It’s disorienting, is all.

“Why are your hands so cold?” he asks, voice curt and gravelly.

“Bad circulation,” I mumble, hurrying to bend my neck and search for the wound he mentioned. “Vitamin deficiencies. Gets chilly at night outside.”

“You just gave me three different excuses.”

“I gave three reasons, all valid, so get off my— Shit. There’s a shard of glass stuck between your lowest two ribs. I think you may have healed around it.”

“Can you take it out?”

“I’d have to cut it open a bit. You’d bleed again.”

“That’s fine.”

It’s not fine at all. But I do it, taking one of the thirty switchblades hidden around my place, carving a small cut over the one already healed.

I’m not an unfledged youth. My bloodlust is long quenched, and I can control my impulses even when I’m injured or hurt or approaching starvation. The scent of Lazlo does not make me lose my mind, because I’m better than that.

But God, it’s sweet.

Always has been. Every time we fought, every blade I sank into his flesh, every breakneck chase, the allure of his blood was there, calling. I’ve injured and killed plenty of slayers before him, and they all repulsed me, but Lazlo . . . I have no idea why his specific blood feels so overpoweringly, mouthwateringly delicious, but now that the glass splint is out, I should probably take a step back.

Yeah.

I’m gonna.

Any second now.

“All new,” I say, not meeting his eyes. My voice trembles. The wound is already closing, and I’m scurrying to the sink to wash the drops of his blood off my hands, but once the faucet is on, I cannot help staring at the running water like it’s my enemy, because it would be such a waste to give up this precious—

It’s a truly terrible idea, but my thumb and forefinger are already inside my mouth, licked clean, before I’m even aware of it. The taste of the blood, even just a few scant drops, awakens my sluggish, dormant body in a way gallons of plasma could never accomplish. Heat blooms and fires through my nerve endings. I feel the telltale itch of my fangs pushing against the roof of my mouth, elongating, and I have to grab the edge of the sink so tight, I’ll never get my security deposit back.

Then Lazlo comes to a stop beside me. “Already feels better,” he’s saying. “Thanks.”

Before turning around, I beg my fangs to retreat. Promise them lots of firm necks to bite into, very soon, if they behave. “You’re welcome.” I take a fortifying breath and then face him. “I’m going to make food now. Hope mac and cheese is all right. I also got you spare clothes, they’re in that paper bag over there.”

“You are getting warmer,” he murmurs. Not suggestively. An observation, followed by the back of his hand tracing my cheek. As if to probe a portentous flush with his knuckles.

I swallow. “Yeah.”

“Good.” His hand lingers. When it finally drops to his side, his mouth curves downward, like he’s displeased to no longer be touching me. “Your body found some B12.”

“Guess so.” I try for my most triumphant smile and start puttering around the kitchen, letting out a relieved breath when he leaves to get dressed. The apartment came furnished, which is the only reason I have kitchen utensils. Unfortunately, by the time Lazlo comes back wearing his new and annoyingly flattering clothes, the stove looks like it just hosted a rave.

“I’m sure you’re good at other things, Ethel,” he says with an undertone of warmth. He wrestles control of the pot so effortlessly, I’m still wondering what happened ten minutes later when we sit at the table with steaming plates in front of us.

There is no damn way my kind and his have ever done this before. Sharing a meal, that is. Talking politely. Even just not killing each other. I wish I had a group chat to share this fantastic occurrence with. Even a single friend would do. Maybe I should yell it out of the window and hope the raccoons will hear.

“So,” he asks while demolishing the food, “where did we meet?”

“Me and you?”

He nods.

I play with a few shells trapped within each other. “Well, we . . . I’m a little older than you.”

“By how much?”

“Not sure.” Lazlo appeared during my third century, and was relatively easy to overpower in our first few encounters, which I attributed to him not having fully grown into his slayer strength.

How I miss those days.

“You were just doing your job,” I add.

“Here in New York?”

No, because at the time I wasn’t aware of the existence of this continent is not the best answer. I lived in Córdoba back then, because it was one of the largest cities in the world, and I desperately tried to go unobserved. By then, I was very much an adolescent vampire, still sorting myself out. I had retained an appreciation for human life, was years from deconstructing the Christian notions of good and evil the abbess had inculcated, and after every meal I drank, I spent several regretful weeks in feverish prayers for forgiveness. I hated killing people so much, I’d resorted to skulking around places where healthy humans might drop almost-dead at any second, in the hope of finding a guilt-free meal. Jousting tournaments, for the most part.

Pathetic, I know.

“In the suburbs,” I lie. “You were with your . . . boss.” Or mentor. Or something. An older slayer whose name I never learned. “He quit shortly after.” I killed him. But he so had it coming.

“Were we nemeses from the start?” It’s obvious that the question is meant to make fun of me, and it’s obvious that he wants me to notice. So I pretend not to.

“Pretty much.”

In fact, I remember his eyes on me from across the square, constant, never leaving. I thought—stupidly, mistakenly, disappointingly—that maybe that handsome young man was attracted to me. In less than two minutes, not only had I concocted a backstory for us (he had seen me at the market and become infatuated despite my intimidating riches and beauty) but also a future (I would reassure him that his lack of wealth mattered nothing to me; we would talk for hours and fall deeply for each other; I would confess my vampiric nature, and after a brief spell of appalment, he would realize that not even my monstrous character could stand in the way of our love; then, forever would begin). As I said, I was very much an adolescent. Still, this was an uncharacteristically pipe-y dream, even for me.

But when Lazlo came after me brandishing one of his favorite weapons, two sickle blades tied together with a metal chain, I wised up real quick.

“It was one-sided,” he tells me after he’s done chewing. “From you.”

“What?”

“The dislike.”

“I assure you, it was not.”

“And I assure you, when I look at you, I feel anything but that.” A pause. “Why are you not eating?”

“Oh. Um, I was so hungry, I scarfed down a candy bar at the register,” I recite. It’s the one excuse I could come up with, and he doesn’t buy it, but he accepts my plate when I push it in his direction.

The sweet heat of his blood still churns through my body.

“Why did you become an entomologist?”

Christ. I can’t remember the last time someone asked me this many questions. “It wasn’t really planned.”

“How do you become something without planning to?”

Well, Lazlo, sometimes a gang of bandits decides to rob your nunnery—because why not?—and you see what’s happening to your sisters and decide that you’d rather throw yourself out of the window than allow the raiders to come any closer to you—because why not?—and a vampire passing by spots you in your last moments and decides to suck you dry—because why not?—and then you wake up in the middle of the night, and for some reason, you’re a damn vampire, too.

“It wasn’t my decision,” I tell him instead. It wasn’t my maker’s decision, either. Even vampires are not sure why some people turn and others don’t. There are necessary conditions—the person has to be on the brink of death but strong enough to sustain the transformation and some of the vampire’s blood has to be ingested by them, but it’s not as simple as that. Many tried and failed. Many didn’t mean to welcome new souls into the night, but . . . here I am.