Page 38 of How a Vampire Falls

Hey, have you ever been to a blood bar?

This time, she’d been home for almost an hour before Mom texted back.

Mom:I don’t remember.

The words were a heavy curtain dropped between them, opaque and smothering. Leslie should have known not to ask.

She wandered around her house, for some reason needing to pace. Then she sank into her favorite stuffed chair in the den, a plum-colored beauty she’d found at a local furniture store. She worked to unclench her jaw. She didn’t get to be mad at Mom for once again shutting down a conversation about vampires. Mom had her reasons. But for once Leslie let herself say out loud everything she wished she could say to Mom’s face.

“We talk all the time. Woman to woman, mother to daughter, friend to friend. Why can’t we talk vampire to vampire? Why, Mom?”

Eleven

If Ryker had been dating Leslie back when his parents had dated, he’d be in debt to the phone company by now. Good thing his generation had unlimited minutes and unlimited texts, because from Sunday night to Friday morning, he and Leslie were communicating one way or the other. Not nonstop, but often. Their video calls could last for hours. When Leslie had errands to run, she slid her phone into her pocket and went about her day, bringing Ryker with her. They both laughed when she told him about human shoppers who noticed her speaking to “no one,” unable to hear him replying from her pocket without the aid of Speaker mode.

He flew to see her every weekend, counting down the days she’d get to be the tourist and he the tour guide. He bristled every time he thought about the way her lousy boss had denied her time-off requests. More than anything, he wanted to give her the financial option of quitting, of making her art full-time. One day he’d be able to.

They’d been together for six weeks when Leslie got her first real taste of Ryker’s job. He was asked by a long-time detectivecolleague to tackle a case with an absurd deadline. Five days to be court-ready. Turned out the forensic accountant who’d been working on it for a month had been as dirty as the fraudulent non-profit he was pretending to investigate. Ryker got the call Wednesday evening, an hour before he’d planned to be in bed and a week since he’d last slept, but he couldn’t let his colleague down. Couldn’t let down the three churches who had worked with this fraudulent organization, lost parishioners’ donations to the scam. For the first time since they’d been dating, he didn’t fly to Tennessee for the weekend.

On Sunday at five in the morning, he answered Leslie’s phone call, scolding himself for not letting it go to voicemail. He didn’t have time for a break from the documents and the numbers. But he wanted to hear her voice. “Hey.”

“Hey! I just decided my new lake scene is going to have some people in it. I want a little vampire couple walking around the lake together, enjoying each other’s company.”

“And how will your customers know they’re vampires? Are you going to give them cartoon fangs or something?”

She burst out laughing but quickly sobered. “Ryker?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t sound great.”

“I’m fine.”

Her pause held a desire to challenge him, but instead she said, “How’s your case coming?”

“I’ve cleaned up the mess that fraudster left behind. And I think I’ve found the bad numbers from the organization itself. Just have to recheck a couple things and then write up the report I’ll give in court tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, that’s great. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” Without seeing her, he sensed when her mood sharpened. He closed his dry eyes and tilted his head toward theceiling of his study, tilted his body back in his chair. “I’m fine, Leslie.”

“No, you’re not. You never went to bed Wednesday night.”

He pressed his lips together and opened his eyes to engage the ceiling in a stare-down. Couldn’t deny it. Wasn’t about to confirm either.

“Ryker Maddox. You’ve been up for ten days.”

“I have to finish this.”

“You have tosleep.”

“I’ll sleep when the work is—”

She hung up on him. Seconds later, a video call came through. He poked his phone screen but left the phone on the table, pointed upward. Leslie’s face appeared, a pucker between her eyes.

“Ryker. Go to bed.”

“When I finish this.”

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