Page 18 of Hot for Slayer
“And I do not see what you enjoy about it.”
“About what?”
“Coming up with rows of numbers. It’s poor entertainment.”
“No. No, there is an actual ...No.” I spend the next two hours teachinga vampire slayer who was created to wipe out my bloodlinehow to correctly fill in a sudoku grid. He’s not at all bad at it, and I hate to acknowledge it.
“So,thisis what we do during the day,” he says after a while.
“We?” I frown. “Wedon’t usually spend our days together.”
He smiles like I didn’t even speak.
“I’m serious. We rarely ...” I drift off, because he’s taking a strand of my hair between his fingers and rubbing it gently, watching the flow of light orange across his own pale skin. His mouth murmurs a few words in another language—one that I speak, but I pretend not to, because this is not—
It shouldn’t—
What is even—
It’s casual, the way he tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. His touch is at once new and familiar, scorching and gentle. “Strawberry blond,” he says to himself. Then asks me, “We rarely what?”
Vampires don’t blush. We simply don’t have enough blood for it. I thank whoever cursed us for that small grace, glance away, and mumble, “Nothing.”
The rest of the day is ...
I wish I could say that it’s terrible. That I consider walking into the sun just to escape Lazlo’s suffocating presence. But that’s not the way it goes.
He is surprisingly restful to be around, even when he teases me for holding a spoon like it’s an object of alien provenance, even when I sneak back up from the basement with my dried laundry, and he watches me fold my lingerie with a smile that says:I know who you wear it for.
In the afternoon, he collects all his weapons and begins to clean them.
“Have you—”
“No, I have not remembered,” he says. “But I feel an itch.”
“An itch,” I repeat. But I watch him polish and oil, trying not to jolt at every sound of clanking metal. My understanding is that the Hällsing Guild doesn’t micromanage, and that every slayer is allowed their weapon of choice. Or five. Given that silver, wooden stakes through the heart, or particularly garlicky Olive Garden dishes have no effect on us, and that only the sun can truly kill us, intelligent slayers (to my constant despair, Lazlo is one of them) tend to prioritize tools that will incapacitate us. Steel bolas trip and bind us, while blades can cut off limbs and make it difficult to run away. Since Lazlo has done both things to me,multiple times, I cannot help but startle when he asks, mid-sharpen:
“What do I do, Ethel?”
I blink. Force myself to calm down. “I told you, you—”
“Ethel.” He holds my gaze, still whetting his dagger with expert strokes. “What do Ireallydo?”
I bite my lower lip. I’m going to have to lie to him again. When, exactly, did that begin to feel so abominable? “You’re right. I wasn’t truthful. The reason we know each other is ...”
He stares, patient.
“You’re a CPA, Lazlo. You do my taxes.”
He sighs. Shakes his head, but his mouth twitches. “I remember why we were in that building now.”
“You do?”
“Hm. To go over your itemized deductions.”
“Precisely.”
He looks at me, amused. I look at him in pretty much the same way. And when I can no longer stand the tension of it, I ask him, “Do you, um, maybe wanna play cards?”
