“You’re no longer hungry?” Andre asked.
“All this devil talk made me lose my appetite.” I eyed the empty table in front of him. “Speaking of appetites . . .” My voice trailed away. I wasn’t really sure what my question for Andre was, but I noticed that I’d never seen him eat, and he still hadn’t taught me anything about drinking blood.
“What is it?” When he saw my meaningful look, Andre raised his eyebrows. “Have you started craving blood?”
I made a face. Ew. “No. Just curious how the whole thing works.”
“Ah.” He flagged the waiter down.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He glanced at me. “This isn’t really a topic I want to go into in public.”
“But the devil is?”
One side of his mouth curved up. “This discussion is a bit more . . . interactive.”
Eep.
No more was said on the subject until we arrived back at Bishopcourt.
As soon as Andre’s entourage met us at the car, he exited the car and quietly discussed something with them. After I managed to catapult my butt out of his car’s bucket seat, I caught a few snippets.
“I’d be happy to do it.”
“Me too.”
“Of course.”
Andre and a young man broke away from the group and walked over to me.
“Gabrielle, this is John,” Andre said, indicating to the guy next to him.
“Hi John, nice to meet you. Andre, what are you doing?”
Instead of answering, Andre laid a hand on the small of my back and led me just inside his house. And then I dug my heels in.
“What’s going on?” People—and what appeared to be a vampire, judging by her pale skin and the pissed off way she looked at me—turned to watch us.
“Nothing you should be worried about.” He discreetly led us down the hall.
“Nothing I should be worried about? I never said I was worried.” Only now I was. Statements like that had two meanings, the literal meaning—don’t be worried—and the real meaning—you better start freaking out.
Andre ignored me and opened up the door to his study. We filed into the room and Andre closed the door behind us. “John’s here to help demonstrate how vampire’s feed.”
The pasta I’d eaten wasn’t sitting so well in my stomach right about now.
“But not, you know, literally—right?” I asked. “You’re not going to actually bite him, are you?”
“It’s not exactly like I’m going to enjoy this. Feeding is a private thing.”
“Ew! You are going to bite him!” I pushed away from the two of them. “I’m not okay with this.” I made a beeline for the door.
Andre moved faster than human eyes could follow to block the door. “We have to go over this eventually. We might as well do it right now.”
There were so many more things I’d rather be doing than this, such as getting my wisdom teeth pulled without local anesthetic, streaking through Peel Castle during a school day, going in for a pelvic examination with a male doctor. Yeah, I was that uninterested in this demonstration.
“I’m sorry I asked,” I said. “Lesson learned—I’ll stop being so inquisitive from now on”—yeah right—“and we can pretend I never asked.”
“Gabrielle,” Andre said, his voice soothing. “you’ve killed an attacker, been shot twice, and successfully avoided death several times. You can watch this.”
I winced. “But it’s so icky.”
“It’s also going to be your reality in a few years—if that.” I knew he had a point, but I’d been clinging to this last shred of normalcy.
I bit the inside of my cheek. My stomach was still mutinous. “Okay, let’s do this.”
“Great—”
“But, you’re going to have to drink from me, not John.” I didn’t want John to get bitten on my account, and there was something intensely creepy about the idea of watching that as a third party.
Andre’s eyes widened. “That’s not a good idea.”
I shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”
He could probably tell I’d love nothing more than to scram out of that room, because he conceded. “John, thanks for volunteering, but you can go ahead and leave.”
“No problem,” John said. He nodded to me as he passed. “Nice meeting you.” He exited the room and closed the door on his way out.
Andre studied me for a moment. “I’m going to have to captivate you—that’s what will make the experience pleasant rather than painful.”
I curled my lip but nodded. I remembered how good it had felt. And that it wasn’t real.
“Are you ready?”
I fidgeted in place. No. “Yeah.”
He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “Okay, I’m going to walk you through this.”
His eyes glittered. There was something dark and illicit about what we were about to do, and my heart rate began to spike. “Are you captivating me yet?” I asked.
He cracked a smile. “Nope. That’s all you.”
Well dang it all.
“But that is the first step. Or, in your case, using glamour.”