Maybe I did it because he must be onto something with the whole Crime of Abomination business? It's an interesting mystery, but it's his mystery and I don't really want to be involved. Maybe it was because it didn't seem right for him to die when he'd protected me first, even if it was just to keep me in the fight. He's right that I have nothing to gain from him, nothing but misery and potentially death.

My gaze falls away from him, because I know I'm just telling myself I don't know why. I think I do know the reasons why. I can sense them beneath the lid of a box in my mind.

So, I do what I always do. I sit on the lid.

I shake my head to clear my confusing thoughts and Ashen lets me maneuver around him as I train my gaze on the doors of the Swan, desperate to be back in my room. I know he can't kill me himself, not with the spell that I cast. But there are other ways to hurt me, and he will, if he finds out who I am. He'll probably hurt me without that kind of motivation. He'll probably do it just by virtue of who he is. A demon. An executioner. A Reaper of Souls.

"The werewolves succeeded, you know," he calls after me, but I don't turn around. "They will try to make another hybrid. They are capturing vampires not to kill them but for a fate worse than death. They will regroup to come for you. You will assist me in uncovering their secrets and finishing this reaping, vampire."

I hear him follow me for a few steps. His footfalls slow behind me until they stop on the sidewalk as I cross the road.

"We are bound together, vampire. There is nowhere you can run where I won't find you."

His words hit like a blade in my chest. He doesn't know they strike in a way he doesn't intend. He doesn't know it might mean something to me to have someone, anyone, that I can't run from.

What the hell is wrong with me? 

I press the lid of the box in my mind more tightly closed.

It's not until I'm sitting on my bed alone with my head in my hands that I realize he never said thank you.

Asshole.

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Chapter 8

Ashen has been in my life for a week and I've already thought through at least fifty different ways to kill him. My favorite so far is stabbing him in the guts with a dirty toilet brush. The reason? He has engaged in a strategic, effective campaign of warfare against his enemy.

Me.

First, he checked into the Swan. He seemed wary of Bian so waited until the bubbly, petite, pretty blond Anna was working the desk and charmed his way into the room directly across from mine. I didn't know it was possible for a Reaper to be charming, but that's exactly what he was. I watched him do it too. I'm convinced he waited until I was there in the lobby. He even had the audacity to wink at me as he turned away from the desk, flipping the key card between his knuckles. I flipped him my middle finger in reply.

The second day he spent skulking around the hotel. My first encounter was to find him examining the alarm trigger on the emergency door on the second floor. An hour later, I caught him nosing around the stairs to the roof. Every floor I was on, he conveniently seemed to be there. I managed to slip away to the security room in the afternoon and watched him check out cameras and exits for a while until I got bored.

On the third day, he decided to make conversation with whoever he deemed important to the daily operations of the Swan Inn. First, it was Peter Staker, who does maintenance for us when he's not losing swans or mowing the lawn at the church. Next, he spoke to Deb, the chef whose Sunday roast attracts half the town to the hotel restaurant every week. He even got Bian to warm up when he helped her with her crossword, though she still darted her eyes to me as they spoke. She's always looking out for me. At least one person is loyal. I later saw Ashen with Anna at the bar, swirling a scotch in his hand as he spoke in low tones and she laughed gratuitously. I swallowed down an unexpected swell of rage and found Peter for a brooding game of cribbage.

At the end of each day, Ashen felt the need to appear at his door just as I entered my room for the night, relaying a critical piece of information from his day. Does it not concern you, vampire, that a person might successfully request the room across from yours without raising any questions from management? (No. I'm a vampire, I could probably just kill them, as I might do to you.) Are you aware, vampire, that the door alarm to the roof has been cut? (Yes. I'm the one that cut it.) Vampire, did you know there were a series of murders in the village back in 2007 and a mansion was blown up and a deactivated sea mine exploded? (Yes. I was here. It was totally awesome.)

On the fourth day, Ashen disappeared, and for some reason I want to kill him for that too.

I tried to play it cool on the fifth day. If he wants to disappear, that's his problem. Maybe it's for the best. Maybe I can finally get back to my quiet village life.

When he didn't reappear the next day I scoured through every inch of his room, which I had been avoiding up to that point. I even went as far as sniffing down his bedsheets before ripping them off the bed. Yeah, I know that's pretty weird. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing there. It was like he never even existed. I started to wonder if the whole thing was some kind of hallucination, but then my tattoo started getting itchy. Really itchy. And then I had weird dreams about Ashen, and the alley, and about him travelling somewhere by car. Somehow, I inherently knew that if I needed to, I could find him. It might have taken me days, even weeks. Some part of me knew that there's nowhere on Earth he could go that I couldn't find him. But even still... I felt and still feel a sense of unease. As much as I don't want him to be here, he should be here. And yet he is not.

Maybe this is all karma. I have claimed a lot of lives, being a vampire and all. I probably deserve a bit of cosmic payback like a significant break from reality that makes me question whether or not I actually exist in the Matrix.

So, here we are. It's now day seven, and I don't know what to make of myself, or life, or reality anymore. How the fuck did this happen to me? Rather than hunting down the Reaper or filling a bathtub with tequila and sucking it down with a straw, I figure the best thing I can do is just focus on my work.

I spend my shift and then some giving everything a next-level clean. I mean, I scrub tiles with a toothbrush in straight-up bleach with my bare hands. I take screens off windows and vacuum up the dead bugs. When I haul bedding to the laundry room, I take the dials off the machines and polish the plastic beneath until it's sparkling. It's not until I'm cleaning the front desk phone buttons with rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip that someone finally steps in.

"Stop it," Bian orders, snatching the Q-tip from my hand.

I give her a sad face and a pout, reaching for the Q-tip. She bends it in half like a madwoman and I gasp with semi-pretend horror as she throws it in the bin. We stare at one another, both of us narrowing our eyes until we're glaring viciously. I'm the first one to cave. Bian might be barely five feet to my five-foot-eight, human to my vampire, but she still scares the shit out of me. She snatches a notepad and a pen from the desk and thrusts them into my chest.

I roll my eyes. Bian scowls at me.

I scribble a note.

Did the guy across from me check out?  I write.

I pass the note back to her and she smirks.

"No," she says. She pulls the pen from my fingers as she pins me with a glare, but her eyes hold a spark of amusement beneath the sharpness on the surface. I do not like that. Bian's gaze flicks to the door and she sits down at the front desk, opening her dog-eared crossword book. "Scrabble," she says, nodding toward the lobby door without looking up.