Between the kind of tasks he could play off as vampiric training, he threw in some cleaning and a little yard work for the hell of it; he’d been meaning to try to prune out the weeds and plant a bed of wildflowers back there, even beginning to turn the lot’s various natural rocks into a pathway. If Violet was committed to being here, then she might as well do something useful, he figured, and if it made her give up faster, then all the better for it. Except shewasn’tgiving up. Violet was still there, still badgering her way into his life like she belonged in it.
Every evening before she rode off on her bike toward the denser side of their suburban neighborhood, she’d scowl at him, her little nose ring twisted up as she asked, “Will you make me a vampirenow?”
Rahil would smile. “Maybe tomorrow, kid.”
Maybe tomorrow seemed to be his mantra.
Maybe tomorrow Violet would grow bored. Maybe tomorrow Rahil would find a job that lasted more than a few days. Maybe tomorrow he’d get a message from Merc. Maybe tomorrow he’d rest for long enough not to feel like his body was falling apart. Maybe tomorrow he could say yes to a family reunion, instead of dodging his nieces’ cute memes and his cousins’ invites and his brother’s gossip and his aunties’ probing.
If tomorrow required a good night’s sleep—or even a day’s sleep, for that matter—to get there, then he was out of luck.
As the end of the week neared, he lounged across the living room’s mattress-couch, his exhaustion plucking at his sanity the way the years plucked at the peeling paint on the ceiling. He’d finished off the rest of the peanut butter with a spoon an hour ago, and his stomach gave an awkward rumble for it. A small ache of blood-thirst followed. It was truly a misfortune that vampires still required all the regular nutrients of food on top of a supplementary-something from human blood. He swore he’d learned what that something was, at one point, but it must not have been interesting enough to remember. Also, based on how few actual facts anyone seemed to have in regards to vampires, it might have been a lie—or a myth, a theory, a piece of misinformation, whatnot.
As Rahil lay there, the softcoo cooof a dove echoed down the weathered fireplace. It was overwhelmed by the sudden shuffle, then the crude squawking of multiple crows. Rahil grimaced.
He flicked mindlessly through hookup potentials, swiping right on anyone who seemed halfway bearable, despite just how poorly both his prior dates that week had gone. He could have asked one of his resident humans for a hit of blood at any point, but now they were out for the weekend, either working long shifts or staying elsewhere. Besides, he hated relying on them. The humans crashing at his house would always leave at some point, and whoever showed up next might not possess the same generosity.
Maybe tomorrow things would get better, but maybe tomorrow things would get worse instead. Rahil could never be sure.
His soul wasn’t engaged in the hunt right now, though. It was probably due to his experiences earlier that week, he told himself. One had merely been so awkward that Rahil had only got a nibble before the young man clumsily decided he had better places to be, giving three entirely different excuses as he left, opening the door to the bathroom instead of the one out. Rahil would have chosen that over his more recent outing, though.
His date had been hot, in a lean, middle-aged hipster kind of way, with a sharp smile and a dry humor that was easy to banter off, and he’d enjoyed Rahil’s fangs enough to ask for a second bite, coming between Rahil’s legs for it, but the whole thing had felt wrong in a way Rahil had difficulty putting words to. He was accustomed to being treated as a sexual object, but the way this man looked at him, touched him, spoke of him, felt a step beyond even that, like every inch of himself was being recorded for later use.
It was the kind of feeling that made Rahil want to check for cameras. Or chains. Which reminded him uncomfortably of the fact that there were vampires he knew ran in his circle—if only by the names on their dating profiles and the occasional glimpse of them at the Fishnettery or one of the local hookup parks—who seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. Not, he suspected, into the arms of a lover, but into the basement of one. If they were unlucky enough, the basement of Vitalis-Barron.
Rahil had left while the unnerving man was asleep.
As a new match sent him a picture that should have made his ass ache and his mouth yearn, it wasn’t his most recent date’s nearly scientific fascination with him that turned him off, though. It was the thought of watching Merc as he worked, and every daydream he’d had of those hands since. They’d been his least raunchy fantasies in years—a single fingertip, tracing down his body likeitwas a work of art, as Merc looked on with that cool, thoughtful expression of his. It made Rahil’s skin hot all over, the air trapped in the sauna of his lungs.
He flopped his head back with a groan, cradling his phone against his chest. He thought a grainy flake of the ceiling fell onto his cheek, but as he went to swipe it off, a juicy mosquito squashed beneath his thumb. It left a smear of red across his skin.
“You didn’t want my blood anyway,” he grumbled.
Rahil tried not to move, to let the wave of exhaustion rolling over him carry him into a dream. His body ached for a slightly different position, and his brain responded by pulling him into thought after thought, half-dismantled but a little too solid to allow for actual sleep. Sweat beaded in the places his skin pressed directly against the mattress.
Around the corner of the foyer, the front door opened and closed. A single set of smaller footsteps made their way across the living room.
Rahil didn’t bother opening his eyes. “If you’re going to stake me, can you do it quick? I don’t have all day.”
The mysterious someone sat down next to him. His skull pinched as his braid was caught under their weight, but he didn’t have the energy to tug it free. Maybe he was more in need of blood than he’d thought? Probably just more tired. Definitely more depressed.
“Something tells me that inviting hunters to slay you isnotthe optimal way to be a vampire,” Violet huffed.
Rahil squinted at her. “I knew it was you,” he lied.
“The whites of your eyes look weird.”
“Oh.” He rubbed across his lids, but no smear of darkness came off. “Are they red or black?”
“Red.”
“That’s fine then.” He shut out the world for three more seconds, counting them in his head. One, two, and—there was her next question, right on time.
“What’s the difference?”
Girl couldn’t go four seconds without askingsomethingabout vampires. Rahil groaned and gave her a little push, tugging his braid free enough to sit up.
Violet sported a matching maroon beanie and tank-top today, disregarding the heat in favor of the fashion statement. It was something Rahil would have done at that age. Something he still did, in fact, over half a century later. At least with his vampire genes, he still looked young enough to fall for that kind of ridiculousness.
