“Sophie, what the hell are you talking about?”
“There’s the issue of how I need blood to survive.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Liam: I drink blood from living donors in order to function. I have to do it a lot.”
“So? I have to eat regular food to survive.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“But it doesn’t make you a bad person, right?
“No,” she said slowly. “Feeding…biting and taking blood…it’s like any weapon, I think. You’ve got a shotgun at home, yes? Well, is it a good shotgun or a bad shotgun?”
“Guess that depends,” he replied. “If I use it to blow the head off a serial vampire scumbag killer, it’s a good one. If I used it to, I dunno, hurt a kid or whatever, it’s a bad one.”
“Well, I think feeding is much the same. I could have hurt you. I could have killed you.”
“I think you did kill me,” he said cheerfully.
She didn’t smile. “I’m being serious, Liam.”
“Yeah, I can tell by the way you’re sucking all the enjoyment out of this moment.”
“And I’ll outlive you,” she continued doggedly, “unless we take steps.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“There it is again.”
“What?”
“That I’m a vampire and a lot older, and so I’m smarter and just in general better than you.”
“That’s ridiculous!” she cried, freshly stung.
“Ha!”
“Ha yourself.”
They didn’t say another word until they got to the town where the last girl, Shawna, had lived and died. Then Liam said, “I’d prefer to ride with Betsy.”
“You took the words right out of my head,” she snapped, her idioms suffering, as always, when she was angry. She swung her door open and jumped out of the truck. “I’ll send her over.”
“Good.”
“Good!” She stomped over to the king and queen, who looked to be in the middle of their own lover’s spat.
“You don’t suck like ordinary people suck, by the way. You suck like Academy Award–sucking. If there was an Oscar handed out for Most Sucking, you’d have it locked.”
“You’ve got to come up with something new. Anything new.”
“Excuse me, Majesties,” she interrupted, her nervousness in their presence evaporating. She could be angry or she could be nervous, but apparently she couldn’t be both. “Liam would like the queen to ride with him.”
“Ride with…oh, right. The B and B thing.” Shawna’s mother had told them the killer was staying at a local bed-and-breakfast. There were two in town; they didn’t know which one she had meant. So they had decided to split up. Originally each couple would make a team. Not any longer. “That’s fine with me. Later, Sinclair.” She walked over to Liam, who had gotten out and was standing beside the truck. “Hey, can I drive?”
He wordlessly handed her the keys, then walked around to the passenger’s side. Sophie waited for a moment. For an apology? Whose?
“Dr. Trudeau, we need to be going,” Sinclair told her.
“Sir,” she replied miserably, and fell into step behind him.
11
“WHAT’S the matter?” Betsy asked him. She was so tall, she didn’t have to adjust the seat, just the rearview mirror. “Did you guys have a big wicked fight, or what?”
“Something like that.”
“I know what that’s like.”
“Mmm,” he replied, secretly doubting she had the tiniest clue. Nice enough gal, and super-pretty, but a regular guy like him didn’t have much in common with the queen of the vampires. “Okay.”
“Dude, seriously. I’m supposed to be the consort of a guy who’s totally arrogant and sneaky and has, like, eighty hidden agendas.”
“You’re supposed to be?”
“Don’t even get me started. It’s a whole long story, and I come off really bad in it. But so does Sinclair! Anyway—”
“You’ve got something…” He pointed to her neck, where three mosquitoes were currently having a party. He guessed…did mosquitoes bother vampires?
“What?” She brushed in the wrong spot, as people always did when told they had something on them. “What? Did I get it?”
“Here, I—” He brushed at her neck, and was startled when something snagged his finger. Well, he was pretty bad at this stuff. “Aw, shit, now I’m caught on something…” He pulled back, surprised to find a gold chain entwined on the end of his finger, and even more surprised to find a cross dangling from the end of the chain.
“Oh, crap! The chain broke!”
“I can fix it,” he told her, since she seemed pretty upset about it.
“It’s just, Sinclair gave it to me. I wouldn’t want anything…it’s nice, right?”
“Right.” He stared at it in wonder…she was a vampire, correct? “Let me hold on to it for you, and I’ll fix it when we’re done tonight.”
“Thanks. It used to belong to his sister, I guess it’s a family heirloom thing. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it, is all. Anyway, where was I?”
“I’m sorry,” Liam said. “But I’ve just gotta know. You’re a vampire, right? The queen of them? What are you doing carrying around a cross? And if Sinclair gave it to you…I guess it’s just an old wives’ tale, huh?”
“Oh no, no,” she assured him, stomping on the clutch and shifting into third. “Sorry, didn’t mean to go all Bela Lugosi mysterious-ee on you. I haven’t been a vampire very long…just a few months.”
“That’s why crosses don’t work on you?”
“No, no. Nothing works on me. Crosses normally burn the crap out of a regular vampire, but I guess I’m special.” She said it glumly, as if it wasn’t a good thing at all. “Crosses don’t burn me, and holy water makes me sneeze, and stakes through the chest don’t work, but they sure wreck my clothes.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, because he had to say something. “About your clothes, I mean.”
“Tell me. My dry cleaner totally freaks out when I come near him these days. Anyway, crosses would burn Sinclair, except he got that one way back when his sister died, before he was a vampire.”
“Oh.”
“Okay? Everything cleared up?”
“Uh, sure,” he said, pretending he heard this sort of thing all the time. Of course, very little had been cleared up. Why was this woman so special? Why had Eric Sinclair, whom she professed to dislike, given her a family heirloom, a religious symbol, no less? Could she be killed? Should she be killed?
He guessed he’d never know, and wasn’t sure if that was good news, or bad.
“Now where was I? Oh, right, the jerkiness of Eric Sinclair.”
“And the whole consort thing,” he prompted her, pocketing the necklace.
“So, I’m supposed to just throw all my doubts aside and be his wife for, like, a thousand years or whatever. And nobody can understand why I’m not getting with the program.” She laughed, sounding a little bitter. “Just forget everything I’ve ever learned and trust some guy who’s as scary as he is good-looking.”
Hmm. Wasn’t that what he expected Sophie to do? Toss aside all she had learned, all she was, because he was mortal and he demanded it? Maybe her thing was more his problem than hers.
“Hellooooooo?” Betsy was saying, waving a hand in front of her face and steadying the steering wheel with the other. “My lips are moving; it’s polite to pretend to listen.”
“I heard every word,” he assured her.
“IT seems your evening has been almost as stressful as mine.”
“Sir, you have no idea.” She glanced over at him and was surprised to see a compassionate expression on his face. “I’ve had a lot thrown at me in the last few hours, that’s all. I’m certainly not going to bore you with it.”
“I’m interested,” was all he said, so she found herself telling him the entire story…her loneliness since her friend had died; how wonderful Liam was; how she didn’t know he had loved her in secret all those years; how wonderful Liam was (when he wasn’t being a tiresome pig-head); how he seemingly accepted her vampire nature; how wonderful Liam was…all of it.