He swept the back of his finger down my cheek and nuzzled his nose against mine, eliciting from me a shaky breath. Maybe this was okay—giving into the physical—so long as I kept my heart out of things. So long as we didn’t commit to anything.
The urge to kiss him surged through me, but he pulled away. The missed opportunity left me a little sad, but I sighed quietly in relief.
Ancient man, Sophia. Remember that. How long can it last?
“And you?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“I can’t answer that,” I said.
I knew exactly what I wanted. It just wasn’t what I should.
When Charles excused himself to make a phone call, I added a few more notes to my Book of Shadows.
Strigoi: ‘Water elementals’, also known as Shape-shifters, sent by the ‘Universe’ to hunt evil Cruor. They feed on blood to see auras, which help them determine who to hunt. Not all Strigoi become hunters. Strigoi are only immortal if they keep shifting. </block>
Charles wasn’t going to stop shifting.
***
WE SPENT THE REST of the night and early morning talking. Charles wanted to hear about my life, which meant telling him about all the people who had died and left me behind. He seemed concerned when I told him about my parents, but, more importantly, he didn’t look at me like I was some kind of freak.
I asked him about the side-effects of Cruor blood, and he said sometimes a bond would form and the human might be able to ‘sense’ the Cruor whose blood they had drank.
Those types of side-effects would fade within a couple of days, as they had with me. But I didn’t tell Charles I’d been able to do more than just ‘sense’ Adrian. My Grandpa Parsons had always told me to never offer up anything I didn’t have to. While others gave their sage wisdom of ‘the only stupid questions are the ones that go unasked,’ it was his advice that resonated more: ‘Only ask questions you can’t resolve yourself.’
Without more answers, I didn’t know which questions were safe to ask.
Charles told me about his life, too. About his early urges for blood and his struggle to temper his supernatural energy. He’d never dated a human before—had always been certain they would run the second they learned about his true nature.
Was I any different?
Our chemistry aside, a mortal woman couldn’t have a future with an immortal man, though my reservations were no match for my impulse to live in the moment or my need to learn more about his world. The supernatural perhaps offered the only explanation for my ancestor’s missing body and my family’s curse, but I couldn’t turn to Charles about those things. Not because he’d told me not to ask any more questions, but because I’d made that mistake when I’d confided in Ivory, and I wouldn’t make it again.
I’d have to find the answers I wanted on my own. The question was, how was I going to do that under his watchful eye? Moving in with him might bring me some protection, but I wasn’t sure how much that protection could outweigh the looming complications.
Chapter 12
SIX WEEKS HAD PASSED since I’d moved in with Charles. Six tortuous weeks of struggling between my physical desire for him and my mental determination not to get involved. I admit to deriving some pleasure in that he didn’t seem to be having an easy time with it either.
His demeanor around me had relaxed a great deal, but there were still times the tension between us was so palpable I feared I would toss caution to the wind. But anytime I thought something was building between us, a week would go by before I would see him again. In that way, living with Charles was fairly similar to living alone.
I had to admit, his house—which was once Belle Meadow’s old library—had some advantages over my own. For one, when my house was ransacked two days after I moved out, Charles’ house was not. Secondly, a moat of daffodils surrounded his lot. But this wasn’t an advantage because of my love for landscaping—which didn’t exist. Charles explained that narcissus, while only mildly poisonous for humans and animals to ingest, was outright debilitating to Cruor even to the touch.
After Charles explained the purpose to me, I’d immediately jotted down what I’d learned in my Book of Shadows, cross-referencing the new knowledge under both Daffodil and Cruor.
Daffodil was discovered as a Cruor repellent incidentally, back when flowers were put on graves to cover the stench of death. When bodies in some graves began to go missing, it wasn’t long before humans noticed the dead buried beneath the daffodils always remained. At first, the humans believed the daffodils were warning off bad spirits. But once news broke forth of grave-robbers, humans began to think the effect had been only a coincidence. In reality, the daffodils had prevented the Cruor from rising. During that time, however, the Cruor discovered a way to turn humans, and the necessity of Cruor being earthborn came to an end.</block>