A rapidly increasing heartbeat.
Brennan lifted his head from the emptied blood bag and saw Cole—the cute library blanket guy—leaning against the wall, a lighter in one hand and a joint between his lips, just before his jaw fell open and the joint fell from his mouth.
It might have been comedic if Brennan wasn’t amid about fourteen different crises.
Brennan’s fangs were still bared, bulging against his lips. He willed them away but they remained stubbornly visible.
“Um,” Brennan said, going completely still, as if that might activate some secret vampire invisibility power. No such luck.Fuck.“Hi.”
He realized there was blood on his lips and moved to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. Cole flinched back at the movement. Reflexively, Brennan threw both his hands up in surrender.
“I’m not gonna hurt you! I— Hold on.”
He concentrated on making his fangs go away.No more blood here! The situation has passed! Go to sleep!It felt akin to talking down an inappropriate boner, a thought that added insult to injury.
Brennan summoned the memory of the garlic scampi his roommate, Tony, cooked last week, how the acrid smell had permeated through the walls and ruined Brennan’s research cocoon, and atlast,the fangs receded.
The first good thing Tony’s cooking had done for him, thanks very much.
“This looks bad, probably, right? I’m gonna say this probably looks bad.…” Brennan trailed off as Cole slowly, deliberately rubbed his eyes with closed fists and blinked hard. “Would you believe that I’m a talented acrobat and this is an unbranded Capri-Sun?”
“I—You—” Cole stammered, then settled on, “Fangs?”
Well. So much for secrecy. Brennan was never a good liar.
“Okay, so,” Brennan said, palms out like he was talking to a skittish animal, “I’m maybe a vampire.”
The words hung in the air for all of a minute before Cole started laughing, light and confused, until it morphed slowly into a horrifiedwhat the fuckthat pulled Brennan from the tidal wave of panic in his brain.
“What the fuck!” he said, laughter edging toward something unhinged. “Is this a joke?”
Brennan’s life? Yes. Absolutely, on a cosmic level.
He said, drawing out each word, “I don’t think so.”
“You don’tthinkso?” Cole’s voice went progressively higher, but he was frozen to the spot on the stoop leading into Michaelson. “Either youarea vampire and youdidjust jump out of a window and drink a pint of donated blood, or youdidn’t.”
Fuck. Shit. He went through a litany of curse words in his head but carefully said none aloud. His mother would be proud.
“I know it sounds—ridiculous, okay, but it’s a developing hypothesis.This is still new to me. That was actually my first time drinking human blood. A week ago, I didn’t even eat meat!” Brennan’s brain and mouth were moving too fast, and he knew he was rambling, but he needed to fill the silence. “My mom made me watch a documentary about factory farming when I was in high school and we went vegetarian together.”
Okay, no. This was irrelevant and Cole was looking at him like he was insane.Read the room, Brooks.Brennan cut himself off and stopped pacing, foot tapping restlessly in place instead. He faced Cole and silently pleaded for him to say something,anything.Cole was stock-still, mouth twisted in a strange wobbly frown.
“So, the library. With the vampire books?”
“Research,” Brennan confirmed.
Cole plucked up the joint he’d dropped and lit it with the urgency of someone who didn’t know what else to do. He shook his head a few times, apparently at the entire situation. Brennan couldn’t blame him.Hestill didn’t know how to process this.
Cole took a long drag. “You’re telling me vampires are real,” he said, gesturing with the hand not holding the joint.
“In some form? Yeah, I’m coming to that conclusion. It’s not likeDraculaorTwilight,the rules are all weird and—I mean, most importantly: I don’t sparkle.”
“Disappointing.” Cole sniffed.
Brennan huffed a laugh before he remembered to resume panicking. What would Cole do? Who would he tell? Brennan barely understood what was going on himself, and now this random blanket-toting, joint-smoking Southern gentleman would run to call the nearest priest as soon as he was sure Brennan wasn’t about to maul him.
Cole finally moved to take in the empty street. God, he was probably making sure there were witnesses so he didn’t get murdered. The streetlights flickered off as the first rays of sunlight rose above the line of maple trees and brownstone apartments. It was barely September, but an early-morning chill was settling over the college town.
