Page 73 of Lucien

Jamie

“Haveyoufigureditout yet, mijo?”

Jamie looked up from where he was fiddling on his mom’s laptop. She’d shoved it at him the moment he’d stepped in the house, claiming it had been “hacked by the internet.”

“Almost. I’m deleting the malware from your hard drive, but youneedto stop clicking on random pop-ups. The internet didn’t hack you, Má. You hacked yourself.”

“I told her that already,” Izzy said, wincing at a tug of her hair. Their mom was giving her two French braids and apparently wasn’t being very gentle about it. Or maybe that particular tug was just a little punishment for Izzy’s sass.

Their mother made a face. “It said my computer was infected and I needed to act fast. It looked very official. How was I supposed to know?”

Jamie held in his eye roll but just barely. “Next time, just text me, okay? I’ll tell you what’s real or not.”

“I didn’t want to bug you.” In response to the look he gave her, his mother raised her hands in defeat. “All right, all right. I’ll text.” She gave his sister a pat on the head. “All done, Isabel. Go finish your homework.”

Izzy hopped up from the chair, dashing to the bathroom for a look in the mirror before running back out and giving their mother a quick side hug. “Thanks, Mamá. You gonna help me with my math, Jamie?”

“In a bit, little menace. I wanted to catch up with Má first.”

Izzy huffed. “You see each other all the time. What’s there to catch up on?”

“Why don’t you go ask Jay for help? He’s, um, older than he looks—maybe he’s good at math.”

“I’m right here. But I’m not very good at math.” The little vampire walked in from where he’d been sitting quietly in the living room, holding the bag of Vero Mango pops Izzy had given him earlier. The spicy-sweet Mexican candy was a favorite in the Hernandez household. And possibly a new favorite of Jay’s, because while the bag had been full earlier, it was looking suspiciously empty now.

“Dude,” Jamie laughed. “How many of those did you have?”

“Seven,” Jay said happily, unwrapping an eighth and popping it into his mouth.

“Whoa,” Izzy whispered, gawking in fascination at this stranger with a stomach of apparent steel.

Jay held up the bag to her. “Did you want one?” He cocked his head. “Was I not supposed to eat all of them?”

Izzy shook herself out of her admiration with visible effort. “Um, no. Go ahead, eat all of them. I just want to see what color your tongue is by the end of it.”

“Izzy!”

Izzy shot their mother a guilty look, then held out a hand to Jay. “It’s okay if you’re bad at math. I don’t wanna do homework anyway. Want to see my comic book collection instead?”

Jay perked up, smiling around his candy. “Yes, please. Very much.”

“Homework after, Isabel!” Jamie’s mom called out in their wake.

Jamie watched the two of them leave—the little vampire only barely matching his younger sister in height—with no small amount of amusement.

Jamie had been…not exactly reluctant, but maybe a little skeptical, bringing a vampire he hardly knew to meet his family. (Well,anothervampire he hardly knew to meet his family.) But Luc had insisted on him having a vampire chaperone, even though he had informed Jamie it was incredibly unlikely a feral vampire would attack in broad daylight. Supposedly the more a vampire’s inner monster took over, the less they liked exposure to the sun.

And honestly, as much as Jamie’s vampire was on his best behavior with Jamie’s family, Jay’s presence was that of a docile little lamb in comparison to Luc’s intimidating aura.

Jamie’s mother adored him already.

Luc had reminded Jamie that morning that it was part of his truce with the creep twins to help them find whatever feral vampire was murdering Tucson’s citizens, and now he was off on a tracking expedition with them and his two frenemies (as Jamie absolutely refused to stop calling Roman and Danny after Luc had let slip Roman’s little comment).

And while Jamie didn’t like it, he couldn’t really argue with the fact that he wouldn’t be much help to their cause as a human. He had no tracking skills and no superstrength, his visions were useless, and Luc absolutely refused to use the one asset hedidhave—being chock-full of delicious blood—to lure the feral vampire out.

All of which just served as another reason to notbehuman anymore…

“Mamá…” Jamie swallowed hard. Now that he was here, he realized he didn’t actually know what to say. How did one bring up the “my boyfriend is a vampire and someday soon I might be one too” conversation to one’s mother?

---