“Did you not remember?” I ask. “What you looked like, I mean. You seem disturbed.”

He turns to me and blinks in confusion. “Not by my face. Just my eyes.”

“Oh. Well, that expression right there, the glare? It’s by far your favorite. Your only, some would say.” He treats me to a particularly nasty one, and I can’t help but chuckle.

“The color, I meant. I thought they’d be . . . I don’t know.” He sounds more hesitant than I’ve heard him before, ever, and I am tempted to tell him that I know why: All slayers have yellow eyes. It’s a by-product of what they’re put through to become what they are, which I’ve heard includes yearslong training by teachers who are not particularly nurturing, and a final rite that often ends in a massacre. Amber is the mark of a full-fledged, immortal slayer, whose eternal mission is to destroy vampire bloodlines. Something else I’ve heard: The Hällsing Guild has been struggling to recruit new members, because becoming immortal no longer feels like a privilege, especially if given in exchange for spending several lifetimes going after creatures who are likely to stuff your left foot up your ass before snapping your head off.

I try not to think about it too much: that slayers, just like vampires, were once humans. We both had to adjust to becoming something new, to the idea of infinity, and that’s no easy feat. Maybe Lazlo’s self-image is tied to what he looked like before becoming a slayer, and his little brain is still buffering over it. But it’s going to catch up any second now, and when it does, he needs to be gone. He can stay the night, sure, but tomorrow I’ll kick him out and—

“Ethel?” he asks like he’s been saying my name for a while.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Is it okay if I take a shower?”

Is it? Who knows what kind of tattoos he’ll find under that shirt and jeans. Maybe his inner thigh is where he keeps a tally of all the vampires he’s killed. Inked on his chest, he could have a photorealistic rendering of himself throwing someone who looks eerily like me into the sun.

Guess I’ll have to run that risk. “Sure. Towels are in the bathroom.” He heads in the direction I’m pointing, and the breadth of his shoulders makes me think of something. “Are you hungry?”

He stops. Nods.

Shit. “Great. That’s just great.”

“It’s great that I’m hungry?”

“Only in the sense that I’m hungry, too. So hungry. I’ll go down to the store and pick up something.” I dash out of the door like it’s being firebombed and head to the Duane Reade downstairs.

I am, of course, not hungry. Because vampires don’t eat. Our bodies reject food in a spectacularly cinematic fashion that would find itself well at home in a vintage horror movie. This is true about any solid or liquid item that isn’t human blood—no matter how close they may approach it. I once took a sip of a bonobo, and hurled intermittently for the following six months. Our species has a clear case of hot-girl tummy, and I’m grateful to the twenty-first century for giving us a final diagnosis.

Back in the nunnery, though, I used to be able to cook. Quite well, according to Sister Wihtburh, even though the abbess would always find some reason to publicly bitch about my meals. Oversalting will not bring you closer to godliness, Sister Aethelthryth. If you are trying to hide your sins behind a curtain of rosemary, you have nearly succeeded. Unfortunately, my last pantry and scullery duties were so many centuries ago, I’m not sure I even remember how to boil water.

Which is an issue, since all I can think of purchasing is several boxes of mac and cheese. I add a clean T-shirt and a pair of sweats to the basket—the largest sizes I can find, yet somehow unlikely to fit Lazlo. I run back to my apartment, and step inside just as he walks out of the bathroom.

Naked.

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Chapter 6

Iguess Lazlo is wearing a towel around his hips.

But spiritually, culturally, metaphysically, he feels naked. And yes, he does have ink all over his body, but it seems to be less focused on narrating the misdeeds of Vlad the Impaler and more on commemorating . . . his childhood, perhaps? Family? For the most part, it’s that same old Hungarian script as on his neck and arms, but I also spot flowers that I’ve only ever seen in Eastern Europe, a castle, a coat of arms. On his chest, right on top of his heart, is an ornate Venetian eye mask that looks eerily familiar, but I cannot place it.

“Why are you holding your breath?” he asks after a long stretch of staring, because I’ve been a little too immobile. Vampires do need air, but given the slow crawl of our metabolism, not nearly as much as humans. I could inhale one day, exhale the following, and still be in peak shape.

And yet, I’m suddenly winded. “Sorry, I was just . . . admiring.”

His eyebrow rises.

“The artwork,” I hurry to add.

“Sure. Right. Because it’s the first time you’ve seen it.”

“Yeah, of course it is.” Why is he smiling like we’re sharing an inside joke? “When would I have seen it?”

He stares as if to challenge me, then folds his arms in a beautiful ripple of muscles and colorful ink. “This place feels familiar. But I’m sure you’ll tell me that I’ve never been in your apartment.”

If he had, I’d be dead. “Maybe you did some pest control work for the previous tenant?”

“I must have done a piss-poor job of it, considering.”

“Considering what?”

He points at a spot above my head. When I turn around, there is a giant—

“Spider!” I scream, running to duck behind Lazlo. It’s big and streaked in yellow and gross, and God, I’ve always hated arthropods.

“Interesting,” Lazlo muses.

I whimper, “What?”

“An entomologist who is afraid of spiders.” He turns to face me. “How unusual.”

Shit. Fuck. I straighten and collect myself. “It’s a very rude assumption,” I say haughtily, “that just because I study insects, I have to like all types of—”

“I have a lot of scars,” he interrupts, conversational. “All over my body.”

“ . . . Okay.”

“Some are big.” He points at a thick, knotty line that bisects the middle of his abdomen. “I wonder how I got this one. It must have been deep.”

Unless I’m mistaken, I gave it to him in Bath during the 1800s. I was having a grand old time choosing ribbons for my bonnet when he galloped into town and forced me to move to France, where Napoleon was still pursuing his military dreams.

I clear my throat. “Pest control is a dangerous profession.”

“Must be,” he says, meaning: No, it isn’t.

“Does it hurt?”

“No. But since you asked, something is bothering my left rib. Could you check?”

Absolutely fucking no, I plan to say. But just like all the other noes I should have said today, it remains stuck in my throat, and I’m somehow sliding my fingers up his flank and over his flank.

For a split second, we both freeze, and I’m not the only one who’s not breathing. The room falls into an unnatural layered silence. Lazlo glances down at me with that inquisitive, slightly accusing expression that seems to chew at the lining of my stomach, and I try to return the stare without looking too wide-eyed and guilty, but there is something here. Something that jumps from me to him, that flows from him to me. A current, a heat, a moment of confusion and deluge that clogs my senses, and . . .

You’re just not used to touch, I tell myself.

Yes. That’s it. It must have been a handful of years since the last time. I like to choose very bad people as meals, so I limit my physical contact with them, while Lazlo . . . He is not food. He is a person, an immortal just like me, surprisingly solid in a world where everything drifts past, disappearing too quickly.