“You thought you’d kill some time, huh.” He takes a drink from the glass and then scowls like it’s not supposed to be empty. “Sorry I ruined your bid for privacy—and I know I can’t get you any of this, but you look like you could use some.”
He’s not wrong. “Yeah, I’m not a drinker.”
His shrug is all about the it’s-your-loss as he goes over to the galley kitchen. To make sure I don’t stare at him, I look around at the blank walls and the unclutter everywhere. I keep overlaying the image of him in a wrinkled button-down with a service weapon holstered under his arm and a badge on hisbelt against what’s with me now. He’s bigger than he was in the beginning, more muscular, and much taller. The clothes are certainly fancier, and the bags under the eyes are gone. Missing also is the existential weariness that was as much a part of him as his skin tone and hair color.
Those hazel eyes are still shrewd under the charm, however there’s a depth now. It’s as if he’s seven hundred years old even though he looks in his mid-thirties, and this makes me reflect on how vampires are like that. They don’t age in increments as humans do. Even half-breeds such as him and Beth look just the same from after their transitions all the way until they hit the proverbial wall right before they die. Their decline is a free-fall, and given that I’m through menopause and looking at, God willing, forty years of hot flashes in front of me, I think that’s a blessing.
“So what you been up to there,” he says as the Scotch glug-glug-glugs into his glass.
I watch the ice cubes become buoyant once again, and ponder whether vampire livers are heartier than humans’. “Typing. You know me.”
His hazel eyes flip to me and he smiles in that charmer way—and yes, my heart tumbles in my chest, even though I’m very happily married. “Keeps you off the streets, does it.”
“Oh, that’s right. Sure does.”
And given that the only thing I know how to do on “the streets” is take illegal right-hand turns on reds and never, ever use my directional signal, it’s a public service.
Cue the silence.
Jesus. I am way too socially awkward and middle-aged-lady to write these books. I’m reminded of the time a reader who was covered with very cool tattoos asked how many I had. I winced and told her, two: One dot on either side of my face at the hinge axis of my jaw. For the purposes of reconstructing all my teeth.
Yup. That’s me, such a fucking hard-ass.
“I have to know something,” I say.
His eyebrow raises as he puts the Lagavulin back on the counter. That he doesn’t recap the bottle tells me that his second isn’t his last.
“What’s that.”
Not a question, and a closed door if I’ve ever had one in conversation. Good thing I have the master key.
“Do you miss anything. From your old life?”
The short answer is no, of course. Or, fuck no. But life, whether vampire or human, has a way of making even bad things fade, and nostalgia isn’t always tied to fond memories. Because brains are fucked-up fun houses.
He takes a long drink. Immediately replaces the volume in the glass, which is a good inch and a half. Cap stays off.
“My mother died a long time ago.”
“I know, and I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you would know, wouldn’t ya.” The smile is a ghost, slipping around the banister of his face, not touching his eyes or that frown, disappearing as soon as a glimpse is caught. “You know everything.”
“Not really.”
“Alzheimer’s is a bitch.” He comes back around and sits on the leather sofa. No manspreading for him; he crosses his legs knee on knee, like a gentleman. “I miss the Foosball table, how about that?”
Nice dodge.
“I thought you took it with you?” I glance at the empty spot on the floor where the game always stood. “Didn’t you?”
“Nah. Rhage broke it about a month before we moved out of here to the Wheel.”
Ah, the missing thirty-three years. I don’t have details on a lot of that, but like an archeological dig that yields pottery shards and bones, I’ll put it together over time.
“What about José de la Cruz?” I want to sit down, but the couch is the only place and I don’t think I’m welcome there. “Do you miss him?”
Butch stares off into the middle distance between us. I wonder if he’s thinking back to those years they served together on the CPD, and I think of a number of times his partner took care of him, worried about him. I especially remember when José went back to that empty apartment at the end ofDark Lover. Butch was gone, and José was not surprised.
