Page 75 of How a Vampire Falls

“What? Who talks about it? I remember precisely one discussion about it when I was a kid, and that was mostly my mom letting me know that if I showered as often as the human kids did, my skin and hair would start to feel like sandpaper.”

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

When he was thirteen, his parents had been passing on vampire history via oral tradition. He shook his head. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

He didn’t want to hurt her, though. Maybe he shouldn’t ask. A few seconds later they both reached the top and landed lightly on their feet, side by side.

“I win!” Leslie raised her fists toward the vaulted ceiling, and her eyes glinted with opal tones. “By less than a second, but still.”

The dream from last night—the dream he’d tried to remember when he woke in the middle of the night shaking—slammed back into Ryker like a blow to his chest. Leslie standing at the top of the rock wall, Ryker gazing up at her from the floor, cheering her success. And from behind her, from nowhere, Jacqueline stepping up to shove her off the wall, and Ryker screaming as the woman he loved fell like a human, didn’t catch herself at all, didn’t land on her feet, simply fell and fell and fell—

“Ryker.” Her hand was on his shoulder, squeezing hard. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Haven’t you climbed this wall countless times?”

“Yeah. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

Leslie took hold of both his hands, stepped in close, and wrapped her arms around him. “No. You’re not. Take a breath.”

He wanted to resist, but maybe that was stupid. He drew a deep breath, let it out, then did it again. He felt like a puny human, but Leslie was right. Breathing helped ease the sharpness of his increased heartbeat.

“There. Good,” she said when his pulse had gotten back down to thirty beats. She let him go, stepped back, and now they stood facing each other on a thin ledge twenty feet in the air. “What now? You obviously need to get down from here, but if you can’t jump or rappel…”

“It’s not the height, Leslie, really.”

“Then…what?”

He sighed. He sat on the ledge and dangled his feet, leaving plenty of room for other gym members to stand and enjoy reaching the top. Leslie sat beside him and bumped her shoe against his.

“Spill it,” she said.

“My ex is in town, and last night I dreamed she pushed you off here and you…” His throat tightened, and the last word came out rough. “Fell.”

Leslie’s eyebrows arched, and her lips parted. She stared at him for a long moment, then shook her head. “Sorry, would you repeat that, but from the beginning?”

“My ex is—”

“Nope, that’s not the beginning.”

He shoved a hand through his hair. He was steady now. The freak-out had lasted only a few seconds, but it had exposed him. Stupid dream.

For a little while they sat quietly. At the moment they were the only ones up here, and looking down from a manageable height felt sort of calming.

When he was ready, he said, “Her name’s Jacqueline Hargrave.”

“Is she a lawyer? With a name like that, she ought to be. Or a writer maybe. Historical mysteries.”

“She’s in finance,” he said.

“Is that how you met?”

He nodded. “Her company contracted my firm—well, my firm at the time. She was newly promoted, on her way to becoming the first female CFO in her company’s history. We hit it off, and I asked to take her to dinner.”

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