Page 102 of Your Coffin or Mine
Chuckling, I take her hand in mine and lead her calmly up the steps while she floats, her eyes wide in a panic.
“This is insane.” Her voice comes out high pitched, and it makes me want to show her more.
“What is your favorite Disney movie?”
“What?” she says, obviously taken aback by my line of questioning.
I pull her along as she floats above the steps, trying not to laugh at the way she’s eyeing her feet as if something is going to bite her at any moment. “I have been doing some light reading and understand that favorite Disney movies are important to members of the opposite sex.”
“Oh umm, hmm. Well, I guess I would have to say my favorite isBeauty and the Beast.”
I clasp my arms behind my back, pondering this. “What is it that you love about it?”
A pleased look passes over her expression, and she glances around the room. “The castle.”
That surprises me and yet it fits. I suppose something had to have drawn her here to begin with.
I make a sweeping gesture with my free hand. “Luckily, I have one of those.”
“Only one?” she scoffs mockingly, her hand to her chest.
“Sadly, yes, as far as I’m aware. I actually haven’t thought to look over my holdings. It is possible Doyle has purchased one or two in my name over the years.”
“Oh my god, is Doyle like a member of your coven or something?” she hisses under her breath, her eyes wide in shock.
“No, and why a coven?”
She grins when I set her on her feet finally at the top of the grand staircase. “I may have watchedTwilighta few times too many. It’s one of my favorite movies.”
“Twilight?”
“Yeah. It’s a movie about, you know,” she says, gesturing to me. “But they glitter in the sun.”
How ridiculous.I blanch at the audacity. “Vampires that glitter? What has the world come to?”
“Never mind. Don’t even worry about it.”
I bring her hand up to rest on my bent arm as we walk down the hallway. “Well, Doyle will need to explain who and what he is in his own time. It is, after all, a special thing to entrust a human with one’s identity,” I admit.
Her nose crinkles and she looks up at me, amusement in her eyes. “How did I ever think you were thirty? You even talk like an old person.”
“As to that, not very long ago, I reached the conclusion that humans have butchered various languages with the passing of time. But bro, it grows on you. Does it not?”
She shakes her head in awe. “How is this possible?”
“Me being a vampire or my power?”
“Both.”
“Come, I’ll show you.” I walk, listening to her heels clack against the marble flooring. I wave a hand and light the candles along the gallery. “The gallery is the only wing that wasn’t updated during the castle renovations, for obvious reasons.”
She walks up to a portrait I sat for a few centuries ago. “I found this place before.” Her cheeks pinken. “And I assumed this was your great-great-grandfather.”
I smile in amusement. “Uncanny resemblance?”
She nods.
“Not quite.” I stop to stare at my own portrait. “This was painted some time in the sixteenth century.”
