Like, okay, when he and Cole started to getintoit? Brennan had gotten used to his fangs dropping at that point. It was still embarrassing and weird but Cole just laughed. He called it a vampire boner, which was mortifyingly appropriate.
They were in Cole’s room, a stack of records knocked over on the floor, some indie singer-songwriter playing on vinyl. Cole was starting todo the thing he did where he leaned back and pulled Brennan up over him, and Brennan pulled back to make some smart-ass comment—
And Cole looked up at him with dazed eyes.Toodazed, because no one wasthatgood of a kisser. Whatever interest had been building in Brennan shattered with the icy realization that something was wrong.
Brennan fell off the bed in his haste to scramble away from Cole.
“Um, yikes,” Cole said, and pushed up to sit with a disgruntled huff. “What’s wrong?”
Brennan shot back up and crept closer to the bed he’d launched himself from, squinting at Cole for some sign of… what, exactly? Magic?
Cole met his gaze with confusion, and sure enough, that cloudy glaze was still there, undeniable. A chill went through Brennan. Did he do that? How?
“Do I have something on my face?” Cole asked, and giggled.
“Are you high?” Brennan asked, half-desperate.
“No?” Cole giggled some more. “I’m good! Why are you on the floor? Get back over here!”
Something was definitely wrong, Brennan realized, in a magic vampire-y sense.
“I need to call Nellie,” Brennan decided.
“Wait, what?”
“You’re all—” Brennan made a hand-waving gesture that clearly didn’t translate.
“I’mwhat?”
“Weird! Your eyes, and you’re giggling—”
“I was giggling ’cause I like you?”
“I think Ididsomething to you!”
“Not yet, that’s the problem,” Cole grumbled.
“I’m calling Nellie.”
Ten minutes later, Brennan had explained the situation, Nellie had laughed her ass off, and Cole was sitting on the bed with his arms wrapped around his knees watching Brennan pace a hole into the carpet.
“Vampire saliva has venom in it,” Nellie explained, her tinny voice crackling through the room on speaker phone. “You guys were swapping spit, so, yeah, he got a teensy bit enthralled by you.”
“So,” Brennan said slowly, “I accidentally roofied my boyfriend with my spit?”
Cole had been fiddling with the strings of a hoodie, and stilled his movements at the question.
“More or less, yeah.”
“Isn’t that, like, a moral concern?” Brennan hissed. How was she so nonchalant about it? Cole went back to fiddling with the string.
“No offense, Brennan, but you’re super weak. Nothing your trace amounts of venom can do is anything worse than, like, eating an aphrodisiac. It wouldn’t make Cole do anything he didn’t want to do.”
“Okay,” Brennan said. “Okay, thanks, I guess.”
“No problem,” Nellie said. “I’m gonna mail you some relevant pamphlets, ’kay? Be safe.”
Brennan resisted a groan, hung up the phone, and turned to Cole. His face was twisted in some expression that Brennan couldn’t decipher beyonddispleased.The cloudiness in his eyes had faded by the time Brennan had gotten Nellie on the phone, and there was no giggling.
