. But I kind of want to…fight them? Like, all of them? At one time? It’s weird.”

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